Winning and Keeping Customers
The Essence of Sales Management
Personal selling and sales management are the primary means through which marketing strategy is executed. Very often much of the marketing budget is spent on the sales force, and sales management is often the most important element of the promotional mix. Operating salesforce managers are responsible for putting both sales strategy and the vision of general management into place. They work closely with executives in transforming strategy into action and ultimately into successful business deals. They also serve as agents for change, supporting their sales directors in transforming the sales force into a high-performing team. The knowledge needed for understanding and applying the key principles of the sales process, assessing the current state of one’s own approach, and discovering levers for improvement has thus become essential.
Target Audience
You are a manager holding a position in sales and/or marketing or who is involved in customer-relations management. Participants are typically responsible for winning and keeping customers, organizing a sales force, or working in a sales supporting function like controlling, accounting, HR, or R&D. Other participants simply wish to gain further understanding of their organizations’ sales functions.
Past Participants' Level of Responsibility
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Selection of countries 2006-2007
Czech Republic, France, Germany, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey
Key Topics
This program evolves around the sales manager’s key tasks and processes, namely:- Understanding market-oriented management
- Defining the role of sales managers in their organization’s sales and marketing team
- Identifying and quantifying customer benefits
- Implementing and adjusting customer benefits
- Understanding the role of accounting information for decision making
- Organizing sales-force activities and measuring performance
- Maintaining a customer-responsive environment in one’s team
Take-Home Value
You will return to your company with the best tools, techniques and concepts available for improving your role in the sales force, having gained a deep understanding of the sales process. You will be able to assess the current status of your sales approach and appreciate levers for improvement. You will have gained additional insight from managers, brought together from a range of industries and companies.
Meet the Faculty
Martin Kupp (Program Director)Full biography
Martin Kupp is an ESMT faculty member as well as a program director at ESMT Customized Solutions, which is a subsidiary focusing on consulting and executive education, where he directs and teaches open enrollment, executive education and customized programs for many of our founding companies as well as other clients. Furthermore, he is a visiting professor at EGP Business School in Portugal. Martin’s area of expertise is in strategy, business market management and value based management. He has written several articles and book chapters on strategy, core competencies and environmental management. Martin received his doctoral degree in business administration from Universität zu Köln, Germany and has previously taught at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh.
Luis Huete
Prof. Huete is a visiting professor at ESMT in addition to being a professor at IESE's department of production, technology and operations management. His areas of specialization include clienting strategies, change management, customer loyalty, service quality, leadership and employee commitment. He regularly lectures at Harvard Business School but has also taught at INSEAD (Paris), Thunderbird (Genève), ISEM Fashion Business School (Madrid) and the Instituto Internacional San Telmo (Seville). In the last 25 years Prof. Huete has advised more than 400 companies and written nine successful books. The latest, Construye tu sueño, proposes strategies for promoting professional and personal progress.
Olaf Plötner
Full biography
Dr. Plötner is Managing Director of ESMT Customized Solutions. In addition, Dr. Plötner is a guest lecturer in accounting at the Free University Berlin. He brings with him experience as a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group, Director at Siemens AG and, most recently, the Managing Director of IMT Berlin Project. His publications focus on customer relationship management, business management, as well as communication and marketing strategy.
