Inc. Magazine
An article Inc. had
Southwestern Advantage ties. The article titled “
Texas Business School Teaching Door-to-Door Sales,” tells the tale of a small Business School in Austin and how they train their MBA students for the real world.
For several years now, the Acton School of Business, a private school with a one-year MBA program has offered coursework in entrepreneurship. Started in 2002, it ranked #13 just last year on the Princeton Review’s top graduate entrepreneurial program list.
The link with Southwestern Advantage is that the class is required to take on a three-day entrepreneurial challenge in which they sell the My Fun With Words book set to families in their homes around Austin.
Jeff Sandefer, Acton’s co-founder and a professor at the school says this is an attempt to teach entrepreneurs something they must know how to do: sell. The three-day Sales challenge is mandatory and the students must be successful. Sandefer maintains the skills needed to sell to a stranger are the same needed to be a successful entrepreneur.
Sales managers with Southwestern Advantage have assisted with training and the monies collected for wholesale and shipping are sent to the company, while the profits made are given to a nonprofit of Acton’s choice.