The COVID-19 pandemic couldn’t stop over 1,300 students at 49 colleges and universities from competing in the RNMKRS global virtual sales competition. While companies are fretting about the future, these dedicated students went to their mobile phones to interact with artificially intelligent animated customer bots to compete for visibility with enterprise employers like Dell Technologies and HubSpot.
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Live sales competitions rely on transporting students around the country. The travel, cost and logistics of these events are a limiting factor for many schools, and COVID restrictions made these events impossible to execute this year.
Students use the voice technology on their phones to have fully contextual conversations with the customer bot as they try to win his trust and educate him on their product line of laptop computers. The customer bot listens, adapts and responds as the students go through the sales call.
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The first virtual, mobile selling skills competition was developed by the RNMKRS Faculty Alliance of leading educators, Dell Technologies training executives and developers from 3 countries.
“Sales acumen requires practice and application, knowledge isn’t enough,” says Stefanie Boyer, Associate Professor of Marketing at Bryant University, 2017 AMA Sales Educator of the Year and RNMKRS Co-Founder (“Rainmakers”), “and as we face new economic realities and distance learning requirements, there is a need for more free technology-based training for students.”
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