UNM Anderson students place in top five in world’s largest sales competition

UNM Anderson School sales students dominated the virtual RNMRKS (pronounced "Rainmakers") international role-play sales competition April 10-11. Eddie Acosta, Andrew Salazar and AJ Dille placed second, fourth, and fifth, respectively.

RNMKRS is the world's largest sales competition, and Acosta, Salazar and Dille competed against more than 1,000 students from 47 universities for these top honors. The competition is scored on points, with a perfect score being 10,000. Acosta received 9,589; Salazar received 9,571; Dille received 9,542.

"Last semester six Anderson sales students placed in the top 10. This semester, we have three students in the top five. Our continued excellent performance in this competition speaks to the depth of the sales talent we are nurturing at Anderson," said Associate Professor Dimitri Kapelianis and director of the UNM Sales and Business Development Center. "I am incredibly proud of Eddie, Andrew and AJ as exemplars of the excellence of Anderson's sales program."

The RNMKRS competition offers its participants invaluable real-time practice in the five core selling steps: introduction, discovery, presentation, objections and concerns, and closing, leading up to competition day through dynamic simulations. A student's success in the competition is directly impacted by the number of times they practice the simulations in the RNMKRS app. Collectively, Acosta, Salazar and Dille completed 400 simulations.

"I attribute my success to active preparation and refining my skills each time I completed a simulation," said Acosta. "I'm grateful for the opportunity to showcase my abilities. Special thank you to professors Dimitri and Wyatt for their ongoing support and their ability to successfully teach the concepts needed to succeed in sales."

RNMKRS is an app-based technology developed by a group of selling professionals. The app uses an artificially intelligent customer bot called Alex Taylor, who walks the students through each basic concept and provides immediate feedback by sharing helpful suggestions on how to do things differently.

For more information on the UNM Center for Sales and Development, visit https://salescenter.mgt.unm.edu/.