A "2013 LEADERSHIP SERIES SALUTE" Goes out to Jones Graduate School Entrepreneur Organization students Jeremy Chapman, Craig Ceccanti, and Paul Lumkins for their Owl Tank Competition Wins

First place winner Jeremy Chapman echoed the sentiments of Lumpkins and Ceccanti. He began his pitch for GMEX.com, a company that matches industrial metal sellers with buyers, by comparing it to Autotrader.com, a company and concept that investors and the general public are already quite familiar with. He said the competition challenged him to create a crisp presentation, portraying a business model that “covered every spoke of the wheel.” His successful pitch netted GMEX.com a whopping $11,250 and in-kind gifts that included $5,000 in branding and marketing strategy from BrandExtract. “We’re really hoping to use the winnings for sales and marketing help,” he says. “We want to be the loudest person in the room, so everyone knows we’re here.” 

Second place winner Craig Ceccanti ’08 pitched Tee’d Off, an entertainment-focused restaurant and bar concept in which patrons can play rounds of golf on some of the world’s most famous golf courses via simulated golf hubs. According to Ceccanti, whose pitch netted his business idea $1,750 in addition to in-kind gifts, “The most challenging thing about Owl Tank was preparing for questions from sophisticated investors. Learning to speak their language and understand what is truly important to them is incredibly useful in evolving our message for future investor presentations.” 

Third prize winners, Paul Lumpkins ’14 and Cameron Hatch ’14, gave the pitch for Modern Hunting, a hunting service conceptualized in one of the students’ MBA classes. According to Lumpkins, the need to compress their pitch into six minutes, “forced us to really think about the essential product story that we were trying to tell and convey our idea in a more succinct manner.” The essential challenge, he says, “is figuring out how to quickly sell your idea to someone who might not have any background in your industry.” 

JGSEO’s Rousing Second Annual Owl Tank Competition Builds Momentum

Recently, the Jones Graduate School Entrepreneur Organization (JGSEO) at Rice University held its second annual Owl Tank Competition. Inspired by the popular television show Shark Tank, Owl Tank offers competitors the valuable opportunity to pitch their business plans to a panel of successful Houston-area business leaders and venture capitalists who serve as judges.

This year, 11 teams, each with a “small idea that doesn’t require a patent or millions of dollars in funding,” competed for the top spots by distilling their idea into a six-minute pitch compelling enough to gain the judges’ interest and enthusiasm. After the pitch, the judges provided valuable feedback, often volleying pointed questions to team members about the viability, sustainability and originality of their plan.

The competition began rousingly, when Michael Tatz ’14, team member for Patriot Family Housing, began calling cadence and jogging military-style across the expanse of Anderson Family Commons. The following teams kept up the energy of the competition, which lasted nearly two hours.

Owl Tank’s Future

“I received a great deal of feedback on the quality of the presentations and pitches, as well as involvement of judges in terms of tougher questions,” says JGSEO President Gene Brieck ’10, when describing the success of this year’s event. “More teams applied, more teams presented, and we more than doubled the prize money in total and gained more sponsors in general.”

The JGSEO hopes to keep the momentum going for next year’s Owl Tank, slated for spring 2014

— M. Yvonne Taylor

A "2013 LEADERSHIP SERIES SALUTE" Goes out to the SEI Program at the Bauer College of Business for Preparing and Placing Top Talent in Professional Selling Roles

The Sales Excellence Institute at the C. T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston was recently ranked as a top university sales program by the Sales Education Foundation.

SEI Program Recognized for Preparing and Placing Top Talent in Professional Selling Roles

The C. T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston is consistently recognized for its specialty programs, with the most recent honor coming from the Sales Excellence Foundation (SEF), which has named the college’s Sales Excellence Institute to its annual list of Top University Sales Programs.

The Sales Excellence Institute at Bauer is a leader in providing sales research and education, with its Program for Excellence in Selling preparing undergraduate students for careers in selling. The institute also focuses strongly on sales research, uncovering the key drivers of superior sales performance and providing information to sales managers about state-of-the-art methods for creating and sustaining competitive advantage in the sales force.

SEF included Bauer’s Sales Excellence Institute on its list as one of the best locations for hiring sales professionals. All of the programs included on the list offer a minimum requirement of three sales-specific courses, university recognition for individuals completing their program and the opportunity for internships.

Established in 2007, the Sales Education Foundation represents the need for a more consistent, rigorous approach to sales education. As a global organization and a component fund of The Dayton Foundation, SEF’s impacts thousands of students and professionals at universities and businesses worldwide.

“Receiving this accolade from the Sales Education Foundation – a highly respected organization – is a real honor,” said Michael Ahearne, a marketing professor and executive director of the Sales Excellence Institute. “This provides further validation that we are the leading sales program in the nation. We will continue to provide great sales opportunities for our talented students while leveraging our world-class research reputation.”

SEF executive director Sally Stevens suggests that a great focus on sales and services cause companies to consider hiring more sales program graduates.

“With a track record for producing top sales talent,” Stevens said, “it’s no wonder that sales students have a job placement rate at graduation of 90 percent in their field, compared to approximately 45 percent in other graduate fields.”

Students like Kaitlin Naumrow, a marketing major who earned an advanced certificate in sales on May 3, also recognizes the value in the sales program at Bauer.

“PES taught us real sales processes, how to be comfortable speaking to new people and that always being adaptable is key to success,” Naumrow said. “The fact we must sell real products for real money as part of our grade is an experience unlike no other. I am confident what I’ve learned from PES will be a change maker in my career.”

By Lori Brown