Skip to main content

Georgia Southern Again Recognized as the Top Program at the RNMKRS Spring 2022 Role-Play Competition

Georgia Southern University has again been recognized for consecutive semesters as the top-performing school in the Spring 2022 RNMKRS Role-Play Competition. To earn this top honor, Georgia Southern beat out 52 highly competitive institutions to have the most students in the top 30% of all competitors. Others in the top 10 included Plymouth State University, Purdue University, University of Wisconsin La Crosse, and Northern Illinois University. In total, nearly 1,600 students from around the globe competed in the Spring 2022 RNMKRS Sales Role-Play Competition. 

Among other honors, the sales students in Georgia Southern University’s Parker College of Business took home an array of notable accolades, including:

  • RNMKRS Spring 2022 Competition 24th Place Runner-up (Madison Watson)
  • Recognized in the Top 1% of all Student Scores (Madison Watson)
  • Top 1% Coach (Linda Mullen, Ph.D.)
  • Most students in the 100+ Role-Play Club from a single university
  • Fifty-four students Recognized in the 100+ Role-Play Club
  • Most Role-Play Attempts from GSU (Craig Hightower, #157)
  • The largest RNMKRS community

“We are so proud of our students and the effort they put into this competition,” explained Linda Mullen, Co-Director of the Center for Sales Excellence at Georgia Southern University. “RNMKRS is so great because of the amount of role-play practice it provides each student. Before RNMKRS we could get through only 10-20 role-plays maximum per student, but now with RNMKRS, students are role-playing 100+ attempts. Practice makes perfect, and with RNMKRS, we can practice a lot in a single semester, better preparing students for a future career in sales.”

Alex, the AI bot, is programmed to respond to students as they lead a mock sales meeting. This semester’s competition scenario had students representing Dell Technologies as they sell the company’s Dell Latitude Rugged laptop computer line to a fire department. Students virtually ‘meet’ with Alex, going through the steps of a sales call. Alex’s program graded each student based on his or her performance, and the institutions were then ranked based on their students’ results.

“I am so glad to have the opportunity to participate in another semester of the RNMKRS competition,” said Madison Watson, a junior Marketing & Sales Management major. “I placed much higher than I anticipated, and I believe that goes to show just how far practice and persistence can take you. RNMKRS is a great learning tool because students can have the space to try new techniques without the fear of failure. By the time of the actual competition, I was more ready than ever, and you can see in my improvement from last year just how much hard work pays off.”


Center for Sales Excellence, Georgia Southern University

Located within Georgia Southern University’s Parker College of Business, the Center for Sales Excellence is recognized by the University Sales Alliance as one of the nation’s top sales programs. Established in 2007, it is the mission of the Center to have a positive impact on the sales profession through education, research, and service. The Marketing B.B.A. program offers the students of Georgia Southern University an emphasis in Sales and Sales Management.

Through the Center, students gain experience with sales role-play in our dedicated labs, with many going on to compete in some of the nation’s most prestigious sales competitions. The Center also works to bring students together with companies in the industry looking to hire the best and brightest minds. It is the goal of the Center to be the preeminent sales program in the nation.

RNMKRS Virtual Sales Competition

Launched in 2018, RNMKRS empowers students to communicate and influence decisions using bias-free interactive technology. More than 2,100 college students complete over 60,000 role-plays, honing their selling skills by speaking with Alex, an artificially intelligent customer bot that listens, adapts, and responds while scoring students and giving them feedback. Students improve their selling skills and refine their communication and empathy skills along the way. All of this activity takes place on their mobile phone.

RNMKRS is utilized in sales classes taught at Georgia Southern University as a means to provide students with an ample amount of sales role-play experience. The virtual role-play is coached by the Center for Sales Excellence faculty, including Lindsay Levine, Ph.D., Linda Mullen, Ph.D., and Travis Brickey.

Share:

Posted in News