Dayton Engineer

The University of Dayton’s Society of Sales Engineers (SSE) is on a fast track to success. Started in the fall of 2022, the student organization has grown from 5 student members to over 100. 

With rapid growth and interest comes a change in their leadership model — SSE has recently changed from an academic student organization to a professional fraternity model.

“My first meeting as president, I had a company come in and only five people showed up,” said junior Andrew Grant, current president of SSE. “I thought that by becoming a professional fraternity and adding a new structure would help.” 

This new model also created exclusivity to the group, creating a more attractive environment for engineering sales recruiters. 

“With a fraternity, you are recruiting the best of the best, so your organization now becomes exclusive,” Grant said. “Companies are willing to pay a lot more and recruit a lot more members because they know they're recruiting the best.” 

SSE also decided to offer a sales certification, consisting of 19 short courses offered during weekly meetings. The short courses include content from sales classes in the School of Business Administration at UD and focus on all key skills of sales — allowing students with no prior experience to learn about the field.

“Weekly chapter meetings will include a 30 to 45-minute lecture and in the last 30 to 15 minutes will be a workshop where each student has to speak or interact with each other to test what they just learned,” Grant said. ““Over two years, our members will earn a certificate they can put on their resumes and speak about in interviews.”

Aside from a tangible item for their resumes, SSE offers its members a unique combination of community and career connections. 

“We bring in five companies a semester to talk with our members,” Grant said. “Over the past two years, around 50 members have landed co-ops or full-time roles through SSE.”

Earlier this October, 16 SSE members attended the National Society of Sales Engineers (NSSE) National Conference in Iowa at the Emerson Innovation Center. The conference included a case study competition, where teams of 2 students worked together to sell a DVC7K digital valve controller. 

Teams began preparation back at UD before they left, researching about the item they were selling. Then in Iowa, the competition started with a discovery call to determine pain points of the customer before they gave their pitch.

UD students Austin Ebbing and Brooke Hunstad took home second place, while three other UD teams placed in the top 15 out of 50 teams.

Grant also presented at the conference about their professional fraternity model, which impressed Gary Williams, owner of the NSSE. Williams has decided to follow this model for all 19 university chapters. NSSE will begin to further grow the structure and become the headquarters for the new fraternity.

“I hope to add a lot of schools into this organization, and have UD help all these different schools transition,” Grant said.

The professional fraternity model pioneered at UD may soon set a new standard for engineering organizations across the country, establishing SSE as a leader in shaping the future of sales engineering education and career development.