Gartner Sales & Marketing Conference 2018 October 9 - 11 / Las Vegas, NV

Customers see less and less value in outreach from suppliers or interactions with sales reps, putting downward pressure on access and influence. The good news: the most progressive commercial teams have found a different model for engaging customers in a way that customers not only value, but reward with higher deal quality. This session will explore what is wrong with the status quo, share insights into B2B customer buying behaviors, and introduce a powerful way to engage today's reluctant customers.

Today's complex sales environment has profoundly affected what it takes to be a high-performing seller. As sales leaders expect more from their frontline managers, sales managers are struggling to keep up with the development needs of their teams. Join this session to learn strategies for improving sales manager effectiveness in developing and coaching frontline sellers.

Only 28% of sales leaders report that their account managers regularly meet their growth targets, despite a significantly expanded portfolio. Join us to learn why traditional account management practices such as delivering higher customer satisfaction and superior service are becoming obsolete. Note: Part 2 of this topic is titled Rethink Your Account Teams for Retention & Growth

Many executives are turning to design thinking as a promising method for developing disruptive strategies for customer experience innovation. Join this session to learn best practices for applying this method to the creation of commercial strategies that create competitive advantage. Key areas covered include • How to unlock critical insights • How to apply design thinking without hiring designers •How to use design thinking to improve differentiation, enablement and sales strategies.

Buyers use supplier websites and sales reps equally at every stage in the buying journey, but they find neither particularly helpful. Join this interactive discussion with vAuto's head of marketing to learn how to source and convert top reps' selling tools into digital, self-serve formats that guide buyers' independent learning and progress through key buying tasks.

While audiences may struggle to remember messages, stories are sticky. .In this workshop attendees work together to develop compelling stories using a standard approach (situation-impact-resolution). We will explore how to bring your customers into your stories, and tailor stories for different roles and different stages of the buying process.

Content marketing continues to be a critical capability enabling B2B suppliers to better engage with buyers. Marketers seek to improve their efficiency and effectiveness by using tools that deliver insights, streamline content planning and creation, and enable multichannel delivery. In this session, you'll learn: • Dynamics shaping the content marketing vendor landscape • The results of Gartner's inaugural Magic Quadrant for Content Marketing Platforms • How to think about content marketing platform selection.

Despite large investments in SFA technology, sales organizations are often disappointed with program results. Join us to learn more about governance techniques that improve usage of sales force automation applications, including how to increase adoption and better manage SFA program ownership.

Top sellers generate almost four times as much revenue as core talent. Even a modest improvement in sourcing high-quality sales talent can lead to millions of dollars in top-line revenue growth. Join this facilitated discussion with expert panelists to learn strategies for identifying talent pools, selecting recruiting channels and attracting high-potential talent.

Supplier websites play a crucial role in B2B buying — not just early, but all the way to the very end of a typical purchase journey. Join us for an interactive session focused on identifying specific changes to your website that will support customers' specific buying tasks from beginning to end.

Are your account team members clear about their role in owning and managing the activities that drive account retention and growth? Join us for a discussion on the role of customer improvement in driving account growth and work on an interactive exercise to determine how best to structure your account teams. Note: Part 1 of this topic is titled Unlocking Growth in Existing Accounts

Design Thinking has caught many leaders' attention - but few know how to use it. This workshop will provide pragmatic, hands-on experience on putting design thinking to work to unlock insights into positioning your offering for competitive advantage. Key issues covered include: What is design thinking and why all of the hype? How to apply design thinking for customer empathy and How to apply design thinking to impact specific aspects of positioning.

In today's crowded environment, sellers struggle to get customers' attention. Learn how leading organizations are supporting prospecting efforts with better tools, training and sales process.

With only 28% of sales leaders reporting that their account management channels regularly meet cross-sale and growth targets, commercial leaders are examining how Marketing can better contribute to account growth. Join us to learn how marketing leaders can build powerful account-based marketing strategies and align the commercial organization accordingly.

In a world where customer expectations and competitive pressures are steadily escalating, commercial leaders must feel confident that they have the changes that will truly distinguish the customer experience. Join us to learn how to realign your customer experience agenda to ensure that while you're working to fix customer pain points, you don't miss critical opportunities to transform and reshape entire customer journeys.

Keeping a behavioral transformation alive in a sales organization requires continued effort and creativity. Join us for a panel of leading companies who have implemented sustainable programs to deepen and expand sales transformation concepts (like Challenger) in their organizations. This includes extending the learning journey in creative ways, conducting account application sessions, and providing concept awareness to support roles who collaborate with the commercial function.

Studies show that we are wired to remember stories much more than data, facts and figures. Stories galvanize. They fuel stakeholder buy-in by painting a clear picture of what is and what could be for everyone - from employees, to investors, to customers. Further, when the stakeholder becomes part of the story, they are more likely to act. Story is equally important for leaders, whose signature stories – both business and personal - impact recruiting, retention, and growth of the company. Critically, your stories are written by your actions, not your words. In this talk, Dr. Aaker will demonstrate how leaders use signature stories to build high performing teams and companies.

Sales performance management (SPM) solutions automate and optimize the execution of variable sales incentive programs and enable the business to be more efficient and effective. This session will explore: • Why you should evaluate these solutions to drive performance • The benefits achieved when SPM solutions are implemented • How to examine SPM product capabilities to differentiate vendors

Customers value — and reward — suppliers that meaningfully help them on the buying journey. Unfortunately, the vast majority of "content" and sales collateral not only fail to provide the help customers want, but worsen the buying journey by adding more noise. This session will explore a process commercial teams can use to create compelling customer enablement materials, as well as company examples and the tools the best sales and marketing teams are creating today for customers.

More info coming soon!

Sales force automation (SFA) applications are essential to B2B sales execution because they automate sales activities, processes and administrative responsibilities for sales professionals. This Magic Quadrant session will examine: • How the market for SFA changed in 2018 • How Gartner defines and segments the providers in the market

Small businesses make up a large percentage of the overall B2B market, yet behave very differently from most B2B buyers, making them an attractive but elusive target. This "Nine Norms" insights framework provides a comprehensive behavior profile of the small business owner, allowing you to market more effectively. Come to the workshop prepared with a product or service in mind that your organization markets to small business customers (0-99 FTE businesses, or businesses of under $10M gross annual revenue). You’ll work to align your company’s current approach against the Nine Norms framework to identify which norms your current positioning appeals to most, and which norms present new opportunities to strengthen your marketing message.

CMOs direct 9% of their marketing budget to data and analytics activities. For their investment, marketing executives expect greater operational efficiency, data literacy and, most importantly, a number on a scorecard that demonstrates Marketing's value. Despite maturing capabilities and tools, proving ROI remains one of the most pressing challenges for B2B marketers. In this session, you'll learn: • The current state of marketing measurement • What data and tools you need to reach the next level of maturity • How to develop a measurement model that works for your organization.

B2B companies are increasingly relying on sales development reps (SDRs) to support their demand generation and prospecting efforts, but the success of these teams varies widely from company to company. In this session, you'll learn how to enable SDRs for success and why quality matters more than quantity.

In a world of empowered customers and increasingly complex purchase decisions, a seller must help customers think differently about their business, guide them through a complex purchase, and facilitate consensus among a diverse set of stakeholders. Join us to learn about the unique competencies demonstrated by high-performing sellers and account managers.

Diagnosing the health of channel partner relationships is critical to improving commercial performance, yet few commercial organizations have strategies in place for tackling underperforming indirect channel partners. This session will explore common reasons channel partners under perform and highlight ideas for building high-performing channel relationships.

Attendees work together to develop compelling stories using a standard approach (situation-impact-resolution). Messages are not memorable, stories are. We will explore how to bring your customers into your stories and tailor them for different roles and different stages of the buying process. This is a repeat of the workshop held on Tuesday.

More Info Coming Soon!

Everyone knows that timing is everything. But we don’t know much about timing itself. Our lives are a never-ending stream of “when” decisions: when to start a business, schedule a class, get serious about a person. Yet we make those decisions based on intuition and guesswork. Timing, it’s often assumed, is an art. In When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Pink shows that timing is really a science. Drawing on a rich trove of research from psychology, biology, and economics, Pink reveals how best to live, work, and succeed. Pink distills cutting-edge research and data on timing and synthesizes them into a fascinating, narrative packed session with irresistible stories and practical takeaways that give listeners compelling insights into how we can live richer, more engaged lives.

Customer analytics — to support measurement, personalization, retention, and loyalty — is a top priority for every marketer. Yet many struggle to extract value from their first-party data because it's scattered across systems, channels and devices. To solve this data dilemma, marketers look to an emerging technology: customer data platforms. In this session you'll learn: • Why you should pursue a unified customer record • What technologies can help achieve this goal • How to get started.

To move from seller enablement to buyer enablement, sellers need tools that allow them to help customers complete critical buying jobs. Join this session to learn the latest sales enablement technologies -- sales enablement platforms, sales training tools, and sales content tools -- and how these tools are being used in top organizations today.

Does your marketing content disrupt the buyer's purchase path — and lead them to you? Learn when in the buying journey customers are most open to disruption and how to build Challenger content that shifts their thinking in your favor.

With all of the attention and focus around ABM, a wide range of vendors have created solutions to help B2B companies plan, orchestrate channels, engage accounts and track success. The market is highly fragmented, confusing and fast-moving. This session will highlight the different categories of solutions, discuss the platform vs. best-of-breed approach and preview expected advancements and changes.

Few marketing organizations have adequately updated their structure, capabilities and operations to keep up with customers who use digital information channels at every stage of the purchase. Join us to learn how the most digitally proficient marketers are evolving their functions, how they focus their investments, and which channels they prioritize.

In today's consensus-driven sales environment, the choice of which customer stakeholders sellers choose to engage is among the most critical decision they make. Most sellers choose either the senior decision maker or an advocate - often bad choices. Learn how high-performing sellers identify and engage the right choices - mobilizers - stakeholders who are best positioned to drive change within the customer organization.

As commercial organizations evolve - particularly to adopt the concept of commercial insight - it's common to see either Marketing or Sales out front in the journey. Join us to learn from experienced professionals on the planning and collaboration necessary to align sales and marketing teams and forge a balanced commercial partnership.