Sales Students Score Top Wins at Annual Competition

Editors’ Note: This feature appears as it was published in the spring 2021 edition of UT Dallas Magazine. Titles or faculty members listed may have changed since that time.

Sales Students Score Top Wins at Annual Competition

UT Dallas students on the Naveen Jindal School of Management sales team made a strong showing at the 2020 International Collegiate Sales Competition (ICSC), winning the sales-management case competition and earning enough points overall to place second in the World Cup of Sales.

Karianna Barreto Samantha Locke Hilary Tran Sophia Maloney Semiramis Amirpour
From top left: Karianna Barreto, Samantha Locke, Hilary Tran, Sophia Maloney and Semiramis Amirpour

In 2019, the Jindal School team won the inaugural world cup at the annual competition hosted by Florida State University in Orlando. In 2020, the cup went to Ohio University, a frequent rival.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 event was held entirely online, from Nov. 11 to Nov. 14, and included 80 universities.

Teams earned the right to compete by doing well in an elimination- round simulation last spring, and in November, the competition included two main events, the case competition and a role-play tournament.

Marketing senior Karianna Barreto and supply chain management senior Samantha Locke were the members of the first-place case- management team. In a two-round event, they created presentations that found solutions for issues related to managing a professional sales force. View their winning video here: https://sales.business.fsu.edu/sales/ICSC2020case/finals/1UTDallas.mp4.

Barreto was a returning ICSC competitor, having placed fourth in the 2019 role-play competition. In 2020, marketing senior Hilary Tran was a semifinalist who finished in the top 20, and Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science senior Sophia Maloney, a computer science major, was a quarterfinalist who finished in the top 50 in the four-round role-play event.

Marketing Senior Lecturer Semiramis Amirpour, who again coached the JSOM team, said ICSC 2020 “was a fierce competition with some of the best schools showcasing their top talent. UTD students worked endless hours preparing for both the role-play and case competition. Even though this was an all virtual event, we once again were able to add to the legacy of our school and program.”