Top MBA Recruiters: Finding A Role With PepsiCo
PepsiCo is one of the most well-known companies in the world. Known as a top manufacturer, marketer, and distributor of soft drinks and snack foods, the company also serves as a top recruiter of MBA talent in the United States. Continue reading…
MIT Sloan Executive Startup on How To Sell Themselves
Brian Eastwood from the MIT Sloan School of Management recently discussed how TechEmergence founder Dan Faggella metabolized important lessons contained within the Negotiation for Executives program to sell his first startup, the e-commerce platform, The Science of Skill.
MBA Job Recruiters: General Motors
General Motors—the Detroit automotive monolith, whose Cadillac and Chevrolet brands are American icons unto themselves—turns 110 next year. 10 years into its second century, GM is poised to shake things up in the boardroom and out on the road due in no small part to growing concerns about self-driving cars.
Top MBA Recruiters: Microsoft
Past, present and future business school students lured by the siren song of the tech industry should look no further than Microsoft, the $407 billion semi-benevolent techno giant that employs nearly 100,000 from its Redmond, Washington headquarters.
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Where Are All The Salespeople Going? HBS Examines
The rise of e-commerce and precipice decline in the overall number of person-to-person sales didn’t require the insight of an ardent futurist.
With the monumental ascent of companies like Amazon and Alibaba, consumers steering away from the help of sales people was, perhaps, obvious. But the reality of why wasn’t simply because of modern convenience, finds Harvard Business Review.
The publication cites a 2015 report from research firm Forrester, which argued that by 2020 nearly “one million” people could lose their sales jobs. The damning figure is in direct contrast to the rise of what Harvard calls “social selling.” The term simply refers to salespeople utilizing specialized content and digital communication as a major part of their sales approach, which has helped build significantly stronger sales data, but comes with the cost of losing traditional sales techniques. Which would eliminate future jobs in the field.
“Social selling makes sense for achieving quota and revenue objectives for multiple reasons,” write authors Laurence Minsky and Keith A. Quesenberry. “First, three out of four B2B buyers rely on social media to engage with peers about buying decisions. In a recent B2B buyers survey, 53 percent of the respondents reported that social media plays a role in assessing tools and technologies, and when making a final selection.”
“In addition, more than three-quarters (82 percent) of the B2B buyers said the winning vendor’s social content had a significant impact on their buying decision,” they continue. “A LinkedIn survey found that B2B buyers are five times more likely to engage with a sales rep who provides new insights about their business or industry. Another survey showed that 72 percent of the B2B salespeople who use social media report that they outperformed their sales peers, and more than half of them indicated they closed deals as a direct result of social media.”
The success, ultimately, may be predicated on bringing forms of traditional sales techniques, social selling and the utilization of progressive communication tools.
“What’s more, sales and marketing can collaborate on information to ensure that their efforts are aligned and to identify common goals and metrics that both teams can support. Since sales pride themselves on their one-on-one relationships with customers, they can discuss with marketing customer successes and concerns, changing customer needs, customer questions and industry updates.”
Read the entire HBS report here.
MBA Startup: Salesforce IQ, Steve Loughlin & Adam Evans (Stanford GSB)
Can you imagine being offered $390 million dollars for anything?
While most of us will never know what that type of success feels like, Steve Loughlin and Adam Evans, are part of the minority who do. These two Stanford Graduate School of Business alumni started RelateIQ, a data-driven company that produced an intelligent email client, calendar, and work dashboard that automatically determined which salesperson at your company had the best relationship with a customer, among other things.
The Palo Alto-based company was acquired by Salesforce, a larger company many saw as a competitor of RelateIQ, for nearly $400 million dollars in 2014. Continue reading…
