Selling Empathy The door of Dr. Alexander Milovic’s office flings open as he announces to anyone in earshot, “She just got a job!” pointing to a girl standing behind his shoulder. These kinds of informal career-planning meetings — celebratory or not —are a regular occurrence for the director of Marquette’s sales program and assistant professor of practice of marketing, someone students describe as an advocate for their interests, futures and general wellbeing. “He likes to see everyone succeed,” says Thomas Madaras, a junior in the College of Business Administration. “That’s his main point.” When he arrived at Marquette in 2014 to develop the college’s sales program, Milovic set out to show that sales is more than the stereotype of the pushy salesperson working a used-car lot. “I want my students to learn that selling is helping others,” Milovic says. “Empathy is becoming the first word that people associate with sales.” Companies are begging for college graduates to fill high-paying sales positions, he adds. “Not only is (sales) lucrative; it’s really fun,” Madaras chirps with enthusiasm. He says that Milovic has served as his mentor and exposed him to a whole new side of sales that made him want to pursue it as a career. Milovic introduced Madaras to the field by getting him a job. As part of their course work for his second-level sales course, Milovic’s students get paid to participate in an eight-week sales internship, selling
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tickets for the Milwaukee Bucks or Marquette Basketball, or coffee for Buena Vida Coffee. “You can’t learn how to sell by reading a book,” Milovic says. “You’ve got to do it.” The students go to work in the evenings making cold calls to potential customers and use the seminar-style class time that Milovic describes as a “therapy session” to discuss any challenges they encounter on the job and get reminders on best practices. “There’s a lot of learning on your feet,” Madaras says. “You need to be confident in yourself and trust that you know what to do.” The stakes are higher since the students’ performance affects a local company, but that pressure “makes the experience more meaningful,” says Madaras. After his experience in Milovic’s class, Madaras landed himself a sales internship for this summer. And as expected, Milovic was the first one there to congratulate him.
MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Dr. Alexander Milovic assistant professor of practice of marketing; director, sales program
Read rave reviews of Dr. Alexander Milovic’s teaching from students: go.mu.edu/Milovic-kudos.
“ There’s a lot of learning on your
feet. You need to be confident in yourself and trust that you know what to do.” Thomas Madaras