UNB Saint John Professionalizing Robust Sales Learning With $1-Million Investment, CPSA Partnership
Tech entrepreneur Gerry Pond years ago identified the lack of local post-secondary sales training as a barrier to growth for Atlantic Canadian companies. The University of New Brunswick in Saint John took up the challenge and launched a new program in 2018. It’s had many successes in the early stages of development, the latest being a $1-million investment from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA).
The ACOA funding will support a number of professional sales initiatives that will be based in UNB Saint John’s uptown building, which has been home to the Saint John campus’ Master of Business Administration (MBA) program since last year and has become a hub of entrepreneurial excellence.
“This funding will benefit Atlantic Canada’s business community, bringing expertise to the area and producing more professional salespeople, which will help boost New Brunswick’s economy,” said Dr. Paul J. Mazerolle, UNB president and vice-chancellor, when the funding was announced. “I want to thank ACOA for providing us with the necessary funds to allow for these opportunities to come to fruition.”
The last year has been challenging for everyone in business and academia. But trained sales professionals will be a critical part of the rebuilding process as the province emerges from the pandemic, and the UNB Saint John program has continued to improve the program to make it more attractive to prospective students and companies.
Late last year, the university announced that it had become an Accredited Partner of the Canadian Professional Sales Association (CPSA), the national governing body for sales professionals.
Under the partnership, the university’s MBA in Business Development and Sales program is the only MBA in the Maritimes accredited by the CPSA Institute for providing all the required education toward the Certified Sales Professional (CSP) designation.
University of New Brunswick MBA instructor Matthew Nicolle says this professional sales designation is critically important, something he highly valued when he was hiring salespeople at his previous job.
“If I have two candidates that have a similar education and background, but one has a CSP [certified sales professional designation] and has actually gone through the formal process of getting certified, I’m going to go for the candidate with a CSP,” says Nicolle.
“It shows that they have gone through a national framework and they’ve been accredited by a governing body.”
The partnership will streamline a student’s path to CPSA accreditation, a process that takes extra education, time (up to two years) and money. They also become CPSA student members and will have access to an abundance of additional professional development opportunities and connections to potential employers.
“That gives them access to a library of different courses specifically in the selling profession, different training opportunities for them,” says Nicolle. “It also gives them exposure to the employer communities that are seeking certified sales professionals to hire post-graduation.”
Kola Oshundiya, a recent graduate of the business development and professional sales program, went on to complete his CPSA designation. Back home in Nigeria, he gained experience doing business-to-customer sales. But he now works for New Brunswick startup Procedureflow and says the UNB and the CPSA programs taught him the skills he needed to sell business-to-business.
“What UNB has been able to do is understand that it’s very important to be proficient at selling software and selling to other businesses,” says Oshundiya. ”The UNB program taught us how to lead conversations, how to approach people, how to understand people’s personalities.”
UNB is now the only Atlantic Canadian University with a formal partnership with the CPSA. Nicholas Crowe, the CPSA vice-president of learning solutions, says the MBA program’s commitment and leadership in professional sales made them a good fit.
“They have a real commitment to sales as a profession … with a mission to help raise the standard of the sales profession and help fill a labour market skill gap,” says Crowe.
Dr. Shelley Rinehart, director of UNB Saint John’s MBA program, says the investments in the sales stream and the CPSA designation have helped increase the number of students in the MBA program.
“There continues to be increasing interest in our one-year intensive MBA program,” says Dr. Rinheart. “The pathways to professional designations are certainly something that supports that growth in interest and registration. The sales stream recently accredited through CPSA is a good example where, despite the challenges of Covid, registration has grown from seven students in our first year to 21 this year, accounting for about 25 percent of our current class.”
Banner photo: Dr. David MaGee, UNB vice-president (research); Dr. Shelley Rinehart, director of UNB Saint John’s MBA program; Gerry Pond (on screen), co-founder and chair of Mariner; Wayne Long, Member of Parliament for Saint John-Rothesay; Sandro Verrelli (on screen), president and CEO of Canadian Professional Sales Association; Dr. Petra Hauf, UNB vice-president Saint John; Dr. Paul Mazerolle, UNB president and vice-chancellor. Image: Rob Blanchard/UNB.
This story is sponsored by the University of New Brunswick Saint John MBA program.