Executive Education at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business | Executive Program in Strategic Sales Management

Program Objectives
Who Should Attend
Program Outline
Faculty

During the seminar, you will learn to:

Understand how your success is linked to fully integrating your sales structural design to the strategic direction of the firm.
Anticipate and respond to turbulent business environments. Understand why the sales force is the firm's primary means to adjust to rapidly changing environments.
Apply strategic techniques to company-wide problems and derive implications for sales force design and account management policies.
Acquire analytical tools that will help you plan market segmentation and account management policies and procedures.
Understand how to identify and focus sales resources on high potential customers.
Receive a framework for recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of current forecasting techniques and obtain systematic procedures for improving them.
Acquire an awareness of the key variables to include in the goal setting process.
Identify the types of sales incentives and compensation systems that can be used to link the sales organization to the strategy of the firm.
Understand how measuring strategy-linked sales processes and outcomes will produce greater sales productivity.
Learn techniques for identifying, hiring, and retaining the best salespeople.

Who Should Attend

This course is designed for those responsible for planning, analysis, control, and direction of the sales organization. Representative titles include vice president or director of sales, vice president or director of sales and marketing, national sales manager, and seasoned regional sales managers. This course is equally applicable for those managing sales processes for products or services.

For those recently appointed to sales management positions or those who have less than five years’ of sales management experience, the Fundamentals of Effective Sales Management program is recommended.

Executive Program in Strategic Sales Management Topics Outline

Strategy and the Firm: Tools for Strategy

Learn approaches to strategy that are compatible with sales management
Identify and integrate strategic activities of the firm with the sales force
Engage in case applications of these techniques

Market Segmentation and Account Management

Tools for account management
Case discussion

Sales Forecasting: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches

Subjective vs. objective techniques demonstrated
Problems and limitations of each technique
Scenario planning exercise
Review of hybrid approaches

Linking Your Firm's Strategy to Sales Force Structure

Linking sales structure design to the firm's strategy
Alternative types of sales organizations
Independent vs. captive sales force
Integrating team and specialist selling with generalists

Strategic Sales Force Size and Deployment

Determining sales force size
Matching sales deployment to market potential and management expectations
Using computer-aided optimization models and mapping applications for territory design

Managing and Measuring the Sales Organization

How to measure sales processes and outcomes
Developing sales measurement data
Computer-aided sales tracking and measurement systems

Optimization of Compensation Systems and Goal Setting

How to identify the types of sales incentive compensation programs
Linking the sales organization to corporate strategy through sales incentive compensation
How to assess, design, and develop sales incentive compensation programs
Using computer simulations to identify alternative sales incentive compensation program costs and salesperson's income levels

Recruitment and Selection

Building profiles for the most effective sales people
Reducing sales force turnover
Reducing management time required to supervise salespeople

Professional Training

Designing programs to address needed competencies
Making salespeople feel useful, important, worthwhile
Developing a consistent, efficient way to teach knowledge and skills necessary for success in your market
Increasing sales force productivity
Continuous improvement in the quality of your salespeople

Executive Program in Strategic Sales Management Program Faculty

Jonathan Frenzen

Professor Frenzen earned multiple degrees from the University of Chicago in a range of subjects from cultural anthropology to marketing before receiving his doctorate from Chicago in 1988. He and his consulting teams have worked with many dozens of Fortune 500 companies on a variety of subjects including marketing strategy, new product development, and sales force management. His research activities focus on business-to-business marketing, sales management, and product development.
Complete biography

William J. Young

Mr. Young is a graduate of the University of Chicago's Executive MBA Program, 1978. He is currently teaching in the Executive Education programs and instructed in the Laboratory in New Product Development and Strategy as well as in the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He has instructed in Executive Education since the program's inception in 1997.
Complete biography