After spending 30 years of his career in sales, Tom Meusel is sharing his passion for the discipline with Boston University students.
Starting in fall 2025, Meusel will teach QST SI 348: The Fundamentals of Selling: Strategies and Tactics under Innovate@BU. The course is open to Innovation & Entreprenuership minors, Questrom minors and Questrom Innovation and Entreprenurship concentrations, according to an email sent to Innovation & Entrepreneurship students.
In the past two years, 15% of Questrom graduates landed their job in sales, Ian Mashiter, curriculum director for Innovate@BU, said.
However, few graduates actually had training in sales during their education, according to Meusel.
Meusel, an industry veteran in high-tech enterprise, sales management and strategic partnerships, said he wanted to create a course that would expose students to the “fundamentals” of a sales career.
“When I started my sales career, a company like IBM was one of my first career moves. They spent a year training me on how to sell, teaching me how to sell and giving me business fundamentals and the techniques to be a good salesperson,” Meusel said. “That doesn’t really exist anymore.”
Sambhavy Shrestha, a program management intern at Innovate@BU, said she found courses on sales were also lacking in other universities.
“This course came to be out of a gap that we saw in our courses,” Shrestha said. “It was not just a BU problem.”
Mashiter said sales are a “vital” part of any corporation.
Students have the impression that salespeople are untrustworthy, said Mashiter, which is a stereotype he hopes to defeat through the course.
Instead, Mashiter said he wants to show students how sales can help them build relationships.
“A professional sales job can be a good start to a very successful career,” he said. “Many CEOS in big corporations started life in sales because it teaches you the front end of business.”
When designing the curriculum for SI 348, Mashiter said they wanted a course “where students could learn by doing.”
The course simulates the customer sales cycle, which is the process of turning leads into customers, to give students applicable sales experience and skills.
“I think what I can bring to these students are a lot of real-world experiences that I’ve had, and apply sales strategies to that,” Meusel said. “My hope is that students have a true curiosity for selling and they see that as a viable part of their career experience, whether or not they go into sales.”
Shrestha said students can also build skills, such as negotiations and personal branding, that can set them ahead as they begin their careers.
“Being able to talk professionally with people is a good skill to have, and you learn it very early on in the business school,” she said.
Even though the class is within Questrom, Meusel said any student can still get value out of the communication skills that sales can give you.
“It’ll be a nice combination of things that maybe students have learned in other classes that they can then apply to a sales curriculum,” he said. “Students who have a true curiosity for selling can see that as a viable part of their career experience.”
As Meusel looks towards the fall, he said he hopes SI 348 has a lasting impact on the foundations of students’ careers.
“I find I love selling, and so I want to transfer that same excitement and energy to students,” he said.
