It was a cold and rainy Wednesday morning when Tanya Martin, the Director of Admissions here at GCC, walked into Mr. Dudkowski’s Professional Sales class. Tanya glided into the classroom with enthusiasm not willing to let the dreary weather influence her or her presentation. Tanya was invited to class because of her enthusiasm and energy. My Professional Sales class was given an assignment to interview or bring in a salesperson to speak to our class about the real world of selling. Mr. D suggested Tanya Martin, the Director of Admissions here at GCC, because she has the responsibility of selling GCC to prospective students. I jumped at the chance to bring Tanya in and I immediately raced to Admissions to persuade Tanya to come to class to speak. Tanya agreed and came in on September 30^th.

Tanya had an immense amount of wisdom to give in the short fifty five minute class. She started off her presentation by saying that as a salesperson you should never be late because it makes a terrible impression, however if you bring donuts and coffee it does soften the fact you were late.

She continued her presentation by following a timeline of her life by telling us where she was from (Alfred, NY), what she majored in (Business, but later switched to Communications), where she previously worked (New York Chiropractic College and St. John Fisher), and how she sells GCC to prospective students.

Tanya sells GCC by the features and benefits the college has to offer. She asked the class to write down what they thought some features of the college were and share them with the class. The three major features the students brought up were:

• GCC is affordable
• GCC has small classes
• GCC offers flexible scheduling

The benefits that go along with those features are:

• GCC is affordable- all of your credits transfer to a 4 year college or university and you do not have to worry about paying a lot for college.
• GCC has small classes-offers hands on learning and as a student you are able to interact with your professor. The professor genuinely wants you to succeed and they will do everything in their power to get you where you want to go. Professor Dudkowski is a great example because he sincerely wants his students to excel and he has an amazing network to help his students do just that.
• GCC offers flexible scheduling- GCC understands that the majority of students here have a job or family and they offer the students the ability to receive a degree while working.

Tanya gave us additional advice and information throughout the presentation and included:

• Accept as many responsibilities and opportunities as you can.
• Job shadow or intern to find out what you want and do not want to do.
• Find a job you love.
• When selling, make the customer understand that they could be a part of something bigger if the purchase the product.
• Build a relationship with the customer and genuinely care about the customer.
• Network as much as possible.
• Do not promise something that you cannot deliver.
• Be persistent, but not aggressive.
• Smile and remember that public speaking is a comfortable conversation not a scary situation.
• Do not miss out on something in life because you are not comfortable speaking.
• Do not ever forget that everybody is somebody.

Tanya gave an amazing presentation and it was a great reminder of what is going on in the industry and how it relates our class. Her presentation was fast paced and filled with anecdotes.  Each student in the class took away something different from the presentation and the most important thing I took away was to never treat anyone differently or rude because you never who you are going to meet or interact with in the future. I am very thankful Tanya had taken the time out of her busy schedule to come and speak with us!

Giving Tanya our GCC plaid as a thank you for coming into class.