TKE Hosts Elevator Pitch Competition at North American HQ

Kennesaw State University sales students learned the true meaning of “elevator pitch,” when they were given 60 s to sell their personal brands while traveling 420 ft in the air on TK Elevator’s (TKE’s) fastest elevator in Atlanta. (An elevator pitch is a summary of a person’s background, skills or business ideas that is supposed to be brief enough to be delivered during a single elevator ride.) A group of 24 students from the Michael J. Coles College of Business’s professional sales team traveled to TKE’s North American headquarters (HQ) to pitch themselves as potential new hires to the TKE sales team. Four TKE executives judged the competition. Students had until the elevator reached the top floor to complete their pitch. According to the source, the idea for TKE’s competition came from Brent McCulloch, associate director of the Center for Professional Selling and a lecturer in Kennesaw State’s professional sales program. He has partnered with TKE for the past three years, including leading students on tours of the facility and inviting TKE executives to class to discuss sales careers. While the event was a competition, the sales team spent the week prior rehearsing together and offering each other advice for improvement. The event concluded with a party on the top floor of the test tower, where TKE presented the first-, second- and third-place finishers with keepsake LEGO brick models of the tower built in February 2022. Each statue is affixed to a pedestal made in the Coles College’s 3D printing lab.