Selling-to-Teach: A Didactical Look at the Natural Integration Between Teaching and Selling

Abstract

This article examines whether educators’ use of selling activities (selling-to-teach) based on the seminal sales process can improve perceived and actual learning. By viewing the teaching interaction as a sales situation, the authors suggest professors can help students realize their need for learning just as a salesperson helps a prospect realize a need for a product or service. Leveraging the theoretical communication commonalities in teaching and selling, we posit that selling-to-teach will positively affect perceived and actual learning. Using a mixed-methods approach through two studies, we find qualitative and quantitative (n=616) support for selling-to-teach. Instead of examining pedagogy in sales, we suggest that sales is a pedagogy to be used across disciplines. This fuller examination unveils the sales process as a pedagogical tool to empower instructors and to maximize the student learning experience through different selling steps used as teaching method.