Abstract
In their paper titled “A Critical Review of the Literature for Sales Educators,” Cummins et al. (2013), the authors note that the marketing education literature has been relatively slow in responding to changes in sales education and training. This perspective supports Grey’s et al. (2012) review of the Journal of Marketing Education (JME) that found since the journal’s inception, only 27 of approximately 800 published articles were on sales education.
In response, JME published the Special Issue on Sales Education and Training in 2014 (Vol 36, Issue 2, August). Ten articles were published in the special issue, covering three broad areas – recruiting and developing the student mindset, self efficacy and sales, and the classroom and teaching tools. Since that time, JME added an associate editor to manage the sales education track, and the $1,000 award for Best Sales Education Paper of the Year was established, sponsored by the University Sales Center Alliance. Duleep Delpechitre and David S. Baker received the 2017 award for their paper “Cross-Cultural Selling: Examining the Importance of Cultural Intelligence in Sales Education.”
Despite JME’s increased focus on sales education and training and the growing number of articles submitted and published in the journal, we have only tapped the surface of sales education. With this in mind, JME is once again interested in bringing marketing pedagogy scholars together to expand our knowledge of preparing students for a career in sales. Manuscripts for this special issue on “Sales Education and Training 2.0” should address one of four topical areas: 1) Framework for marketing curriculum, 2) Information technology, 3) Career development, and 4) Diversity. Papers that address the following topics are especially desirable:
➢ The use of direct measures to assess the effectiveness of pedagogical interventions
➢ Digital marketing in sales education
➢ Social selling
➢ Critical thinking in sales education
➢ International/cultural perspectives
➢ Psychometric measures
➢ Conceptual/empirical models
➢ Enhancing role-playing skills (e.g., listening, needs assessment)
➢ The impact of interventions on students’ intent to pursue a sales career
➢ Skills desired by employers and methods for developing those skills in students
➢ Learning strategies
Potential contributors should feel free to contact the co-editors with any questions. All manuscripts will be judged on their scholarly merits and ability to advance the marketing education literature. See Cummins et al. in the spring 2013 issue of JME for a review of the sales education literature as well as articles published in the 2014 Special Issue on Sales Education and Training (Vol 36, Issue 2, August). Authors should follow JME’s general submission guidelines available in recent issues or online at http://jmd.sagepub.com/.
Professor Dawn Deeter-Schmelz, Kansas State University
Professor James (Jimmy) Peltier, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater