The biggest challenge to growing a successful entrepreneurial venture is selling. Entrepreneurs must build a strong sales pipeline to ensure profitable growth as they tackle other pressing issues like staffing, infrastructure, and financing. Chicago Booth Professor Craig Wortmann returns to the Sales Leaders' Roundtable for a followup on last year's presentation on "Building the Sales Engine". Key issues are how to acquire customers, target sales through different channels, manage the sales function, and use the key tools required for success in selling.
Driving Directions:
http://www.chicagobooth.edu/visit/gleacher/
There is validated parking for $5.00 at the NBC lot and $6.00 at the AMC garage. Please validate your ticket in the right machine at the front desk at Gleacher.
Event Details
Entrepreneurial Selling is a distinct form of business development that entrepreneurs, corporations and foundations alike are embracing. In this keynote speech, Craig explores what makes “entrepreneurial selling” different from “professional selling” and how our behaviors must change to drive performance. Based on his Chicago Booth course (rated Top Ten in the country by Inc. Magazine), this talk looks at the combination of knowledge, skills and discipline required to make an impact in a market that is fragmented and noisy. Great entrepreneurial stories combined with immediately actionable frameworks underlie this powerful talk.
Learning objectives:
• Understand the key phases of the selling process
• Use the sales toolkit to construct a sales strategy for a set of clients and channels
• Identify the most common failure points in an entrepreneurial sales process
• Put to use a set of sales skills that will serve you in any career context
Speaker Profiles
Craig Wortmann (Speaker)
Clinical Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
http://chicagobooth.edu
Craig Wortmann brings his 20 years of experience in sales and marketing strategy to the classroom through his Entrepreneurial Selling course. Currently he serves as the CEO of Experience, a firm that helps companies build their sales and marketing engine. Prior to founding Experience, Wortmann conducted a turnaround of an interactive marketing agency and sold it successfully in a six-month timeframe. Wortmann also served for nine years as the CEO of WisdomTools an e-learning software and consulting firm. While at WisdomTools his clients ranged from McDonalds to the New York Stock Exchange to Walgreens and beyond.
Furthermore, Wortmann’s background includes strategic sales and marketing experience at IBM, a Dean Witter company, and The Forum Corporation, a leading global training consultancy.
Outside of the classroom and the office, Wortmann is both a writer and a professional speaker. He authored a book about using stories as performance tools which is titled What's Your Story?, and speaks on the subjects of leadership, selling and entrepreneurship. He also collaborates with his wife and two kids on building the future.
Wortmann earned his MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
Questions
Ken Nordine, Jr., '97
312.546.4522
Other Information
The mission of the Chicago Booth Sales Leaders' Roundtable is to help both Chicago alumni and a broader community of sales professionals learn more, meet other colleagues and resolve sales issues. Our vision is to be the first choice for learning and sharing new sales leadership ideas. Visit the Chicago Booth alumni website for more information about the Sales Leaders' Roundtable, to view upcoming events and to subscribe to our email list.