Nicholls host 16th annual Bayou Sales Challenge

From Feb. 27 to Mar. 1, Nicholls State University hosted the Bayou Sales Challenge for the sixteenth year.

Along with Nicholls, six other universities traveled to Nicholls to participate in this event, including Florida State University, Louisiana State University, Southeastern Louisiana University, Southern University, University of Louisiana – Lafayette and Xavier University.

Laura Valenti, assistant professor of marketing and director of the Bayou Sales Challenge, said she is excited for all the universities who came and participated.

Overall, there were about 43 participants from all of the schools; this number does not include the coaches that came as well.

This program is hosted every year by Nicholls to develop students into strong salespeople through practice. Through this practice, students learn about themselves, gain confidence and gather a skill set.

“I competed because I wanted to push myself to try something new and to see what my skill set was in that competition,” Brooke Carlos, marketing senior from Raceland, said.

On the website of the challenge, it promotes the challenge as the largest and most competitive sales challenge in the region.

The purpose of the event it also stated on the website: “Students, individually and as a team, compete in high-pressure sales simulations in Nicholls’ state-of-the-art sales and interactive training lab.”

This challenge allowed some students to see what their future career would look like.

“I got a little bit of insight as to what I’m going to be doing in my future career later on,” Caroline Babin, professional sales and marketing junior from Thibodaux, said.

The cost to compete as an individual in the competition was $50, and to compete as a team was $25. The coaches who come to the competition were not charged.

The competitor also needed to be a full-time student at a university, and they could not be in a full-time business position since the sales challenge is an undergraduate competition.

Valenti said she is honored to be the director of the challenge and proud that Nicholls was able to host it.