Connecting with non-marketing majors (CIS students)
Posted by Joe Cannon
Do you sometimes have trouble keeping those non-marketing majors awake in the intro class? One of the challenges of the introductory marketing class is motivating non-marketing majors (typically 75% or more of the class). While this class is even more important for them — it will likely be their only marketing class — they are usually not intrinsically motivated by marketing. My friend Tom Boyd (Cal State Fullerton) told me that early in the semester he brings in non-marketing businesspeople as guest speakers. I tried that this semester, and taught the cross-functional chapter in Basic Marketing (chapter 20) in the second week of class. It worked and my non-marketing majors were more motivated all semester. A blog post from Vivek Wadhwa on the TechCrunch blog describes why IT managers need selling skills – “It’s All About Selling for Survival.” While this post targets IT people, it really fits with anyone who will eventually be in management in any functional area. I am going to assign this reading next time I teach the class.
Tags: Motivating students, non-marketing majors
This entry was posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009 at 11:23 am and is filed under Cross-functional, Selling and Sales Mgmt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.