After almost a full year of planning, the 2014 Sales Competition and Conference is a wrap! On November 14th and 15th, 30 students from the top MBA programs came to Cambridge to participate in the event. We had 12 accomplished sales professionals as our judges; 5 senior sales professionals who sat on panels; 8 student volunteers; and an additional 25 local business school students who attended the conference!
The MIT Sloan and HBS Sales and Business Development Clubs partnered to host the 2014 International MBA Sales Competition and Conference. Our collective mission is to promote sales as a critically important and fundamental business skill necessary for every career, either as a successful entrepreneur or as a top-level executive. We believe that selling skills are one of the most important competences in business and its application is not only about achieving measurable revenue targets, but also about selling your strategy, your marketing plans, your consulting final projects, and ultimately yourself.
The event began on Friday evening at the Harvard Faculty Club, where we heard from the renowned Mark Roberge, the Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot.
Following Mark’s presentation, the competitors and judges had the opportunity to network and mingle before the big event on Saturday.
Saturday morning kicked off with a lesson on how to effectively network, from Diane Darling, an expert on networking and building connections.
While the competitors went into the individual and team rounds, the conference attendees had the chance to hear from a panel of accomplished sales leaders. The first panel was “Sales, Marketing, and Business Development: How are they Different, and how do they Interact?”. The second panel was “Sales and Business Development in Start-ups” where we heard from successful entrepreneurs.
Following the competition, everyone went to the Microsoft campus for networking and relaxing after a long day.
We wrapped the event up with a keynote speech from Lisa Stapleton, an Area Sales Manager for Microsoft.
Last, but certainly not least, the winners were announced!
Thank you to our generous sponsors – Microsoft, HubSpot, and Goldman Sachs!