Thank you for partnering with us as a role play buyer!

This page has everything you should need for preparing for and participating in the role play:

• Timeline and Microsoft Teams meeting links for your role play session.
• An overview of the role play scenario, buyer roles, key goals and challenges, and key concerns
• How to begin and end the role play and transition to providing decision feedback and coaching
• The students' sales call goals, evaluation criteria and a form to share your decisions with us

If you need other help before the role play please email pslgen.business@uconn.edu.  If you need help the day of the role play, please email Rick Shannon at rick.shannon@uconn.edu or email Emily Laput at pslgen.business@uconn.edu.

About Mia's goals and challenges

Reveal this information as appropriate to respond to student questions. 

1. You are always battling to get higher rankings. UConn tends to rank in the top 25 public US MBA programs, and the top 100 programs globally. Key to this is attracting quality students into the program and delivering high-quality courses and programming.  This helps students gain high-quality positions after they graduate, which generates satisfied alumni who support the program.
2. Your current key goal is to increase quality enrollments. You recruit students to enter twice a year, in spring and fall.  Last year, you enrolled 300 students (~150/semester) and would like to enroll 350 students in the upcoming year (175/semester).  Longer term, you would like to get to 500 students annually, ideally while reducing your admissions ratio from 40% to 30%.
3. A small, stretched in-house marketing team at the School supports your program. The team is led by your colleague Bill Eyre, who is a marketing expert.  A newer member of his team, Tora Ogueri, spends about half of her time working on marketing for the MBA program. You meet with them regularly to discuss goals and challenges.
4. You are specifically looking for help at the top of your recruiting funnel: attracting visitors to your website, capturing their contact information so you can interact with them more personally, and convincing qualified applicants to complete the online application.  Once you have applications, you have a strong admissions process that yields good conversions to quality admits. But competition is fierce, and you both suspect you need to do something different to attract and engage with prospective students earlier in their decision-making process.
5. Keeping digital marketing content fresh is an ongoing challenge.  Your marketing team keeps the website updated, but you suspect you should be ramping up new digital content much faster than you are right now.   Three areas that regularly come up in discussion with your marketing team include:
   1. Social Media- more channels, more posts, using more effectively.
   2. Video Content- more content, how to produce more efficiently.
   3. Paid Advertising- where to advertise on search and social media, how to get a better return.
6. You have about six months to recruit each entering cohort.  This makes getting going quickly very important, but also means that you may need to put off longer term activities until you have made good progress on this year's goal.
7. While you have a great deal of influence, you will not be the final decision-maker.  Your marketing colleague Bill will make any decision to hire a marketing agency.  However, your programs are both strategically and financially important to the School, making you influential in the decision.

Evaluation criteria

1. "Connect": builds good rapport:  Students should start the call by spending time effectively building rapport: volunteering things they might have in common with Mia, demonstrating interest in Mia as a person.  Stronger students will spend more time here than weaker ones, and will also better follow your cues on when to transition the discussion to its business purpose.
2. "Explore": probes for business impact:  Students should own the agenda and discussion, asking questions and adapting their follow-up questions to your responses.  Stronger students will go beyond fact-finding and situation questions to explore challenges and opportunities and the business impact of addressing and pursuing them.  They will also ask more questions about buying process, and others involved in buying decision.
3. "Advise": provides motivating preview of capabilities:  Students should provide a quick preview of the types of solutions they offer that could create value for you, and why they could credibly deliver the business results you need from these solutions.  Stronger students will be able to demonstrate that they have some expertise in digital marketing, while resisting the natural urge to move into extended time pitching (even if prompted by "tell me a little about what Impact does").
4. "Commit": asks for a followup meeting with a clear goal:  Students should be clear on their proposed next step and ask for a specific time and date to meet with you.  Stronger students should persist when you defer, earning your commitment by listening to you and responding to what you say, while making it clear why moving forward is in your best interest.  They should also explore for others involved in the buying process and nudge you to include them in the next meeting.
5. "Overall": in control, professional: Students should take responsibility for the flow of the conversation, with confident and professional interactions that balance listening and talking.  Stronger students will be more comfortable going off their agenda, letting the conversation take its natural path, while still maintaining enough control and gathering enough information to keep the result productive for both of you.