2 minute read
Selling Points
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT
Entrepreneur Thom Coats prepares business students using the state’s only professional sales simulation lab
by Carol Stuart
“Shhh,” Thom Coats says, please don’t tell anyone that he now gets paid to coach future sales professionals at MTSU after nearly 25 years of working in new business development.
First invited to speak during Ethical Leadership Week several years ago, Coats not only continued participating in other University events but also earned his M.B.A. in order to teach at the college level. He now imparts wisdom from his career experiences as a new professor of practice and director of the Insurance Group of America (IGA) Professional Sales Program at MTSU.
"This is the greatest thing for a storyteller in the world,” Coats said. “I get to tell the same stories to new victims every semester.”
A third-generation entrepreneur, Coats brings a world of contacts and expertise to the program and his students. He also has co-written an Amazon bestseller with a group he convened to hold Unstuck, a TEDx-style business conference, at Bridgestone Arena.
“The advantage I have is that I have lived it,” he said. “You could talk about things from a textbook all day long, but when you actually can relay the story into a real-life scenario, the students will lean into it.”
Each student watches “game film” with Coats to review sales practice events recorded in the Mel Adams State Farm Agent Professional Sales Lab, which simulates a client’s office.
“The fact that we have a sales lab puts us head and shoulders above everybody else,” Coats said.
In addition to MTSU’s proximity to the international commerce center of Nashville, the program gives students hands-on experiences by teaching a basic sales process through roleplaying and implementing customer relationship management software.
For the Professional Selling class, different partners rotate through a series of scenarios in which they attempt to sell Enterprise fleet management services to the University in the lab space. Top students ultimately compete for a prize to pitch to an Enterprise representative. In the advanced course, Coats had students pitching Lee Co. and other firms to the companies' own representatives.
He also has linked students with leaders in their chosen industries. One who wanted to move to New York City and work with music publications chatted with Peter Cronin, former Billboard editor who relocated to Nashville from the Big Apple.
An inspiring clothier was introduced to Dean Wegner, founder and CEO of the Authentically American national brand, and now has a summer job there. Coats believes MTSU’s having many first-generation college students makes the sales program a game-changer.
“You should make a higher-than-average income just because you have the discipline that you need to earn your degree,” Coats said. “But if I could teach these students the process of working a sale, then I could take that earning potential and possibly double or triple it and change family trees.”
