With approximately 15% of engineering job postings involving product sales, marketing or customer field support, a minor in engineering sales can be a critical step towards a great job offer. Besides being one of the best paid positions in engineering, technical sales offers substantial travel opportunities and the ability to solve customers’ engineering problems in the field working with people. Talk to your advisor to see how just a few additional courses could fit into your schedule and fast-track your job prospects.
To fill this need, the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering has developed a minor in sales engineering. The engineering sales minor is a 15 credit minor that complements the technical training in the student’s major discipline by providing the tools and knowledge required for technical (i.e. business-to-business) sales careers. The minor is available only to engineering students and is administered by a supervisory faculty committee. No more than 6 of the 15 credits can be used to meet any other department, college or university requirements.
Requirements:
- IE 4500 Technical Sales for Engineers
- IE 4300 Entrepreneurial Product Engineering
- MKT 3400 Principles of Marketing
- MKT 4500 Advanced Professional Selling
AND
One of the following:
- IE 3050 Engineering Economic Analysis
- CE 2060 Engineering Economic Analysis and Professional Issues in Civil Engineering
The objectives of the minor are to provide a broad understanding of the technical sales process, primarily from the business-to-business perspective. At the conclusion of the minor, students will be able to:
- Calculate a return on investment and communicate this to the customer
- Determine payback period for a given solution and communicate this to the customer
- Perform a market segmentation
- Develop a client value analysis
- Perform prospecting and business-to-business marketing
- Identify decision makers and processes
- Manage a sales process
- Use sales automation software
- Apply knowledge of underlying international sales issues
- Prepare written and verbal sales presentations
- Provide information about product/service pricing
- Lead a team selling process
- Establish sales channel management procedures
- Develop sound distribution strategies and global sales processes
- Formulate bid strategies/negotiation strategies
- Employ good time management skills
Those students interested in pursuing this minor should contact an academic advisor in their home department and fill out a REQUEST FOR MINOR form. Evaluation of all students requesting this minor will be conducted in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering. Any questions should be directed to Ms. Devna Popejoy-Sheriff at devna@iastate.edu.