Texas Business School Teaching Door-to-Door Sales

Grad students in Texas study entrepreneurship–and learn some tough lessons about sales.

Acton, a private school whose primary offering is a one-year M.B.A. program, was founded by a group of entrepreneurs in 2002 and designed specifically to teach the fundamentals of entrepreneurship. Last year, it ranked No. 13 on the Princeton Review’s list of top graduate entrepreneurial programs.

Every year following winter break, Acton’s class of about 25 students breaks into small teams for the Acton Sales Challenge–a three-day competition in which students go door to door to see which team can sell the most children’s dictionaries. The challenge is a core part of the experience at Acton."When we started this program, I couldn’t find a single M.B.A. program that taught anything about sales," says Jeff Sandefer, an Acton professor and one of the school’s co-founders. "Sales is seen as kind of the ugly stepchild of business."

Rachel Kaufman | Inc. magazine

Full Story: http://www.inc.com/magazine/201205/rachel-kaufman/business-school-teaching-sales.html