Winning and Keeping Customers
The Essence of Sales Management
In today’s fiercely competitive B2B markets, businesses look to the sales force to drive economic growth and profitability. Yet finding the right sales strategy has never been more difficult. Products and services have become more complex. Customers are more informed and demanding. Competitors are more assertive. At the same time, the rules of the game have changed. In an environment marked by accelerated technological, economic, and social change, yesterday’s approaches are less effective. Winning and Keeping Customers (WIN)offers modern sales managers a fresh set of tools and strategies to make customers tick, click, and stick. The course explores new customer value paradigms. It examines the potential of product customization and solution selling. It also takes a hard look at ways to boost customer retention, including the promises and limitations of e-commerce and CRM. Finally, by looking beyond traditional sales roles, Winning and Keeping Customers helps companies transform the customer experience into a competitive differentiator.
Target Audience
Sales and/or marketing managers responsible for winning and keeping customers, or managers working in a sales-supporting function like controlling, accounting, HR, or R&D.
Past Participants' Level of Responsibility
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Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and UK
Key Topics
Winning and Keeping Customers helps sales managers deliver excellent customer experiences for competitive advantage by:- Understanding trends and challenges of modern sales management
- Analyzing customer needs and selling customer value
- Organizing acquisition management
- Linking customer satisfaction and supplier profitability
- Achieving customer retention and managing key accounts
- Measuring sales performance and generating motivation
Take-Home Value
Having gained a deep understanding of modern sales management, managers will be able to assess the current status of their sales approach and provide concrete ideas for improvement. They will also benefit from the additional insights of colleagues across industries and companies.Meet the Faculty
Olaf Plötner (Program Director)Full biography
Professor Olaf Plötner is the dean of ESMT executive education. He joined ESMT as one of the first faculty members and managing director of ESMT Customized Solutions GmbH in 2002. Olaf’s current research and teaching focus on strategic management, industrial market management, and sales management in global B2B markets. His work is reflected in his most recent book Counter Strategies in Global Markets, published by Palgrave Macmillan, Springer, and SDX Shanghai. His research has been portrayed in journals such as Industrial Marketing Management and Journal of Business and Industrial Marking as well as in leading international media such as Wall Street Journal, Times of India, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, China Daily Europe, and Financial Times.
Olaf is a visiting professor at Darden School of Business and a regular guest lecturer at Freie Universität Berlin and ESCP Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris.
Olaf also worked as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group in Frankfurt and as a director at Siemens AG in Boston.
Jan Wieseke
Full Biography
Prof. Dr. Jan Wieseke has held a Chair at the Marketing Department at the Ruhr-University of Bochum since 2008. He is a specialist for sales management and psychological processes within organizations.
ESMT European School of
