Marketing students win prize from Xerox
Five marketing students will be splitting a $2,500 prize from Xerox, and will also have the opportunity to shadow a Xerox sales representative in the field.
Recruiting Specialist at Xerox Canada Michel Blais presented the award on November 30 to a group of students in MARK 454: Personal Selling.
Professor Lea Katsanis had assigned a case study about Xerox to student groups in the class. The students then presented their results to a panel of judges that included Blais, as well as Concordians Gerry Hughes, Director of the Institute for Cooperative Education, and Joseph Capano, Principal Director Development for the John Molson School of Business (JMSB).
The five winning team members are Tanya Caristo, Zeyad Saadeh, Stephanie Laurin, Gabrielle Faraggi and Jonathan O’Connell. They will each spend a day with a Xerox sales representative to learn about working in the field. Four students who received honourable mentions will receive a free textbook or $100 of trade books from McGraw-Hill Ryerson.
Katsanis, who is also Chair of the Marketing Department in the JMSB, met with a Xerox representative about a year-and-a-half ago to discuss Xerox’s intention to connect classroom teaching with their sales and recruitment strategy.
Blais suggested giving the students a case study with a cash prize and mentoring opportunity for the team that best showed an understanding of a prospective client’s needs, handling the client’s objections, and eventually closing the sale.
Katsanis’s pedagogical goals for the students were slightly different. Students’ proposals were evaluated by the judges, while Katsanis evaluated their oral presentation skills. That aspect of the project counted for 10% of the final mark for the class. Katsanis sees the importance “for students to get validation from a national employer.”
In Blais’s remarks to the class, he said he was “impressed with the class’s professionalism.” One group created a publication as part of their project that Blais showed interest in using internally at Xerox.
“In all the terms I’ve had students make presentations, this was the most rewarding. It was a thrill! I get to see my students shine,” said Katsanis.
On December 8, Xerox will host a networking event where the class can learn more about the company and meet Concordia alumni who work there. Some of these students have caught Blais’s attention for possible future employment.
The same project will be assigned in the fall of 2011. A similar project may be considered for the MBA program in the JMSB.