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| Home » Events » Past Events » 2009 PODi AppForum » Sales & Business Strategies Track |
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Sales & Business Strategies Track
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| Session Descriptions* for the Sales & Business Strategies Track |
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| This track is intended for business owners, top-level managers and salespeople who are charged with strategic planning, sales and marketing. Sessions and discussions will focus on successful digital printing business practices. |
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CEOs, Business Owners, Presidents, General Managers, EVPs, VPs, Salespeople of print service providers or anyone involved with the business aspects of digital print. |
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Making the Move to Solution Sales  |
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Tues, 11:15 - 12:00 pm |
One of the largest investments any organization makes as they become a marketing solutions provider is in their sales force. The success of this investment is critical to the success of the business. Luckily, if you’re considering adding solutions to your services you can benefit from our combined knowledge – there’s no need for your organization to make mistakes.
Kate, a leading S3 sales trainer, will begin this session by identifying the top five Best Practices and the top five mistakes for creating and managing a solution sales force. Jim will share his experiences, both good and bad, with transforming sales forces at three different companies. Then the audience will be asked to contribute their experiences as well. The end result will be a highly participatory session that captures the hard-earned knowledge of all the session attendees.
Key Takeaways
- Assessment tools for making the right hire. How do you ensure that the person you’re hiring is right for solution sales? What is the right profile?
- Techniques for early evaluation. Keeping poor performers is a sure-fire way to increase your costs
- Sales compensation plans that work. Incenting the right behavior is critical to success
- Learn how to manage the sales pipeline
- Ongoing training – find out what tools are available to keep your sales force up to speed
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| How to Think Like a Marketing Strategist |
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Tues, 1:00 - 2:00 pm |
As a marketing services provider, you have to be able to engage in meaningful conversations with marketing executives to win a sale. You must bring real value to the conversation. You need to present solutions that will lead to better results for your client. In short you need to become an effective marketing strategist or champion. Or you better have one on your team.
Tim and Martin will explain how successful marketing strategists catch the attention of marketing executives, conduct relevant conversations that win new business and construct the latest direct marketing solutions that are making a difference. You’ll get a deeper understanding of what it means to be a champion and practical tips for becoming a great one.
Key Takeaways
- You’ll understand the top three issues that keep marketing executives up at night
- You’ll be able to articulate why integrated direct marketing solutions are one of the most effective marketing techniques available today
- Learn the pros and cons of the leading media choices
- Understand the role of the strategist or champion versus the sales rep
- Find out which of the latest marketing solutions are winning new business
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| Can You Get More Business by Being Green |
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Tues, 2:00 - 3:00 pm |
Gaining a competitive advantage is difficult as the competitive landscape is always shifting. Today’s advantage can become the price of doing business tomorrow as market requirements ratchet up. This is certainly the case with the “green” movement.
Companies around the world are quickly putting in place policies and procedures that describe how they are “green”. Many of these companies are evaluating their entire supply chain and this includes all printed products. So what is your response when a supplier asks you about how “green” you are? Are you ready?
Mike Kyle, Eco Director of Pace Litho, will give you some ammunition to help you formulate or augment your “green” strategy. Mike’s role at Pace is to help continue Pace’s green efforts and educate the client base about the power and “greenness” of digital printing. In this session Mike will:
- Describe and sort out the truth about current buzz words and certifications
- Provide the most important environmental pros and cons of digital vs. offset printing
- Tell you about key practices that truly make a difference
- Provide practical tips on how to market your company’s green strategy to increase business
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Productize Your Offerings
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Wed, 10:15 - 11:15 am |
As Hansaprint, the leading digital printer and magazine printer in Scandinavia, began to sell more solutions two issues arose. First, it’s difficult to train sales staff to sell every possible type of solution. Second, it was getting increasingly difficult to deliver and maintain customer specific solutions. To solve this problem, Juha led an effort to productize Hansaprint’s offerings. If you are experiencing these same challenges, you’ll find help in his case study and in the research produced in the process.
IWCO, one of the largest high volume direct mailing operations in the US, has been investing in solutions for highly targeted and personalized retention mailings that cross or up-sell existing customers. Debora will explain how they have productized their automated marketing platform (AMP), which can deliver a wide variety of solutions.
This session will help you understand how to use productization to streamline your sales and build efficiencies into your operations.
Key Takeaways
- A concise explanation of productizing a service: What does it mean to "productize a solution"? How can you offer both a solution and a product? How much of each sale is repeatable and how much is custom?
- A roadmap for how to productize even complex solutions for hard-to-reach target groups
- Learn how productizing benefits your sales and operations
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| How to Become a Marketing Services Provider |
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Wed, 11:30 - 12:30 pm |
Mark Anderson will chronicle his ongoing transition from lettershop to marketing services provider. He recognized the new growth opportunity that exists for printers who are willing to leverage the power of digital printing and become marketing services providers.
Mark Anderson started by merging his lettershop with an offset printer who wanted to move into variable data printing. He led the effort to transition the sales staff to solutions selling and brought creative in-house. He has since gone on to start his own direct marketing agency.
Mark Parent has over 20 years of experience in the graphic arts industry, including 15 years in advertising agency commercial graphics and print production. He has spent the last 6 years in research on digital technology and new methods of improving sales and marketing ROI. SugarBush Media Solutions is an innovative marketing communications solutions provider that addresses clients' core communications challenges and goals.
Key Takeaways
- Gain the insight you need to decide this transition is right for you. Is it time to abandon the old ways of doing business?
- Understand the skill sets required to make the transition. What resources and knowledge do you need to make your first solution sale?
- Learn what investments in time and capital are required. What’s needed for sales, branding and delivery? How long will it take? Are partners needed?
- And finally - is it worth it? Is the new business profitable? Is it fun?
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Improving Sales with CRM T
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Wed, 1:30 - 2:30 pm |
How you manage your solution sales process is critical to your success. Technology can either restrict the process or enhance the flow. In this session, two print industry veterans will explain their approaches to enhancing sales with CRM technology.
Steve will share insights into increasing the productivity of your sales force by automating portions of the sales process. By automatically monitoring prospects’ activity as they move through the process, double digit productivity improvements are common.
Mark will demonstrate how you can use web-based CRM to deliver a highly scalable platform for growth for yourself and deliver immediate cost reductions and ROI. He will explain his own implementation of Salesforce.com into his print business, and provide a step-by-step road map to implementing web-based CRM into YOUR business.
Key Takeaways
- A map of the S3 sales process and automation opportunities
- Methods to identify which prospects are ready for a sales call
- How to have a first class CRM system with no IT infrastructure and no IT staff
- How to manage the S3 process in Salesforce
- How to manage customer service in Salesforce
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| Sales and Business Strategies: Taking the Next Steps |
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You've listened to a lot of sessions about strategies. Now it's time to get yours down on paper and into action. In this interactive session, you'll work through a booklet that will help you turn your business strategy into a business plan that you can consult in your day-to-day decision-making. Step by step, consultant and track chair Kate Dunn will take you through the process. You'll walk out of this session with a tool to turn your strategy into reality.
* Note: Speakers & Session descriptions are subject to change
T Sessions identified with this icon contain content focused on Technology
Sessions identified with this icon will be based on audience participation |
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