GROWMARK is recognizing the recent winners of the National Agri-Marketing Association Collegiate Sales Competition.
GROWMARK — an agricultural cooperative serving almost 400,000 customers across North America ? is a proud supporter and sponsor of the competition, which was held virtually this year April 14-15. Amy Bradford is GROWMARK?s corporate communications manager. She says students were given a certain amount of time for a sales pitch in front of judges, in which they were evaluated on presentation, business knowledge, and public speaking skills.
?For a number of years, NAMA has held a marketing competition,? Bradford said. ?So, this sales competition is relatively new because this is the second year that it?s been held. It?s designed to give students an opportunity to actually make a sales call based on a scenario they are given and demonstrate their ability to sell products.?
The first-place winner was Isaac Brockman from Illinois State University. Coming in second place was Regan Ragsdale from the University of Missouri. The third-place finisher was Radine Kruisselbrink from the University of Guelph in Canada. Bradford says some of the judges were GROWMARK employees and that the company is excited to continue its sponsorship of this competition.
?GROWMARK and its FS member coops actually hire and recruit a lot of salespeople,? Bradford said. ?Either crop specialists, seed specialists or energy specialists, those jobs are all sales jobs. The sales staff go to the farm gate and work with the farmers. It seemed like a really good opportunity for GROWMARK to get in front of these students ? the best of the best ? that are competing in this contest and sponsor the sales contest.?
Kariann Elsbernd from Iowa State University was a finalist in the competition. Other finalists included Paden McDermid of New Mexico State University, Ellie McGowan of Murray State University, Jason Nelson of Pennsylvania State University, and Jack Swartz from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
More information is available at growmark.com.
