Junior Haylee Frost received the Sales Top Performer Award for Buckle, a western and country themed clothing store, for the month of July.

Out of every Buckle store in the United States, Frost was second-highest in sales. She had only been working since mid-June and had left Buckle mid-August to come back to school.

Frost described how little there had been when she had started out. However, once she started organizing displays and including shoes in her sales pitches, she saw an increase in sales by at least 50%.

This increase, Frost explained, drastically changed the shoe department with footwear suddenly in high demand and high supply. . During this time, she received the Certificate of Sales Excellence.

Frost admitted she was not quite aware of the significance when she first found out. Frost wants to go into sales, so to receive this award was affirmation in her career path.

“It made me feel like I could do it,” she added.

Through the career-development platform, Handshake, Frost took up an internship at Buckle. The store’s location was close to home for her, contributing to her development during the internship.

Frost attributed her abilities to numerous events in her life. She had taken a sales course in the spring 2022 semester. She stated that the sales at Buckle had been an application of the course’s content and curriculum. She attributed much of her success to Professor Kris Hovsepian, who was her sales and marketing professor. Her background in softball had created a competitive edge, which she said attributed to her success.

She stated that it was like she was competing with her coworkers for higher sales. “On the iPad, you can see everyone else’s numbers too,” she explained.

Hovsepian commented that Frost was one of her favorite students and expressed pride for her accomplishments, stating that, “You can tell from her personality, she is a people person.”

Hovsepian explained that Frost has the “competitive edge” needed in sales, something that cannot be taught in a classroom.

Haylee was told she would be an ideal candidate for a manager at Buckle. However she stated that she would like to see what other options are available to her now that she has grown from this experience.