Five Founding Principles™

ALL SMEI’s activities are guided by five founding principles, designed to strengthen principles and practice of the profession.

1. Professional Standards and Identification. The improvement of the standards for professional selling, sales management and marketing, in order to establish sales and marketing as a recognized profession.
   
2. Continuing Education. The planning and implementation of monthly meetings of the membership to enable members to keep up-to-date with changes in the marketplace and to grow as professionals. The planning and implementation of organized training programs for professional selling, sales management, and marketing.
   
3. Sharing Knowledge. The establishment of discussion forums, for example, shirt sleeve seminars, and roundtable meetings which enable members to share sales and marketing experiences and knowledge.
   
4. Assist Students. The establishment of programs to work with students at the high school and college levels to enable them to understand the excellent career opportunities in the sales and marketing profession. This objective ultimately led to the current SMEI sponsored programs with Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA), and Pi Sigma Epsilon (PSE).
   
5. Support the Free Enterprise System. In recognizing that sales and marketing is the energizing force that drives the competitive marketplace, SMEI has always been committed to supporting the free enterprise concept.

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