Gary W. Rollins Endowed Chair in Sales
Christopher R. Plouffe
PhD
Gary W. Rollins Endowed Chair in Sales
418-C Fletcher Hall
In 2020, the Gary W. Rollins Endowed Chair in Sales was established. Dr. Christopher R. Plouffe is the first appointment to the Sales Chair position which was established as part of the historic $40 million gift made by Gary W. and Kathleen Rollins to the college in 2018. In this role, Plouffe will engage with the business sales community and develop the Rollins College of Business sales program and its sales curriculum and courses. Importantly, he will also mentor and guide students as they consider a sales career.
The mission of the Rollins Endowed Chair in Sales is to professionalize and advance the sales profession and sales education by acting as both educator and catalyst between prospective sales students, companies and organizations needing salespeople, and macro-level stakeholders such as the University itself and the greater Chattanooga community.
Why Sales?
Professional Selling is the lifeblood of all firms and corporations, as in most cases, it is the primary source of revenue. Yet by credible estimates, some 70% of University Graduates - regardless of college, major, or program of study - will "end up" in a sales role within the first decade of their career (Bolander et al. 2014). Few of these students will have had any deliberate training in sales in their college education (Damast and Weinfurter 2016; Lytle 2012; Peltier and Deeter-Schmelz, 2020). That universities are not doing more to prepare students for sales and related types of customer management careers has been well-chronicled in outlets such as USA Today, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Harvard Business Review, and many other outlets.
Both the state of Tennessee and the region surrounding Chattanooga are underserved in terms of sales education and formalized training for college students. Research is clear that if individuals are exposed to solid training and education in sales prior to graduating college, then - in the event they either elect to pursue a sales career, or if they "end up" in one - with such training in hand, they:
- perform far better than their peers with no such training
- exhibit significantly higher job satisfaction
- show a markedly lower propensity to burnout or otherwise leave the workforce
These facts and trends lie at the heart of the mission of the Rollins Endowed Chair in Sales.
Want to learn more about sales? Contact Dr. Plouffe directly or email [email protected].
Research
- Sales Performance; Salesperson Management; Solutions Selling
- Influence Tactics and Behaviors in Sales; B2B Purchasing
- CRM & Buyer-Seller Relationships
- B2C & B2B Technology Adoption; Diffusion of Innovations; Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) Exchange
Education
Ph.D. in Marketing - Ivey Business School, Western University, Canada
MBA - Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada
B.A. in Sociology - Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada
More About Dr. Plouffe
In the first part of his career, Chris spent a number of years in the high-tech industry at Hewlett-Packard, initially in marketing and public relations. He finished his career at HP in sales and business development, selling mainframe-class commercial and technical super-computers to a wide variety of industries such as retail, financial services, and telecom.
Prior to joining UTC, Chris was in the College of Business at New Mexico State University (NMSU). While at NMSU, Chris was a Full Professor and the Robin T. Peterson Endowed Chair & Professorship in Marketing. In previous academic positions, Chris held tenured or tenure-track positions at the University of Akron, Florida State University, Washington State University, and the University of Georgia. In each of those positions, Chris took on leadership roles in either initiating, growing, or managing those universities' sales programs, centers, and institutes.
Chris' insights have been quoted in both Fortune magazine and BusinessWeek. He also serves as a consultant and sales trainer with a number of leading firms including UPS, Eli Lilly, Bank of Montreal, Davey Tree Co., Bell Canada (BCE), Home Depot, and others.
A winner of multiple teaching awards, Chris' research has been cited over 2,500 times and primarily focuses on sales issues and salesperson performance. His research has been published in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Information Systems Research, Personnel Psychology, and numerous other general and field-specific journals.