More Science & Less Art

Sales leaders are increasingly leveraging technology, analytics, and big data to add more science to marketing and sales. This trend is creating a set of new opportunities for B2B companies, leading to a fundamental shift in the sales and marketing operating model. Leaders of the pack are already capturing these opportunities by making tactical, measured interventions to transform their sales and marketing functions. This presentation will cover:

• 10 ways technology will redefine sales and marketing capabilities and implications for critical sales roles;
• select case studies on how leading sales organizations have captured value through technology, analytics, and big data;
• what winners do to capture these opportunities.

Speakers:
Anna Koivuniemi, Associate Partner, McKinsey & Company
Ted Callahan, Associate Principal, McKinsey & Company

Time: 9:50 – 10:20

Location: Flourish Suite

"Did Bob really just sell something!" Experiences in Trying to Change a Sales Culture.

In this session, David Partington, Head of Retail at Gallagher Heath, will share the strategies he leveraged in his organization at multiple levels to improve his team's ability to achieve more consistent and successful sales results.

In this session, learn – and then leverage – these best practices:

• Implement a consistent sales process for all sales reps and sales managers.
• Manage performance of the sales team using leading indicators that track to and maximize sales success.
• Ensure sales leaders are engaged in supporting the implementation of a new sales process and driving behavioral change throughout the organization.
• Improve the skill set of sales reps and sales managers when they're with their clients.
• Identify a demonstrable return on investment as a result of sales process optimization.

Speakers:
David DiStefano, CEO, Richardson
David Partington, Head of Retail, Gallagher Heath

Time: 10:20 – 10:55

Location: Flourish Suite

The Future of Sales

Within the last year, many sales leaders have found that social media and new buyer behavior have completely disrupted the "traditional" sales process. Much of the buying cycle now happens before reps speak to a prospect. Your prospects are reading your blogs, downloading white papers, checking out your company on LinkedIn, or following you on Twitter. How prepared are your reps to have meaningful conversations by the time prospects connect with them? What tools help enable your sales team to win? Sales reps need on-demand access to materials so they can stay one step ahead of the customer.

This panel discussion will focus on the strategies you need to deploy now and the trends you need to monitor to ensure success in the future:

1. Enable sales reps to build relationships with prospects via a variety of channels
2. Communicate effectively with your sales team
3. Provide reps with content that empowers them to have relevant conversations with prospects
4. Understand key trends impacting sales force effectiveness

Moderator:
Gerhard Gschwandtner, Founder & CEO, Selling Power

Panelists:
Jonathan Farrington, Chairman, The JF Corporation and CEO, Top Sales Associates
Jacco van der Kooij, Sales Leader, Harmonic Inc.
Steve Gilroy, Chief Executive, Vistage International (UK) Ltd.
David Keene, Head, Enterprise Marketing, Google

Time: 11:25 – 12:05

Location: Flourish Suite

Marketing Insight: Your Road to Sales Enablement

For many years experts have been pitching the importance of alignment between sales and marketing departments, but very few companies have actually mastered it. It's the age-old challenge: sales thinks that marketing isn't producing enough qualified leads, and marketing thinks that salespeople don't know how to close a deal. What many sales organizations don't realize is that marketing can actually provide more value than that found in a list of leads. Marketing can provide insight into the customers' intent and where they may be in the buying cycle. Combined with social intelligence, this marketing insight can be extremely powerful and actually help drive more revenue and accelerate growth. Attend this session to learn how focusing on the right metrics and providing marketing insight to your salespeople can help drive results.

Speaker:
Stephanie Dart, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Time: 13:45 – 14:15

Location: Flourish Suite

From Connections to Closed Deals: How to Sell in the Social Era

Social networks and social media have irrevocably changed the buying process. Learn from the industry leader in online professional networks, LinkedIn, to see how this new social-selling era has given companies a competitive advantage. Andy Eustace, LinkedIn's Sales Solutions Leader, will share strategies and best practices for creating a scalable social-selling program. This session is a must for sales and marketing professionals and organizations focused on pipeline generation and sales effectiveness through the power of social.

Speaker:
Andy Eustace, Enterprise Account Executive, LinkedIn

Time: 14:15 – 14:40

Location: Flourish Suite

How to Successfully Adapt to Changes in Buyer Behavior: Real-World Insight from Global Procurement Directors

Recent shifts in buyer behavior have changed forever the way your salespeople must sell. Many sales teams complain of commoditization pressures, intense price focus, and unilateral demands for discounts. So how can you help your team thrive and grow revenue in this new and demanding environment?

In this session, three Fortune 500 procurement directors reveal all, sharing the tactics they use to squeeze extra discounts from vendors.

You will learn:

• The hard-core negotiating strategies used by procurement
• How to ensure your value is recognised – and paid for
• Easy to implement tactics that can be immediately applied in the field.

The insights from this panel discussion will help you your successfully adapts to today's challenging buyer.

Moderator:
Andrew Moorhouse, Principal Consultant, Blue Sky Performance Improvement

Panelists:
Martin Webb, Former Global Procurement Director at British Airways and CPO at Orange; currently representing Cisco and AXA
Steve Wills, Former Global Procurement Director at AXA. Head of Procurement strategy for London 2012 Olympic Games
Larry Beard, Global Procurement Director for Tate & Lyle; formerly CPO at Aer Lingus

Time: 15:00 – 15:40

Location: Flourish Suite

Making the Connection between the Buyer's Journey, Your Pipeline & Your Revenue Goals

The changing shape of the buyer's journey has introduced a raft of new issues for sales leaders who are trying to manage the pipeline and generate accurate revenue forecasts. The latest research suggests that the typical B2B buying-decision process is 57 percent complete before a salesperson is even engaged, and sales forecast accuracy on a deal-by-deal basis is on average no better than tossing a coin. Faced with these challenges, Bob Apollo will share insights on how sales and marketing organizations can work together to identify what an ideal customer and opportunity look like, engage earlier with the right prospects through effective content marketing, equip sales people to have compelling conversations that move the opportunity forward, and generate more accurate revenue forecasts. This presentation will help you to establish critical connections between both sales and marketing tactics, and your sales reps and your ideal prospects.

Speaker:
Bob Apollo, CEO, Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners

Time: 15:40 – 16:10

Location: Flourish Suite

The "Social Sales" Scorecard: Metrics for Sales & Marketing Success

In this session, Laura Nuhaan, Partner at The Andeta Group and author of The Sales-Balanced Score Card, will address what key performance indicators are relevant in today's social-sales environment. She will discuss the importance of sales and marketing alignment, the new skills that sales and marketing personnel need to be successful, and how changes in the customer's buying behavior have impacted the role of sales reps. She'll share the main activities that you should expect from your sales team, a framework to address the new sales environment, and examples of companies executing the sales roles successfully.

Speaker:
Laura Nuhaan, Partner, The Andeta Group

Time: 16:15 – 16:45

Location: Flourish Suite