Advanced Marketing Strategy

Introduction

Too often in business, ‘Marketing’, is just an impressive title for sales, or else it is just the creation of fancy advertising. Yet in truth, marketing is a sophisticated and powerful methodology for conducting and growing a business. Consider this - How are Prada able to sell handbags to women for many hundreds of dollars when any visit to the market will get a bag for carrying your possession for only a few dollars (indeed, most supermarkets will give you a plastic bag for free!). How are Ferrari able to command prices of hundreds of thousands of dollars for their cars when a few hundred dollars will buy a car that will successfully take you from ‘A’ to ‘B’? The answer? Marketing.

The discipline of marketing will enable you to build powerful brands that command a place within the psyche of your customers. Executed well, marketing can have a profound effect on your bottom line and can enable your organization to grow exponentially, even in very difficult trading conditions. Done poorly, marketing will waste a lot of money and frustrate your salespeople and your executive team. The purpose of this workshop is to enable you to systematically adopt, employ, and execute proven marketing strategies that will help you to build enduring and powerful brands. It will provide an overview of the marketing process with a suite of tools, models, and theories and will then move on to the practical application and execution of the tools & techniques required for a winning marketing strategy.

Objectives

Participants who attend this program will learn skills to enable them to recruit, retain, manage, control, and motivate high-performing sales teams to achieve tangible bottom-line success.

Participants attending this program will:

• Learn techniques for optimal interviewing and recruitment of high performers
• Learn how to build, manage & develop high performing sales teams
• Understand and practice dealing with, Personal Motivational Styles to drive optimal performance and staff retention
• Develop effective communications strategies for optimal performance
• Learn how to design & implement an effective Performance Management system that produces results
• Develop cost management strategies to ensure financial goals are met
• Gap Analysis – effective tools & approaches for managing competencies and performance on the job
• Fully understand the Marketing Model
• Understand and be able to manipulate, adjust and manage each aspect of the marketing mix
• Understand how to do a Strategic Market Audit
• Understanding Strategic Product Positioning
• Understand Market Segmentation
• Understanding Branding for Growth
• Understand Value Creation, delivery & Capture
• Learn how to manage Brands and Product Portfolios
• Understand and deploy a marketing tactical mix
• Managers will learn how to channel their skills and motivation into improving the sales team’s performance across all aspects of the business.
• Sales forces are often a very expensive asset for an organization, this workshop will help delegates to get the maximum return of the investment that a sales force represents, and will enable the Sales Manager to be a coach, confidant, and manager, even when separated from the sales team by great physical distances. Managers will be equipped to make a significant contribution to top and bottom-line improvements by effective recruitment, retention, and stewardship of their sales teams.
• Marketing is a critical component of business success. It builds brands that highlight the company’s profile and drives profits. It protects against creeping commoditization by establishing a value that is beyond price. Good marketing can help guarantee a company’s success and wellbeing, bad marketing can drive you out of business.
• Participants will leave the program with new insights into their preferred leadership and management styles, as well as the personal motivation drivers of their sales teams.
• Participants will also learn and experience coaching techniques which will enable them to become much more effective leaders. The psychology of human interactions is also covered here, which will enable the participants to practice and develop their new skills in their daily, non-professional lives as well as whilst at work. They will also have refined their ability to influence senior management peers and subordinates.
• Participants will learn valuable business skills and techniques and tricks to help them understand their markets and their customers better. This will help them to rapidly climb through the ranks in their own organization as they are seen to have a deep and profound knowledge of customer Behaviour and the way to both create and capture value in the market.

Training Methodology

This is an interactive course. There will be open question and answer sessions, regular group exercises and activities, videos, case studies, and presentations on best practice. Participants will have the opportunity to share with the facilitator and other participants on what works well and not so well for them, as well as work on issues from their own organizations. The online course is conducted online using MS-Teams/ClickMeeting.

Who Should Attend?

• Anyone who is responsible for the supervision, management, or coaching of salespeople, or those on the ‘Fast-track’ to management.
• Experienced Sales Professionals who want to learn new and exciting techniques for driving results forward, even in teams that ‘have seen it all’.
• Individuals who have some experience at the supervisor/manager level and are ready to take more management responsibilities.
• Individuals who are being groomed to make the transition from supervision to either a manager or leader of change.
• Individuals who need a deeper understanding of what drives individual behavior and group dynamics.
• Individuals who need to hone their coaching skills to produce results.
• Sales Leaders who are looking to improve their managerial knowledge and skills, and have been called to lead a change initiative.
• Individuals who are already Marketing Professionals who would like to formalize their thinking and strategies along proven, strategic lines.
• Those who are new to the marketing function or moving across from other disciplines within the company, as well as people with some sales experience but who have had no formal marketing training.
• Individuals who would like to improve and change the way they address and make offerings to their markets.
• Those looking for greater returns on their current investments.
• Business Professionals who need to break out of the ‘Commodity Trap’ and give a positive differentiation to their company, services, products and offerings.
• Leaders who are looking to improve their marketing knowledge and skills.

Course Outline

Day 1: Building & Managing Sales teams

• Attracting, Recruiting & Retaining the Best Sales Team
  • Interviewing Skills
  • Appraisal Skills
• Ensuring we have the correct job requirements in place
• Effective Succession Planning
• Effective coaching techniques for Managers
• Incentive Management
• Define the terms “leader”, “manager”, “Coach” and “Mentor”

Day 2: Managing the Sales Team

• Motivation Strategies
• How to build a strong sales culture
• Implementing effective educational strategies
• Motivating techniques
• Thinking ‘out-of-the-box’
• The four stages of team development
• Managing different personality types
• Build capacity in your people
• Understand the forces that oppose personal change
• Situational Leadership

Day 3: Performance Management

• Adopting correct Key Performance Indicators
• Using technology to get a competitive advantage
• Maximizing Salesforce Return on Investment
• Designing & adopting Competencies
• Competency Management
• Coaching underperformance
• The disciplinary process
• Problem Solving & Decision-Making
• How to implement Performance Improvement

Marketing

• Marketing Overview
• The Power of Marketing – Learning from the Best (and the worst) – Case Studies of Marketing campaigns acknowledged as Best-in-Class and some disasters!
• Trade-offs and compromises - Understanding the issues raised by the Marketing Model
• Marketing as THE Prime differentiator
• Marketing Planning
  • What REALLY should be there, what can we leave out?
  • The Marketing Plan, Art-form, or Working Document?

Day 4: The Strategic Market Audit

• Market Research
  • Types of Research
  • Role in Decision-Making
  • Doing your own Market Research
  • Why you need Market Research
• Understanding the Strategic Audit
• Tools & techniques
• Analytical models
  • PESTLE
  • Directional Policy Matrix
  • Porter’s 5 forces
  • Market Mapping
• Case Study

The Tactical Mix & Action Planning

• Learn how to create and carry out a Tactical audit
  • Customer satisfaction surveys
  • Tracking Promotional spend effectiveness
• The Product
• Life Cycle Management
• Commodity Products
• Added Value products
• The Place
• Supply Channels
• Channel Management
• Logistics & Supply Chain Management
• The Marketing/Sales interface
• Purpose
• Campaign planning
• Selecting & briefing an agency
• 4 Pricing Methods
• Competitive pricing strategies
• Open book pricing
• Pricing self-assessment
• The Promotions
• The Price
• A Marketing Health Check

Day 5: Strategic Positioning

• Learn how to do Visioning & Objective setting
• Learn how to develop Growth Strategies
  • How will we grow?
  • How will we compete
  • What will drive us?
  • Who will we serve
• Branding
• Brand Positioning
• Valuing the brand
• The overall Brand architecture
• Analyze the Competitive Environment & Position Your Firm
• Learn how to segment markets properly
• Learn how to develop a compelling value proposition for your brand
• Learn how to conduct Relationship Management
• Learn how to execute Brand Management Strategies
• Learn how to ensure all aspects of the Marketing mix are functionally aligned
• Learn how to manage a portfolio of products for optimal profit
• Delivering the Value