CU Coventry student triumphs in national competition to identify the sales stars of the future
Bentil Oduro, Professor Tony Douglas - co-organiser of the event, Florian Mueller, Tricia Steel - Aftermarket Sales Operations Manager (Textron Aviation), Eden Tesfagaber, Bhajan Aulak and Sandip Kaur
news
Wednesday 28 March 2018
Press contact
A student from Coventry has triumphed in a presitigious national competition to identify the sales stars of the future.
Eden Tesfagaber, a second-year student studying on the sales and marketing degree course at CU Coventry, was one of the winners at the first ever Gartner UK Universities Sales Competition, in Edinburgh, Scotland.
She is also due to be offered an internship with UK-based IT research consultancy firm Gartner, which sponsored the event, on the back of her triumph.
The competition was held at Edinburgh Napier University and saw students from universities across the UK demonstrate their sales skills while trying to impress industry experts.
The competition included a series of sales pitches and speed selling events which challenged the students to sell under real life conditions to major players including Gartner, as well as Salesforce, the Institute of Sales Management and aerospace experts Textron Aviation.
A total of three students from CU Coventry entered the two-day competition, with Florian Mueller and Sandip Kaur also participating.
They were accompanied by Bentil Oduro, course leader in sales, marketing and public relations at CU Coventry, and Bhajan Aulak, course leader in business.
Eden, Florian and Sandip will join others from the UK competition to go head-to-head against the best in Europe at the next round of the competition which will be held at Paris Euridis Business School in May.
The whole event was extremely inspiring and was an excellent opportunity to meet and present to industry experts who gave very productive, professional feedback.
We’ve had various assignments during our second year including pitching and presenting, so I was able to use the skills I have developed through my course during the competition.
CU Coventry provides so many extra-curricular opportunities for students which will help with our employability. I was even lucky enough to be scouted for a seven-week placement at the contest.
I’m really looking forward to the next stage of the competition which we’re going to begin preparing for in the coming weeks.
Eden Tesfagaber, Sales & Marketing
The competition was an excellent opportunity for students to show off the skills they have developed during their time with us at CU Coventry, and we are extremely proud of those who took part.
We are training the students to become practitioners in sales and marketing, and this extra-curricular activity gave them the opportunity to take part in range of exercises and present sales pitches to industry experts.
They have all gained valuable experience which will make their CVs stand out when they go on to look for employment.
We now look forward to accompanying the students to the next stage of the competition and wish them the very best of luck.
Bentil Oduro, sales, marketing and public relations course leader at CU Coventry
