New Assistant Professor in Marketing Jeremy Wolter, and wife Katie, have four boys, Liam, Jude, Miles, and newborn, Oliver.

Jeremy Wolter comes to the Raymond J. Harbert College of Business Marketing Department with a strong reputation for research, a desire to promote students’ career aspirations, and four boys ages three weeks to 5 years old.

“It’s the largest responsibility I have,” Wolter, a new Assistant Professor in Marketing, said of parenthood. “Everything we (parents) do, on purpose or accidentally, you influence them to some unknown degree. You are always on. It’s wonderful. It starts when they are brand new. When they first learn to smile, it’s one of the first things they give back to you, and that in itself is awesome. It’s the same situation with students, you get to see what impact you had on them.”

Wolter, who recently finished his PhD with a concentration in marketing at Florida State University, is teaching Personal Selling this fall and will concentrate on Principles of Marketing and Services Marketing next semester.

“The great thing is personal selling is in everyday life for every single person,” he said. “For them, the biggest component can be going on the market and trying to get a job, and in that case you are trying to sell yourself. One big thing I would like for them to take away is improving their chances on the job market. I want them to have gained skills that they can use in a variety of areas in their life beyond selling. There are a number of students who are in it who don’t plan on going into a sales career.

“We have sales management, and personal selling. Sales management is managing sales teams, different strategies and an incentive type of thing. In comparison to that, personal selling is the process. You get a little bit of the foundation, the vocabulary, who are the buyers, what does it look like across industries, and then you get the sales process -- everything from prospecting to cold calling to negotiations to overcoming objections to closing the sale.

“It’s a fun class.”

Wolter and his wife, Katie, a pediatric physician, moved to Auburn with sons Jude, 5, Liam, 4, Miles, 2, and Oliver – who was born on Aug. 22, “the day before we moved here.”

“Jeremy has a lot of experience in services marketing and his research looks very promising,” said Department of Marketing Chair Avery Abernethy. “He is off to a really good start in the classroom. We were looking for somebody who was a scholar and was good in the classroom. Those were our two big things.

“He comes from a great program. The chair of his dissertation is Joe Cronin, who is an extremely well-known scholar in marketing.”

Cronin is the John R. Kerr Research Chair in Marketing at Florida State University.

Wolter, who grew up in St. Augustine, Fla., earned his M.S. in Integrated Marketing Communication from Florida State and received his undergraduate at the University of Central Florida, said his research is focused on two areas – identity-based marketing and services marketing.

His piece on marketing strategies regarding customer satisfaction versus product identification is under second-round review by The Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.

Wolter said he is determined to “excel in everything they have asked me to excel in – research and teaching.” He also expects a solid effort from his students.

“I expect professionalism and putting the time in,” he added.