An Experiential Learning Project For Personal Selling, Sales Management and Entrepreneurship Courses
Through the Selling Smiles 101 project students are given an opportunity to apply classroom concepts to the real world while making a significant, positive difference within their local community.
The project requires students to actually get out and apply the concepts, theories and techniques that they typically learn through lectures, role plays, cases and job shadowing. In fact, Selling Smiles 101 was initially conceived as a vehicle to help students, regardless of career path, develop the kind of life skills required to "hit the ground running" upon graduation. Specifically, the project requires students to adopt and achieve an ambitious sales goal that requires them to prospect, qualify, present and close real sales. In the process students gain self-confidence, become better presenters, learn to cope with ambiguity and to accept responsibility, recognize the efforts of others, and how to motivate themselves and others.
What distinguishes the Selling Smiles 101 project from Cutco in the Classroom, is that the proceeds of student sales are directed towards a charity partner. In Canada students have partnered with the Children's Wish Foundation of Canada (CWF) to help grant the wishes of children with high risk, life-threatening illnesses. Commission generated by student sales in the Selling Smiles 101 class is donated to the CWF at the end of the term. The goal is to raise money to grant wishes for children with high risk, life threatening illnesses. In just four years, students at the Haskayne School of Business (University of Calgary) have raised over $160,000 (Canadian) for the CWF and helped fund the wishes of eleven local children and their families through the Selling Smiles 101 program. In addition to motivating the students enrolled in the course, this charitable donation has also led to considerable local and national publicity for the Selling Smiles 101 project, the CWF, and the Haskayne School of Business. Moreover, enrollment in the sales management course has doubled since its inception.
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