Members often ask MANA to be more engaged with students and professors at business schools, and MANA recently had that opportunity at the full-time MBA program ranked #1 by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

“The Hard Sell” competition at Chicago Booth gives second-year full-time students the opportunity to pit their sales skills against their peers and gain real-world sales experience before graduation. The program is spearheaded by Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship Craig Wortmann (left), whose “Entrepreneurial Selling” course was featured in the Inc. magazine article, “The 10 Best Entrepreneurship Courses of 2011.”

MANA CEO and President Charles Cohon was one of 18 executives chosen to judge the MBA candidate competitors. Cohon also “plays a key role in Chicago Booth’s ‘Entrepreneurial Selling’ class by serving as a judge for MBA students’ final projects,” says Wortmann.

Manufacturers’ representatives “bring more solutions to the table” than a direct sales force, said Wortmann in a recent interview, and for that reason “it tends to be a broader, richer conversation” than a direct salesperson can achieve. To view the entire Wortmann video, visit MANA’s YouTube channel youtube.com/manaspeaks and click on the video titled “About Manufacturers’ Agents with Chicago Booth Professor Craig Wortmann.”