UCM Students Place Seventh in National Collegiate Sales Competition

Celebrating a seventh-place finish out of 68 teams in the National Collegiate Sales Competition were University of Central Missouri students and their faculty coaches, from left, Tyler Hirlinger, coach; team members Meleah Volmert, Joel Leslie, and Dalton White; and Charles Schwepker, coach.

University of Central Missouri marketing students competed against some of the top students and teams in their academic discipline this month through the National Collegiate Sales Competition  (NCSC) March 3-6. It is hosted by Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia, and is considered the largest and most competitive sales competition in the nation. 

During the event, UCM was represented by the team of Joel Leslie, a senior from Lee’s Summit, Missouri: Dalton White, a junior from Leavenworth, Kansas, and Meleah Volmert, a junior from Washington, Missouri, all majoring in marketing. The UCM team finished seventh overall out of 68 participating universities. Leslie advanced to the semi-finals, and tied for 11th place out of 136 collegiate competitors. White advanced to the quarterfinals and finished in a tie for 19th place. Volmert participated in the speed selling portion of the competition. The team was coached by Tyler Hirlinger, associate instructor of marketing, and Charles Schwepker, Randall and Kelly Harbert Marketing Professor in the Harmon College of Business and Professional Studies.

The NCSC was created in 1999. It provides a venue that allows competitors to sharpen their sales skills in a highly competitive environment while also providing networking opportunities with national and international peers. Additionally, the competition provides corporate sponsors an opportunity to network with high-caliber students who are skilled in sales, and possibly recruit them for jobs. Some of the most prestigious institutions in the nation are part of this event. UCM is the only Missouri institution on the NSCS’s 2023 list of participating universities.

Prior to the NSCS, the three students competed in February in the Redbird National Sales Competition (RNSC) at the Professional Sales Institute at Illinois State University. In that event, which included 120 competitors from 43 universities across the nation, UCM finished ninth overall. Leslie and White advanced to the semi-finals, while Volmert nearly missed advancing to the semifinals.