MKA2021 – Salesmanship is a 3-credit course on professional selling. Daytona State College titles it Building Selling Relationships, which better reflects how the subject is now taught — the older title survives in the SCNS inventory but the content has moved substantially away from what it implies.
That shift is the course's organizing idea. Selling was once taught as persuasion technique: memorized presentations, objection-handling scripts, and closing tactics designed to move a prospect toward a decision. Contemporary professional selling is taught as consultative and relationship-based — diagnosing whether the buyer actually has a problem the product solves, and building a relationship that produces repeat business and referrals. The practical reason is not sentiment: in most business-to-business and high-value consumer selling, the cost of acquiring a customer is high enough that a single transaction does not repay it.
Content covers the role of professional selling in the economy and the marketing mix; the buying process and how buyers actually decide, including organizational buying and buying centers; prospecting and lead qualification; pre-call planning and research; the approach and gaining attention; needs discovery — questioning frameworks and, above all, listening; the presentation and demonstrating value rather than features; handling objections as information rather than resistance; negotiation and concession strategy; closing and gaining commitment; follow-up and account servicing; relationship management and CRM systems; territory and time management; sales metrics and pipeline management; ethics and legal issues in selling; and careers in sales, including compensation structures.
Offered at approximately 10 Florida institutions.
Sales is one of the few fields that hires substantially on demonstrated aptitude rather than on a specific degree, and Florida's hospitality, real estate, construction, healthcare, and logistics sectors all employ sales professionals in volume. It is also among the more accessible routes to a high income without a graduate credential — with the trade-off that compensation is frequently variable and performance is measured continuously.
Worth addressing directly, since the SCNS title may put students off. Salesmanship is a legacy name, and the practice it evokes — scripted pitches, pressure closes, the stereotype of the pushy salesperson — is precisely what contemporary professional selling education teaches against. Daytona State's title, Building Selling Relationships, describes the actual content. The research-supported finding is that in consultative and B2B contexts, diagnosis outperforms persuasion: the salesperson who asks better questions and sometimes concludes the product is not a fit outperforms the one who closes harder.
Students expect a course about presenting and are usually surprised that the graded role-plays weight discovery most heavily. Rackham's research on SPIN questioning found that successful salespeople in complex sales spend far more time asking than presenting, and that the questions which correlate with success are those establishing the consequences of a problem rather than merely its existence. Students who prepare a polished presentation and skip discovery reliably score poorly, and this is the single most common feedback in the course.
Assessment centers on live role-play sales calls, usually recorded and reviewed. Students find this uncomfortable and consistently report it as the most valuable part. Two practical points: prepare a call plan rather than a script, because a script collapses the moment the buyer says something unexpected; and watch your own recording, which reveals filler words, interrupting, and talking past a buying signal in a way no critique can.
The reframing that changes performance. An objection means the buyer is engaged enough to articulate a concern — silence is worse. The professional response is to clarify the concern before answering it, because the stated objection is frequently not the real one ("it's too expensive" often means "I don't yet see the value" or "I'm not the decision maker"). Students trained to rebut objections immediately talk past the actual issue.
Worth flagging concretely, because students often do not realize a license is involved. Selling insurance requires licensure through the Florida Department of Financial Services; selling real estate requires a sales associate license through DBPR including pre-licensing education and an examination; and selling securities requires FINRA registration. Each has its own coursework, examination, and background requirements. A student targeting one of these should investigate the licensure path early, since it is separate from the degree and takes time.
Sales compensation structures vary enormously and materially: straight salary, salary plus commission, draw against commission, and pure commission, with quotas, accelerators, caps, and clawback provisions. A "draw" is an advance against future commission and can leave a new salesperson owing money. Students should leave able to read a compensation plan and calculate realistic earnings at various performance levels, and should ask specific questions in an interview rather than accepting a stated on-target earnings figure.
The course appears as MKA2021 under both titles. The MKA prefix covers marketing applications and sales; MAR numbers cover marketing principles and are different courses — MAR3023 Principles of Marketing is upper-division and does not substitute for this one, nor the reverse. As a 2000-level course it is lower-division and does not satisfy upper-division requirements. SCNS equivalency applies to the same number at the same level, never across numbers.
Generated August 31, 2026 · Updated August 31, 2026