Coming Soon: Regional Benchmark in B2B Sales Education, The Biggest Ever South East Asian Sales Competition Sponsored by Salesforce
Universities across South-East Asia are undertaking a joint initiative to boost sales resilience in early March 2021. Traditionally, companies have taken a major role in training their own business-to-business (B2B) sales teams. However, universities are increasingly taking the lead in sales education development and skills practice. An effective method of achieving this is to complete a sales education course with a ‘live’ role-play sales meeting in front of a jury; this is the core of the South-East Asian Sales Competition (SEASAC), designed for university students.
After the success of the 2020 SEASAC, hosted by the Mahasarakham University in Thailand, this year’s competition lead moves to Indonesia where a panoply of universities and almost 100 students from across the South-East Asia region and Europe will be participating. Due to the continued pandemic, the SEASAC 2021 – in-tune with current sales conversations – will be held online from 3-5 March 2021.2
The main organizer for this year’s event is the Catholic University of Parahyangan (UNPAR) from Indonesia. Competition Director, Dr. Margaretha Banowati Talim, commented, “Businesses have opportunities to act as judges, or even set their companies as ‘case exemplar’, thereby gaining cost-effective recruitment opportunities and in many cases learning how they can sell their products and services more effectively. We would be delighted to hear from any business who is interested in learning more and cooperate with us.” The main sponsor in SEASAC 2021 is Salesforce, which defines the ‘sellers’ cases for this year’s competition.
SEASAC is a European Commission-funded Erasmus+ project created to support the professionalization of B2B sales throughout the South-East Asian region. Sales education is based on a mixture of research and skills practice. Students’ final assessment is to participate in the simulated live sales exercise organized by a conglomerate of Universities under the SEASAC banner. Competition buyers and judges are drawn from all over the world and have a wide variety of experience from business and pedagogy.
Mr. Harri Lappalainen from Turku University of Applied Sciences (Finland), says, “SEASAC research demonstrates that this method of boosting sales education has many developmental benefits for students, including building individual confidence and developing a positive approach towards sales as a vital business skill. Performing in a live role-play is quite nerve-racking but ultimately really rewarding experience”.
The sales competition concept, as adopted to South-East Asia, has been developed and tested over many years by a number of European universities. Winners of the European competition and SEASAC are offered reciprocal opportunities to compete, thereby expanding student’s cultural understanding of B2B sales.
Details and how to contact the Southeast Asia Sales Competition core persons can be found at www.seasalescompetition.com. **
About SEASAC
SEASAC is co-financed by the European Commission’s Erasmus+ Capacity Building in the Field of Higher Education programme.
Disclaimer: This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein.
