UNM Anderson School Students Dominate on World Stage
December 11, 2023 - Megan Borders
UNM Anderson School students Diego Flores and Paul Holzmann tied for first place in the RNMKRS (pronounced "Rainmakers") College Competition, a role-play virtual sales competition, in November. RNMKRS is the largest sales competition in the world, and Flores and Holzmann competed against more than 1,000 students from 40 universities for this top honor. The competition is scored on points and both students received an almost perfect score of 9,695 points each out of a possible 10,000.
In addition to Diego and Holzmann’s success, Anderson had four other students secure spots in the top 10. Dominique Thurmond placed sixth, followed by Clay Houghtaling in seventh, Quincy Sander in eighth and Jaime Martinez-Gibson in ninth.
Associate professor Dimitri Kapelianis said, "The students' performances were amazing. It speaks to their hard work, talent and their ability to be open and collaborate with each other. I couldn’t be prouder of all of my students."
The RNMKRS competition offers its participants invaluable real-time practice in the five core selling steps: introduction, discovery, presentation, objectives and concerns and closing, leading up to competition day through dynamic live simulations. A student’s success in competition is directly impacted by the number of times they practice the simulations in the RNMKRS app. Both Flores and Holzman practiced over 100 times each.
"A person becomes adept at selling techniques through practice and repetition of the basic concepts combined with the ability to receive feedback," said Kapelianis.
RNMKRS is 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.