Aligning Marketing with Sales - Still a Long Way to Go

Sales Leaders' Roundtable

November 8, 2006 , 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Michael Bier, a Director in Sales Performance International's Client Services Delivery consulting practice and GSB alum, will identify the primary dimensions and fundamental causes of continuing misalignment between Marketing and Sales functions at many companies, and will outline a practical, step-by-step and experience-based approach for dealing with the problem. Learn more.

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Where

Gleacher Center
Room 100
450 N. Cityfront Plaza
Chicago, Illinois

Driving Directions: View a map of the area, including parking facilities. The 201 East Illinois lot offers a special UC rate with validation. Get a validation coupon from the reception desk on the first floor of the Gleacher Center.

Who

Michael Bier, '81
Director
Sales Performance International

Program

6:30 PM - 7:00 PM: Registration and Networking
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM: Presentation
8:30 PM - Cash bar in the Midway Club

Registration

Register Online

Please register by November 8, 2006.

Other Information

Refreshments are not served, but you are welcome to stop by the 2nd floor canteen for your own refreshments for the meeting. We invite participants to gather in the Midway Club on the fifth floor after the meeting for networking, cash bar, and additional Q&A with our speakers.

Questions

Ken Nordine '97
312-546-4522

Event Details

Have you ever wondered why Marketing and Sales functions at many companies often seem so unfailingly out of synch with each other? Have you ever wanted to know how this value-destroying problem can be solved? Audience members will learn answers to 5 key questions about Marketing and Sales alignment problems:

• Why have Marketing and Sales 'wheels' perpetually been out of alignment?
• How can you avoid favoring and pulling to one side or another?
• How can you optimize a company's ability to steer in increasingly rough competitive markets?
• Which key linkages often need fixing to enable Marketing and Sales to work more smoothly together?
• How can you 'test drive' your alignment approach, to ensure everything works properly?

For example, Aberdeen Group recently observed that "this Marketing/Sales divide in B-to-B firms leads to a tremendous waste of marketing and sales effort and expenditures, inconsistent customer messaging, poor or delayed sales readiness, fewer sales calls as a result of protracted sales preparation time, and less effective selling dialogues. The bottom line: higher costs, lower revenues, and shrinking margins in an economy where these problems can put a firm out of business."

In fact, research indicates that 80% of leads generated by marketing departments are not acted on by sales personnel and that 70% - 80% of marketing materials go unused by sales organizations. Our speaker, Michael Bier (GSB MBA, 1981) will draw from both his recent consulting experience and a book to which he contributed published earlier this year, "The Solution-Centric Organization", by his SPI colleagues Keith Eades and Robert Kear (McGraw-Hill). Simplistic approaches to addressing the Marketing-Sales disconnect typically tackle only symptoms and fail to address its basic causes. He will define the fundamental origins and true nature of the continuing and disturbingly common disconnect between Marketing and Sales. Michael will then outline a rational step-by-step approach that has succeeded in addressing Marketing-Sales alignment in even complex global high technology companies, and that has enabled significant sales increases at companies that were growing slowly even as competitors outpaced them.

Speaker Profiles

Michael Bier, '81
Director, Sales Performance International

Michael's responsibilities at SPI include selling, structuring and leading complex marketing and sales consulting assignments for large companies that are seeking to improve their 'revenue engine' performance -- their ability to market and sell products and solutions that meet the ever-changing needs of their customers in increasingly harsh competitive environments. Michael specializes in improving the alignment of marketing and sales functions, to ensure a tighter and more effective focus on the priority problems that a company's most important customers face. He has recently worked with marketing and sales functions at several of the world's largest global high tech companies in the software and hardware sectors, as well as with leading US and global companies in financial services, consumer products and business services industries.

Prior to joining SPI, Michael ran his own consulting practice, where he served clients defining and implementing strategic changes in a multitude of industry sectors, including professional services, building supplies, and telecom equipment manufacturing. His post-UoC consulting career started over 20 years earlier, addressing market strategy and organizational change issues at Management Analysis Center / The MAC Group, the strategy predecessor of Gemini Consulting / Cap Gemini. He subsequently enjoyed a 16-year career in strategic change consulting at Coopers & Lybrand and later PricewaterhouseCoopers, working for large and small clients in the USA, Europe, Latin America and Asia.

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