Tech Sales is for Hustlers Podcast

Campus Series: Riley Dugan – The Heart of Sales is Persuasion

Guest-At-A-Glance

Name: Riley Dugan

What he does: Riley is a Professor of Marketing at the University of Dayton.

Company/Institution: University of Dayton

Noteworthy: Riley’s professional path is quite interesting. He has worked on the Texas-Mexico border for an organization called Teach For America. He was also at Seaspan and lived in Alaska. He interned for Senator Mike DeWine, now the governor of Ohio, and also worked in accounting. 

Where to find Riley: LinkedIn

Key Insights

⚡You learn by doing. Professor Dugan is a big fan of experiential learning. Practical knowledge is equally essential as theoretical. Riley organizes role-plays, putting the students in real-world situations to master the skills of negotiation. ”In my course, students do seven in-class negotiations. They do two negotiations with me. They also do a group role-play negotiation, which I moderate, where they have to balance the competing needs of clients with also trying to maximize their financial self-interest.”

⚡ Sales give you autonomy. Many students choose sales because their parents or siblings are in sales or studied at the University of Dayton. Others, not familiar with the field, can hear Professor Dugan present the program and learn about the profession’s benefits. ”I talk about the fact that sales gives you a lot more autonomy on your job than does working in accounting. It gives you a lot more varied sorts of things that you do in a day than a lot of other elements of a business. I just lay out the value proposition of why it’s something that they should consider.”

⚡ Use that first job as a learning experience. According to Riley, when you graduate from college, don’t hesitate to accept a good job offer that comes your way. It will probably not be something you want to do for the rest of your life, but it can be beneficial for many reasons. ”Use that first job as a learning experience. You might not succeed up to your expectations. It might not be in the exact city or industry that you want to be in. View it as a valuable learning experience and take those learnings two or three years. Then maybe something opens up in the city or in the industry that’s your preferred choice, and you can carry those learnings forward with you.”

Episode Highlights

The Heart of Everything We Do is Persuasion

”When I was working on that Texas-Mexico border with fifth graders, you have to persuade them to want to read; you have to sell them on the idea ‘This is going to be beneficial for you.’ If you could do that to a ten or eleven-year-old whose mind is completely someplace else, you can sell anything. No matter what job I did, persuasion is a key element to it, and selling is something that we all do.”

The Connection Between Sales and Stoicism?

”I teach a course called a Value Analysis of Major Sales Engagements, which teaches students concepts, such as total cost of ownership, return on investment, and net present value. As far as I know, we’re the only institution that offers that at an undergraduate level. Given the ongoing COVID pandemic and the job market might not be as robust as it was a couple of years ago, I introduced a book into that course called ‘The Obstacle Is the Way’ by Ryan Holiday, a modern take on Stoicism. I might be the only professor in the country introducing ancient Greek philosophy to their sales students. A lot of the lessons the Stoics taught, and continue to teach, are extremely relevant for not only how to handle your life, but how to handle your career too.”

The Rise of Inside Sales 

”One of the things we’re thinking about instituting and ramping up is an inside selling course—one of our corporate sponsors. Gardiner, incorporated down in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, specifically hires people for inside sales coming out of college. Other firms that we partner with do the same. That’s something that has been a reflection of what’s going on in the marketplace.”

The Point of a Negotiation Course Is to Learn How to Negotiate

”I was talking to an employee of one of our corporate sponsors a few years ago, and he said, ‘I had taken a negotiations course, but we didn’t do any negotiation.’ I’m like, ‘What’s the point of a negotiations course if you don’t do any negotiation?’ We have a video system in our sales center, which captures and records that practice role-plays. They’ve (students) got a portfolio, fifty to a hundred role-players, they can show a prospective employer if a prospective employer says, ‘How do we know you can go through the sales process?’ Or, ‘Can you show me some evidence of when you did the negotiations?’  I think it pays off in terms of where our students are getting jobs and the sorts of salaries they’re earning one or two years out after graduation.”

The University of Dayton as part of the Family Tradition

”A lot of our students who naturally matriculate to sales do so because they have parents who are in sales or because their siblings came here. We have students where all four kids in the family went here and their parents went here and so forth. It almost seems like something that’s passed down in the family.”

Prepare to Hear More NO’s than YES’s, and Don’t Take It Personally

“Be able to handle rejection and also be patient. You’re going to be climbing up this mountain, but then once you get to the top, it’s an awesome view. You’re going to have to struggle for a little bit, but once you get your feet wet, you get down the nuances of being a professional, managing a territory, other sorts of things, everything starts to fall into place. No matter how much practice you have in school is once you get out in the real world, it is different. When you’re out in the real world, you’re in the big leagues now. You’re going to fail, but that’s okay because that’s what being a human growing is all about.”

Transcript:

[00:00:05] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:00:05] Hello, everyone and welcome back to the Tech Sales Is For Hustlers, Campus mini Series. I am Kristin Wisdorf and today we have Riley Dougan, professor of marketing at the University of Dayton. Welcome, Riley.

[00:00:28] Riley Dugan: [00:00:28] Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate this opportunity.

[00:00:32] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:00:32] Yeah, we’re very excited. You are a first professor and leader of a sales program who has joined us, who’s from the Midwest. So we’re very excited about that. Yes. as a Midwesterner myself, where I am very excited. So we like to start, Riley, all of our podcasts with the same question we actually ask our campus interviewees, which is go ahead and take 60 seconds and give us your highlight reel.

[00:00:58] Tell us about you.

[00:01:00] [00:00:59] Riley Dugan: [00:00:59] I’ve had a very interesting and varied professional career. I had been a person who’s waived salmon in Alaska. I have worked on the Texas Mexican border for an organization called Teach for America. I’ve worked for Seaspan. Intern for a Senator Mike DeWine, is now the governor of Ohio.

[00:01:15] Worked in accounting at Grant’s, Oregon, Denver. And now here I am at the University of Dayton. I’m originally from Cincinnati. Just down the road from Dayton I have my PhD from the University of Cincinnati as well, too. So I have a background in a lot of different areas. Not all of which are related.

[00:01:31] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:01:31] Okay. That is an incredible background. I had no idea, so you lived in Alaska. Oh my gosh. When did you do that? Tell us more about that. I’m

[00:01:42] Riley Dugan: [00:01:42] Yeah. I was in graduate school at the University of Oregon in political science. And I quickly realized that the job opportunities for people who have PhDs and political science wasn’t very great. So one of the summers there, when I was in Oregon, I took a ferry up to Alaska and worked on an Island there, for about three [00:02:00] months.

[00:02:00] No days off, and it was in company, they own the hotel or slash barracks that we stayed in. We ate in their cafeteria every day that the salmon that they couldn’t sell is what they fed us. I ate salmon for 84 straight days, two meals a day. Yeah, so I think I maybe approach sales from a little bit different background.

[00:02:18] A lot of other people.

[00:02:19] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:02:19] No kidding. That is incredible. That’s like very adventurous of you to just pick up and take a ferry to Alaska and, wow, that’s exciting. Okay. And then also you mentioned Teach for America, that’s a very competitive, like a challenging role to get. How and why did you decide to do that? What was that process like?

[00:02:40] Riley Dugan: [00:02:40] Yeah. The first year after I graduated from undergrad, I was a teacher in the Catholic school system in Cincinnati. So I started off as a substitute teacher and then a long-term opened up and a long-term opening opened up and I took that opportunity. And one of the things I really enjoyed in that role was seeing students progression as readers, [00:03:00] and seeing the growth in just a few short lines. And when an opportunity arose, with Teach for America, to do the same thing with students who predominantly were ESL English as a second language, many of whom have recently immigrated from Mexico, I thought it was a great opportunity to help, to assist in any way I could.

[00:03:16] And then also to better my skills as a teacher, which I’m still carrying forward and using today. And when people say, “Oh, teaching these students, it’s so difficult.” I’m like, “No, it’s not, trust me.”

[00:03:26] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:03:26] Have no idea.

[00:03:27] Riley Dugan: [00:03:27] for America. That’s the big leaks. It’s a really challenging job. And so it really prepares you well to teach at any level, even college.

[00:03:35] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:03:35] Wow. You’ve had, like I said, this very interesting kind of adventurous background. Living in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, and then down in Texas and you’re from Cincinnati. How did you end up in sales? What was that moment where you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to teach college students, but I’m also going to teach marketing and sales.”

[00:03:56] Riley Dugan: [00:03:56] That’s a really good question, Kristen. When I was getting my MBA, at the University of [00:04:00] Cincinnati, this was 2007, and around 2007, there weren’t a lot of jobs to be had. And my sister is a business professor as well at Emory University in Atlanta, and she’s served as a mentor for me throughout my life.

[00:04:13] And I asked her, I says “The cotton doesn’t look good, so good right now. And I heard that you don’t when times get tough marketing often are some of the first jobs that get cut. So what would you recommend that I do?” And she said, “Yes, you’re right. Do you like accounting?”

[00:04:27] I took one counting the course at that time. I’m like, “Yeah, I like it. Okay.” And she’s “If you always want to be sure to have a job, get a degree in accounting.” So I stayed another year, got another master’s in accounting and took a job at Grantor in Denver. And so while I was getting my accounting degree, we were always told that everything flows back to accounting.

[00:04:44] Accounting is the center of the business and yada, yada, yada. So we had an inflated opinion of ourselves, but what I quickly realized is, working in accounting, specifically auditing, nobody wants to audit, The only reason that they actually get audits is because the government or the bank [00:05:00] tells them that they have to write.

[00:05:02] And how do you sell an audit? Because the procedures that you’re engaging in are specifically specified. Again by the government. And so it’s a commodity product, but it’s also a really expensive commodity product. And, at the time, it was a difficult environment. Just like every other firm we were struggling to sell business, To sell a new business. And I quickly realized that, we didn’t have people out there selling new business, then we wouldn’t have anything to count. And it is true with every business as well, too, because sales is the front line. And if people aren’t selling anything, the accounts don’t have anything to count, production

[00:05:36] doesn’t have anything to make, so really the whole strength and wellbeing of the business is critically dependent on salespeople and how are they performing their jobs. And so at that point, I’m like I’ve always wanted to really focus on marketing and sales and I don’t really like this job so much, so maybe I can go back to school again to get a PhD and did so, at the University of Cincinnati focused on sales and then the rest has been history.

[00:05:59] Okay.

[00:05:59] pioneering-creative_1_03-26-2021_123430: [00:05:59] Your background is [00:06:00] so interesting because I think, more times than not, sales just happens to a lot of people. I’m not at the universities that you attended, and your education background is just like incredible, you’ve studied so much. Most students, they’re just not exposed to professional sales, being an intentional, I’m deciding to do this and commit to this.

[00:06:16] Based off your past experience with it being in so many different places, what did you do work-wise that may have given you that aha moment that sales would be a good fit for you. What do you think was the most impactful, now that you are teaching, looking back on what you’ve done in the past?

[00:06:33] ‘Cause I feel that a lot of sales skills are built in these odd jobs that students are doing and they don’t realize. So I’m just curious, in your past experience, where do you think sales was applied? Maybe not intentionally, but it was there.

[00:06:45] Riley Dugan: [00:06:45] Yeah, that’s a great question. If you read Daniel Pink’s book “To sell is human.” one of the things he says is he’s yeah, I’m a writer, but what I wrote down, everything I did, on a daily basis, I quickly realized that I was in sales, because I’m trying to persuade my editors to accept a story.

[00:06:59] I’m [00:07:00] trying to persuade my spouse and my kids to do particular things. So really at the heart of everything we do is persuasion. And for instance, when I was working on that Texas Mexican border with fifth graders, you have to persuade them to want to read. You have to sell them on the idea that

[00:07:14] no, this is going to be beneficial for you, right? And if you could do that to a 10 or 11 year old, whose mind is completely someplace else, he can sell anything. And I think just realizing that no matter what job I did, persuasion is key, is a key element to it. And just made me realize that selling is something that we all do.

[00:07:32] And so it’d be cool if I could get a job teach that. And one of the things too, that when I was getting my PhD, that I soon realized is now when I was getting my PhD, I would teach undergraduates at Cincinnati, University of Cincinnati. And we’d always tell our students, go where the jobs. Go in those industries where the jobs are. And when I was doing my research, I’m like, it’s probably good advice that I should take as well too. So where are the jobs in marketing as a professor? And a lot [00:08:00] of those jobs were in sales because a lot of schools were starting to develop sales programs and recognizing that, “Hey, most of our students are getting jobs in sales.

[00:08:07] Maybe it would be a good idea if we actually teach them to do that.” And so I’m like, “Okay these jobs are opening in this area that I’m interested in. Probably a good idea for me to do my research in that area too. So I can just transition seamlessly into that.”

[00:08:20] pioneering-creative_1_03-26-2021_123430: [00:08:20] How established was the program when you got involved and how have you seen it change since you’ve been a professor?

[00:08:27] Riley Dugan: [00:08:27] Yeah, so compared to a lot of other programs, we are fairly well-established. So we were very fortunate to receive a very large donation from a very successful former alum, for a million dollars, to help build out our sales center. And Mr. Tony Kristoff is the head of our sales center has been really successful in partnering with very selective organizations, which kind of

[00:08:45] it takes care of her operating expenses every year. But it’s grown significantly over the seven years that I’ve been there. And one of the ways it’s grown as we’ve rolled out new course offerings. So for instance, I teach a sales negotiations course, so that’s very unique around the country.

[00:08:59] I [00:09:00] don’t know of many other universities that do that. I also teach a course called a Value analysis of major sales engagements, which basically teaches students concepts, such as total cost of ownership, return on investment, net present value. It gets students using financial metrics to justify the value of the solution that they’re selling to customers.

[00:09:18] And as far as I know, we’re the only institution that offers that at an undergraduate level. And I’ve made actually an interesting tweak to that course this year as well, too. Given the, the ongoing COVID pandemic and given that that the job market might not be as robust as it was a couple of years ago,

[00:09:32] I introduced a book into that course called the “Obstacle is the way”, by Ryan Holiday, which is a modern take on stoicism. And so I might be one of the only professors in the country introducing ancient Greek philosophy to their sales students, because I think a lot of the lessons that the Stoics taught and continue to teach are extremely relevant for not only how to handle your life, but how to handle your career as well too.

[00:09:54] And the eCom look you have on both of those things. Yes.

[00:09:59] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:09:59] That is [00:10:00] very interesting. What was the name of the book? “Obstacle is the way”

[00:10:03] Riley Dugan: [00:10:03] “Obstacle is the way.”

[00:10:04] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:10:04] The obstacle is the way. All right. That’s that’s great. And I would agree. I haven’t heard of a lot of courses like that in sales curriculum across the country and one thing that I’ve noticed, I took sales classes when I was in college and I remember my college was one of the few that had even sales curriculum and over the last

[00:10:24] 10 plus years, it is boomed across the country with universities being more accepting and building of sales curriculum, and sales programs. In the last seven years, how has your program and the curriculum changed aside from having those courses that other colleges don’t have?

[00:10:43] Riley Dugan: [00:10:43] Well, one of the things that we’re thinking about ramping out, or instituting and ramping up, as an inside selling course. Because one of the things that we realized is that a lot of the jobs that are coming up now are an inside sales. One of our corporate sponsors, Gardiner incorporated down in Fort Myers Beach, [00:11:00] Florida, specifically hires people for inside sales coming out of college.

[00:11:03] And in other, other firms that we partner with do the same as well, too. And so that’s something that I think has been a reflection of what’s going on in the marketplace. So that’s been a curricular change as well, too.

[00:11:15] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:11:15] Yeah obviously being that we are all inside sales hustlers, here at memoryBlue, that is a decision that we absolutely see as being vital in building the skills. I think everybody envisions, if they if a student is excited enough to get into sales that they want to study it, they probably envision themselves on a golf course, taking people out to dinners.

[00:11:37] And while that might be your future in sales, most people don’t actually start in a sales job like that. And you have to build those skills, whether it’s in your new potential new curriculum with an inside sales course, or just your current classes? How do you prepare students for the, their first job in sales?

[00:11:57] Because more likely than not, it’s going to be a lot of [00:12:00] rejection, a lot of time on the phone, a lot of emails sent and they got to crawl before they can walk before they can run type of a job.

[00:12:06] Riley Dugan: [00:12:06] Yeah, absolutely. So the University of Dayton and me specifically, we’re really big on experiential learning that you learn by doing. I remember I was talking to an employee of one of our corporate sponsors, a few years ago, and he had gone to a fancy pants, big 10 school and said, “Yeah, I had taken a negotiations course there, but we didn’t actually do any negotiation.”

[00:12:25] I’m like, “What’s the point of a negotiations course, if you don’t actually do any negotiation.” And No kidding.

[00:12:30] Yeah, and like in my course students do seven in class negotiations. They do two negotiations with me, which are great and which are both salary negotiations, and then they also do a group role-play negotiation, which I sorta moderate as well, too, where they have to balance the competing needs of clients with also

[00:12:46] trying to maximize their own financial self-interest. And all are working in a collaborative team setting where different team members will have different financial interests within the company. And so I’m a huge proponent of you learn by doing. And so in addition to [00:13:00] instilling that in all my classes, I’ve coached quite a number of sales teams in the past that competed national competitions.

[00:13:06] And so the real value, I think in those sales competitions is really not so much the competition itself, but all the practice that you did beforehand, all those reps, right? All those role-plays that students go through which, when they graduate, we have a video system in our sales center, which captures and records as practice we’ll place.

[00:13:23] They’ve got portfolio, maybe a 50 to a 100 role-plays they can show a prospective employer, as a prospective employer says “How do we know we can go through the sales process? Or can you show me some evidence of when you did an negotiations?”  “Here you go. Here’s 50 videos of me doing that.”

[00:13:37] And a lot of it’s just reps and practice and fortunately, at the University of Dayton, we’re not a tiny school we have about with graduate students, about 10,000 students. But we’re small enough to where students can get a lot of one-on-one attention, whereas at bigger schools that may just not be as practical.

[00:13:52] So I estimate that with students, I do probably about a 100 to a 120 role-plays in negotiations each semester in total, just in [00:14:00] class. It’s significant amount of one-on-one time outside the classroom. But I think it really pays off in terms of where our students are getting jobs and the sorts of salaries that they’re earning just one or two years out after graduation.

[00:14:11] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:14:11] Yeah, definitely. I love that you have the ability to record and it captures and students can create a library of their their, their real life practice reps. It’s like they’re creating their own highlight reel or their own game film that they can share. And we record, all of our SDRs are able to record their calls, and store their best, and coach on top of it ,and leave notes and comments for themselves so that, if they’re preparing for

[00:14:38] morning, they can literally go back to their library and listen to their best calls ever to almost prepare them mentally for the day. So you’re getting people you’re getting people, the ability to do that earlier and earlier in their career, which is awesome. How do you get students who are maybe underclassmen, freshmen, or sophomores interested in the sales program?

[00:14:58] Are you finding more [00:15:00] and more people are excited about sales? Are, is it still take a fair amount of persuasion and selling when they’re underclassmen to get them interested? What’s it been like lately?

[00:15:09] Riley Dugan: [00:15:09] Yeah, that’s a good question. Like I found that a lot of our students who just naturally matriculate to sales do so because they have parents who are in sales or because they have siblings who are in sales. The University of Dayton is really unique. We have a really vibrant on-campus atmosphere.

[00:15:24] We, I think our the largest owner of single family homes of any university in the country. And so imagine a Greek or sorority, Greek fraternity rows or whatever sort of thing. But with instead of 20 houses, 500. And that’s what our campus looks like. Students live in like their own homes, with a couple other roommates, in a really big student neighborhood that used to be planned housing for one of the really companies that was instrumental in developing professional sales, which was NCR.

[00:15:50] And so it’s, these old houses around the turn of the 20th century. So it’s a really cool on-campus environment. And so what that promotes is a lot of students who come here [00:16:00] because their siblings also came here. We’ll have students where all four kids in the family went here and their parents went here and so forth.

[00:16:07] And I get a lot of students in my sales classes who I’ve already had their older brothers or sisters too. So it almost seems something that’s passed out on the family as well, too. But with respect to recruiting students, one of the things I do is I go into the, the entry level biz classes, right?

[00:16:22] The business one-on-one sort of class where as freshmen students are getting exposed to all the different areas of business, and I go up there and get my 15 minutes feel one class as to why they should consider sales. And I talk about some of the salaries that students are making. I talk about the fact that sales gives you a lot more autonomy on your job certainly than does working in accounting.

[00:16:42] It gives you a lot more, kind of, varied sorts of things that you do in a day than a lot of other elements of business. Excuse me. And I just really lay out the value proposition of why it’s something that they should consider. And I think we have a lot of fun too. We go to these competitions and that’s always fun.

[00:16:56] And, in classes, when you’re actually doing exercises, it tends to be more [00:17:00] fun than just listening to boring lectures all day as well, too. So I think students gravitate toward it for those reasons as well.

[00:17:07] pioneering-creative_1_03-26-2021_123430: [00:17:07] I think everything you guys are doing makes my job as a recruiter so much easier. And to your point, getting in front of students as early as you possibly can, just to enlighten them, prepares them so much better, when they are taking that next step and it provides that ability for them to decide that for themselves.

[00:17:23] I think the stat is like 88 or 90% of marketing grads end up starting in sales, whether they want to or not. And you’re yeah, you’re providing this purpose behind it, which obviously I love. You mentioned that you guys are you do heavy focus on experiential learning, learning by doing and that’s exactly how we structure our training process here.

[00:17:40] It’s a combination of classroom style and then application, you’ve got to try it out and if it works awesome, if not back to the drawing board. What is an exercise or assignment that you give your students that you feel pushes them out of their comfort zone and basically allows them to grow and develop the most?

[00:17:58] What is the most kind of uncomfortable [00:18:00] exercise or challenging exercise or assignment do you give to your students that allows them that opportunity to develop?

[00:18:07] Riley Dugan: [00:18:07] Yeah. Great question. In my value analysis of major sales engagement course, we read the Challenger sale. I takes it in and most of the sales roles, role-plays, I think that students do in the University of Dayton too and then also around the country are based off of the spin selling paradigm, which was developed in part by Neil rack.

[00:18:25] And it’s about asking questions of the perspective by these spins and acronym standing for situation, problem, implication, needs payoff question. So you’re sitting there for 20 minutes, diagnosing problems that the buyer already knows that he has, but I tell the students, I’m like, “Look in the 21st century with the internet,

[00:18:42] if the buyer already knows they have a problem, they’ve probably already gone out and taken a lot of steps to try to rectify that problem. They don’t need you to find them drowning in the water and just save them, because they’re professionals. They’ve already gone out and done things to address the problem that you’re

[00:18:57] just now uncovered. Research has shown that about [00:19:00] 75% of the buying decision is already made up by the time that the customer actually meets with the salesperson for the first time.” And so we take a different view on the sales process, in this particular course, because I had students do a role play with me.

[00:19:12] Where they have to use the purposeful choreography methodology, that’s put forth by the challenger sale. And so the challenger sale is about this idea that really if you want to provide value to your customers, you have to teach them something. You have to teach them something about how they can engage in business better, how they can do business better instead of solving their problems, find problems that they didn’t even realize they had.

[00:19:33] So I play the role of a general manager at a grocery store in Cleveland. And the student’s job is to try to improve my beer and wine sales. And so then they have to take me through this six stage purposeful choreography, where they’re trying to basically tell me about problems that as a general manager even I know even I wouldn’t realize that I have, right?

[00:19:52] So it takes a lot of specialized knowledge. It takes a lot of creativity and it also takes the ability to incorporate financial [00:20:00] metrics with this narrative storytelling mindset. So it’s a totally different kind of approach or spin, no upon intended on the sales process.

[00:20:09] It just gives our students sort of another tool in their toolkit that they can carry forward with them.

[00:20:15] pioneering-creative_1_03-26-2021_123430: [00:20:15] Absolutely. I think sales classes exposed students to topics and things that are so practical and applicable regardless of their path, wherever they end up going. When you have a student come into, maybe that first sales course, the bottom tier, introduction to it, what’s one thing you hope they take away after they complete that class with you?

[00:20:37] Riley Dugan: [00:20:37] That really, no matter what job they’re going to go into, they’re going to have to use selling techniques. And the reason I say that is because again, persuasion is really at the heart of everything we do. And whether you’re an engineer, whether you are going to go into accounting, finance, whatever being able to persuade people more effectively is something that is going to be very valuable tool in your toolkit throughout your profession.

[00:21:02] [00:21:00] pioneering-creative_1_03-26-2021_123430: [00:21:02] Definitely. And then I am curious, I think in sales you have to be self-motivated and you have to be able to push yourself, you’re challenging yourself and you’re hoping it over hit your goals and you’re pushing yourself. And a lot of the work that you’re doing is going to showcase in however much money you make, which is one of the positives of pursuing that.

[00:21:20] What do you think your biggest motivator is as an educator or throughout your career? What has pushed you to the point that you’re at right now?

[00:21:28] Riley Dugan: [00:21:28] I think just seeing growth in students. I’ve certainly had students. and when I first started the University of Dayton, I was teaching the principles of marketing course, which is like the marketing one-on-one course. And so all students in the business college have to take that, even if they’re going to go into marketing or sales or whatever.

[00:21:42] And then just seeing some students in that class who were shy at first and really didn’t really want to speak up in class and so forth. And then seeing them take sales courses, I’m like, “Oh, I’m surprised that these students would be taking sales courses” and then, seeing their evolution as students and as professionals, as adults throughout their career, where they become more [00:22:00] comfortable, they become more confident and assertive.

[00:22:01] And then get really good jobs. And I just had a student like that who graduated, I think, gosh three years ago, and last year or two years after graduating, she already bought a house in Denver, which is not a cheap place to buy a house. As 24 years old, if you’re already a homeowner in an expensive city like Denver, or you’re doing something really well.

[00:22:18] And so I’m just like, “Wow, I just, I remember you as five years ago, you’re shy and a little bit, maybe uncomfortable speaking up in class and now look how far we’ve come.” So that always has been something that I really like and really like to see.

[00:22:31] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:22:31] Yeah, that’s so true. I think the beauty of sales, at least I believe, is you’re never really at the top of your game. There’s always ways to develop yourself and get better. And as a professor like yourself, it would probably be very rewarding and exciting to see people change in four years, and then obviously keep up with your alumni and see how they continue to develop after they graduate.

[00:22:53] Riley, you had mentioned early in our conversation that you got, and you gave the advice to go where the jobs are. What, [00:23:00] where are your students going? What either physically in terms of like location being in the middle of the country and Dayton and what types of industries and sales roles are they taking on these days?

[00:23:12] Riley Dugan: [00:23:12] Yeah. Even though we’re the university of date very few of our students are actually from as a private school, we get students from all over the country and all over the world and that’s just continuing to accelerate. And our students take jobs at companies on all corners of the United States.

[00:23:24] And so a lot of those jobs are in technology sales actually. So last year, even in the pandemic, I placed a student at Cisco systems, one at Dell. The one that Cisco systems is working in Pittsburgh, one a Dell is in Round Rock down in Texas. I placed a student, Oracle he’s in New York. And just a lot of various other places around the country.

[00:23:42] I recently had a student in my negotiations courses, past year or this past semester, who is from Cleveland and he and his roommate, both of whom are sales students at the University of Dayton, took jobs at VMware. and I just remember asking him, “Oh, so did you negotiate your salary?” And he’s “Nah”, and I’m like “Why didn’t you negotiate your [00:24:00] salary?”

[00:24:00] Then he told me what he was going to be making. I’m like, “Yo, yeah, he didn’t need to negotiate anymore. You’re already here.” And I was just absolutely blown away. And and so they’re going to be down in Austin with it together and stuff. And so yeah, our students take jobs everywhere and tech sales is something that we really push.

[00:24:16] Some of our corporate sponsors like Reynolds and Reynolds as well as Gardner are specifically in the technology industry. We also work with tech systems, which is high-tech recruiting and so forth for tech professionals. So we really specialize in high technology firms because, again, that’s where the jobs are,

[00:24:32] oftentimes they’re very lucrative, it’s  a sexy type job, it’s “Hey, I’m working in an IBM, I’m working, Cisco or Dell, a place like this.” It’s companies that all are there, acquaintances, no matter what their age they’re gonna hurt those competencies.

[00:24:45] So I think that’s something that students really like.

[00:24:48] pioneering-creative_1_03-26-2021_123430: [00:24:48] We’re a bit biased, obviously operating within the tech industry. It’s a great space to be in it’s growing and it’s consistent. So that’s great to hear that, so many of your students are diving head first into that. With it being, [00:25:00] there are so many different sales opportunities out there now.

[00:25:03] And with these programs growing as much as they are, employers are bending over backwards to be able to hire these students. And it’s awesome because they have so much opportunity and so much to pick from. I’m curious, Riley, when you’re working with your students, what advice do you give them when they are deciding between a variety of different roles for that first job?

[00:25:22] Riley Dugan: [00:25:22] Yeah. And one of the things I tell them, it’s “Look, you can take a job where you’re not 100% sure do I want to spend my, the rest of my career at this at this position, at this company”, because the vast majority of the time you won’t right. Students are probably going to be working in multiple different companies over the course of their career.

[00:25:38] That’s just. The way the world works now. And I just tell them, “Use that first job as a learning experience. You might not succeed up to your expectations, it might not be in the exact city or industry that you want to be in, but just view it as a valuable learning experience and take those learnings two or three years.

[00:25:54] So now then maybe something opens up in the city or in the industry. that’s your preferred preferred choice. [00:26:00] And, but you can carry those learnings forward with you.” Just viewing a career in a step as a series of different peaks in balance, in a sense it, it has, I think, a good mindset for students to have.

[00:26:10] That they don’t have to find the perfect ideal job when they’re 22. And they may honestly, they may not even really know what they want to do. They may start in sales and say, “Hey, I want to get more into management or kind of an executive or maybe a training or a leadership leadership and development type role.”

[00:26:23] And it just really depends, but just being open-minded and be a lifetime learner and whatever like I tell them about my own personal experience. It’s gosh, I’ve done all kinds of different things. So it took me basically until I was 35 to figure out what I wanted to do.

[00:26:36] So don’t feel like you have to have it all figured out.

[00:26:40] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:26:40] But I feel like you’re the perfect person to hear that and get that advice from because you have lived a lot of places and done a lot of unique things. And so they can, they almost there’s a future that they can see in you and in conversations with you because you actually have gone outside of your comfort zone and use your experience to [00:27:00] apply it to your job and your role now.

[00:27:01] Absolutely.

[00:27:03] pioneering-creative_1_03-26-2021_123430: [00:27:03] What do you think differentiate like a top performer in your sales classes in comparison to maybe one to one or two of the lower performers? What are some qualities that you really look for and really successful students that are extremely engaged when they’re in your classes?

[00:27:18] Riley Dugan: [00:27:18] Yeah just an interest in learning. In fact, I had a student just last week, get in touch with me and say how much she likes the books that she’s been reading in class. And if I had any other book recommendations for her and I’m like, “Oh, do I ever?” And so I actually took some books off of my shelf and said, “Here, you can have these” right.

[00:27:35] And she’s interested not only in how to be a better salesperson, and in fact, she’s her first job is with a large bank here in the Midwest, Fifth Third, where she won’t actually be in a sales role, but she’s probably my most prolific, most skilled sales student. And the books that she got from me deal with all kinds of different topics about developing professional competencies, but also lessons in personal finance and things like this , which I think [00:28:00] are extremely important and something else

[00:28:01] I work into my curriculum too, towards the end. Just being interested and wanting to learn more than just what’s in the class, the very top students always seem to have that where it’s like, “Oh, this is a really cool book. What else can I read that’s similar to this. Or maybe, in this area that will help me as a professional?”

[00:28:19] pioneering-creative_1_03-26-2021_123430: [00:28:19] I think that focus on curiosity is so important. That’s what sales is. It’s asking questions, it’s seeking to understand and solving problems with a solution that makes the most sense for the person that you’re speaking with. So that sentiment is perfect. We do talk a lot about the benefits of sales and

[00:28:34] being a recruiter for sales roles, I think that they’re endless and there’s so much just kind of career opportunity and development opportunity there, but obviously there are drawbacks to it and I’m sure some of our listeners would like us to discuss some of those challenges that they should be expected to experience.

[00:28:49] Can you talk to us a bit about what specifically you want your students to be ready for from a challenge standpoint and that first sales job, when they transition from graduation?

[00:29:00] [00:28:59] Riley Dugan: [00:28:59] Yeah, rejection. I know something you both have alluded to earlier. Prepare to hear way more NOs than YESes and don’t take it personally. And some of the research that I’ve done actually, and it’s been published, has shown that when sales students who go through collegiately collegiate sales programs, for the first 18 months of their career they don’t perform as well as experienced hires.

[00:29:21] So if a company is adding experienced hires and they’re adding collegiate educated salespeople, fresh out of college at the same time, then we’re about 18 months as experienced hires are going to perform better. And the collegiate hires might start to get discouraged. But what we realize and what we found out is about at about the 18th month mark, right,

[00:29:39] those collegiate hires, their careers really take off, right? Like whoosh, it’s this crazy exponential curve. Whereas the experienced hires, they just plateau their entire time. There really isn’t any growth. And so I just stress, be able to handle rejection and also patients, right?

[00:29:55] It’s you’re going to be climbing up this mountain for 12 or 18 months, but then once you get to the top, it’s an [00:30:00] awesome view. You’re going to have to struggle for a little bit, but then, once you get your feet wet, you get down, the nuances of being a professional, managing a territory, other sorts of things, everything starts to fall into place.

[00:30:11] It’s okay, now I get this right. Because no matter how much practice you have in school is once you get out in the real world, it’s, it’s, it is different. And so just being able to handle that and then being able to handle not doing well, perhaps at first, if you’re a student has a 3.8, you’d probably never really failed too much in life, but when you’re out in the real world, it’s you’re in the big leagues now you’re going to fail, but that’s okay because that’s what being a human growing is all about.

[00:30:41] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:30:41] Yeah, you ma you made such a good point about being patient, it’s interesting. We purposely hire and we look for people who are impatient, right? Good salespeople are itchy, and they’re hungry, and they like you said, you’re, some of your better students, they’re like gobbling up.

[00:30:57] “What more can I read and learn?” and [00:31:00] that is exactly the type of person you want, but then once they start the job, we’re like “Wait, you have to be a little bit patient. You have to give it 12 to 18 months.” In fact our program is 15 months for that exact reason that you said Riley, because you will be more successful longterm

[00:31:15] if you give yourself the time to learn the fundamentals. So we’re looking for impatient people and then asking them to remain patient their first job in sales, which is kinda wild. What misconceptions do you do you think most people have about getting into sales or are there any misconceptions that you debunk early in working with students who are in the first couple of sales classes or courses with you?

[00:31:39] Riley Dugan: [00:31:39] 100%, right? The common stereotype is salespeople. “Oh, they’re smarmy and sleazy and they, the used car sales person and, for me growing up it was always the telemarketer calling us while we’re eating, or occasionally even a door to door salesperson.

[00:31:53] And I tell them, look, that’s not what sales looks like. At least not the types of jobs that we’re going to close, but. I think unfortunate [00:32:00] stereotypes of salespeople persists in the sense that it’s like, “Oh the kids who aren’t smart enough to do accounting and finance, they’re going to go into marketing and sales.” Or, “Oh, God, just like being a garbage man. Somebody’s got to do it.” I guess Riley’s kids are going to go into sales or whatever the case may be, but, I tell them like, look, sales requires an extreme level of intelligence because you have to be adaptive and you have to think on your feet because no two customers are the same.

[00:32:22] And it’s like in sports, like a team, might prepare for an opponent the entire week and work out a strategy of how they’re going to attack that opponent. And then they get to the actual game and it’s “Oh crap. The strategy that we had devised is completely irrelevant. Now that the team we’re playing is doing something different than we anticipated”, but they can’t just say, “Stop.

[00:32:41] We need a couple more days to figure out a strategy.” It’s “No, you’ve got to adapt on the fly right then and there.” And it’s the same thing in sales. So preparation is so important. You’ve got to prepare for your role or your your meetings with your customers doing role reversal, role-plays, things like that are going to be so valuable in that regards, but, with all the preparation you do, you [00:33:00] also have to be willing and able to change course, perhaps if, “Oh, okay.

[00:33:04] When you thought you were going to have a 30 minute meeting the buyer says they can give you five minutes, right?” Or like “You thought you were gonna meet with somebody from production. Actually, you’re going to meet with somebody from finance and accounting.” And so being able to speak

[00:33:16] those different languages, understanding people’s different value drivers and doing that on the fly and changing things on the fly requires a great deal of intelligence. And our sales students, in particular, are extremely bright because they’re able to do those things.

[00:33:29] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:33:29] Yeah, it’s not even just intelligence, but good salespeople, lead salespeople have a high level of emotional intelligence as well. You have to prepare and you have to know your, be ready and know details and think on your feet, you also have to be able to adjust and adapt to the people you’re working with and handle that judiciously and empathetically.

[00:33:49] And so I agree, you’re doing the work for all of us by putting out there like that sales is a, an incredible profession and you’re preparing the next generation of sales, tech [00:34:00] sales folks too, which is really exciting. So I want to transition and ask a little bit about you directly.

[00:34:05] So when you think back to your career and your life, is there a manager or mentor that you’ve had in your life or currently that has really stood out to you and has taught you a lot or been your favorite?

[00:34:19] Riley Dugan: [00:34:19] Oh, I’ve been fortunate, I think, to have a lot of good bosses and also a lot of people who haven’t very good bosses. And you can learn from boats. I’ve learned that this is the type of work environment that I want to be in. And then also this is a type of work environment that I don’t want to be in, right.

[00:34:34] And oddly enough, I think probably the healthiest work environment that I ever had, and probably the boss that I appreciated the most was when I was in graduate school at University of Cincinnati, I had a night job working in a FritoLay plant where basically I just grabbed boxes of chips and then loaded them up into trucks from gosh six at night to sometimes at three in the morning to help pay my bills and, just working in that environment, it, it showed me too, was that, there’s a whole heck of a lot of [00:35:00] smart people out there

[00:35:00] doing jobs that may not be quote unquote white collar professional, but there’s a lot of really intelligent people out there. And maybe those individuals didn’t have the chance to go to college for whatever reason or it wasn’t something they’re failing stress growing up. And that’s something I try to instill in my students, that privilege they have of being at the university, being able to attend college.

[00:35:19] But, it’s, you can learn something from every job that you have, right. Everything that you do, whether it’s even being on like a high school sports team. How did your coach interact with you? How did your teammates interact with you? What did you like about that? What did you not like about that?

[00:35:31] But just always being open and receptive and learning and constantly trying to improve yourself, I think is something that, I’ve tried to adopt in my life and hopefully I incorporate into my students as well, too.

[00:35:44] pioneering-creative_1_03-26-2021_123430: [00:35:44] Riley, you have such a kind of openness and a unique way of approaching new experiences. And tackling them head on and I think that is a true testament to how much you can gain in your past experiences that ultimately lead to where you’re at now. And it doesn’t [00:36:00] all have to necessarily make sense in the moment.

[00:36:01] But looking back each step brought you to where you’re at. I’m curious if you have a life lesson that you wish that you didn’t learn the hard way through those experiences, if you could go back and know something specifically that you had to learn the hard way, what would that be?

[00:36:16] Riley Dugan: [00:36:16] One of the things I would always recommend to folks is particularly young folks is, when you think of your career, don’t think of it is running away from something or running away from a job, or I’m running away from a company, always view it as I’m running towards something.

[00:36:28] And so one of the things I found beneficial at the time, when I was doing all these different sorts of things, is whatever was the next step, right, then, the next job or whatever, in my career path, I always felt like for one reason or another, it was going to be better.

[00:36:40] It was going to be an improvement. I never felt like, “Gosh I made a mistake here are screwed up. And taking these terrible lessons with me.” I just try to, take it for what it is and move forward and do whatever I’m going to do next is an exciting opportunity.

[00:36:52] So I think it’s really a mindset thing more than anything else. And one thing I would tell any college student, and this is something I harp on in my [00:37:00] classes all the time, is save your money. Invest in the very first job that you have. And that’s something that I’ve done, even when I was doing a lot of quote-unquote menial type jobs, I was saving money.

[00:37:10] So for instance, when I worked in Alaska I the money that I saved from that job was not much because I had to pay off some student debt with the money I saved. I invested in Oracle stock and that stock went up 500% so that when it came time to buy my first home, here in Dayton, I just used that stock to buy, put a down payment on that home.

[00:37:27] And it’s this idea that I’ve had I not done that had I spent it on something more frivolous I wouldn’t have been able to be a homeowner. Just saving your money, right away and just no matter what it is you’re doing, we’ll just give you more flexibility later on in life to do the things you want to do.

[00:37:40] So I know that’s a little bit off topic, but I think that’s an important lesson that, that all young people in college or who are just out of college, who might be hearing as really should know. Okay.

[00:37:49] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:37:49] No, that’s such a good point, especially when you get into sales as a career, when you start actually like figuring it out and doing well and taking home those big commission checks, it’s a good reminder to [00:38:00] have from someone who’s lived it and also the fact that you’re not afraid of hard work.

[00:38:04] I’m sure. Working in Alaska with Sam and eating salmon for what was 84 straight days, that’s not something that a lot of people would be the first to sign up for. So not only were you making really smart choices for your future, you are doing the hard work that a lot of people shy away from as well.

[00:38:21] That’s great. That’s really good. What would you say so far, and you got a lot of career in life left has been your biggest win or one of your biggest wins?

[00:38:33] Riley Dugan: [00:38:33] Oh, I think getting married to the person who I got married to. And so that’s been, I think the best decision I ever made in my life. And it’s not a professional decision, but it’s a decision that’s going to impact you for ideally the rest of your life. Finding the right spouse is so extremely important.

[00:38:48] That’s probably the best decision I ever made. And I think, the best professional decision I ever made was coming to the University of Dayton. It’s definitely a school that I think kind of suits what I’m looking for, which is not only a focus on research, [00:39:00] some of the, the big 10 schools for instance, or just research, and yeah.

[00:39:02] As long as you don’t, harm a student in the classroom, then, you’re five on the teaching things. But. No at the University of Dayton, we really do stress teaching. And that to me is just so valuable and so rewarding ’cause that’s, to me, it’s more enjoyable than anything related to getting something published or making a conference presentation or anything like that.

[00:39:21] Just seeing growth in students and having an opportunity to impact that in some small ways is really meaningful.

[00:39:28] pioneering-creative_1_03-26-2021_123430: [00:39:28] We’ve talked about so much on this podcast as that you are honestly one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met and my, I have a question for you. What give me a second. What is your super power? What would you consider to be your own super power? As you’ve developed so much in your career, you have a wealth of knowledge to share you educate, but what is your, if you could just summarize it into one super power, what do you think it would be?

[00:39:52] Riley Dugan: [00:39:52] I don’t think I think, I don’t think I, I have any super powers because there certainly are people who are better teachers and better researchers than me at [00:40:00] various schools throughout the country who I’ve met, we’ve gotten sales fields, so many great sales educators and great sales researchers, not fortunate enough to be able to work with a lot of them and to collaborate with them.

[00:40:10] But I think one of the things that I’m good at, and I think this is important is I’m really able to focus well. And the amount of hours I put in work per day are probably a lot less than what a lot of people put in, but they have, when I’m working, I get down to it, I find that 30 minutes of focused work, oftentimes speeds two hours of kind of unfocused work where you’re on social media or meeting a huge NBA fan, like what the calves did, the trade deadline, right?

[00:40:34] It’s there’s time for that. But when it’s time to work it’s time to sit down and get out. And that’s been something to, for me, where I have honestly a tremendous amount of free time because when I do work, I work and then, when the work’s done and I might be four or five hours a day okay, cool,

[00:40:48] the rest of the time is mine. So

[00:40:51] Kristen Wisdorf: [00:40:51] That’s great. And that’s also to wrap this, sing up nicely in a bow, if you work hard and you choose sales as a profession, you hopefully will also [00:41:00] have a lot of free time and be able to enjoy the fruits of that type of job. Riley, we very much appreciate you joining us today. This has been absolutely incredible.

[00:41:08] I’m really in  ah of your background and the experience you’ve had and how hard you’ve worked to get where you are. I know our listeners are going to be very excited to hear about your story and thank you so much for sharing a little bit of Dayton with us today.

[00:41:21] Riley Dugan: [00:41:21] Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for the conversation.