Workshops

Pre-Conference Workshop: Sales and Marketing Are Two Peas in a Pod

Wednesday, April 18 ~ 1:00 - 3:00 p.m.

 

As a subset of marketing promotion, sales plays an important role in many organizations.  Yet, sometimes there is a disconnect between a company’s marketing efforts and sales efforts.  Often promotional planning addresses advertising and branding separately from the company’s personal interactions with customers in the field.  Salespeople often come from independent stock and get so focused on products and customers that they don’t take full advantage of the marketing tools available to them.  In this interactive session, we’ll discuss how selling and marketing can co-exist as an integrated effort with some simple twists of commonly used tools.

Scott Downey, Purdue University

Scott Downey teaches courses in selling and sales management in the Department of Agricultural Economics. He joined Purdue University on a full time basis in 2000 after spending 15 years in the financial services industry and eight years concurrently teaching undergraduate and graduate level marketing and finance courses, at Purdue and Indiana Wesleyan Universities.
Scott is also associate director for the Center for Food and Agricultural Business. He teaches in many of the Center’s programs and represents the Center at other events within industry. He is a frequent speaker and consultant for agribusiness industry sales teams on professional development topics like building value, branding in the field, field marketing, key account management, and leadership.

Scott received his Bachelor’s degree at Purdue University in 1985 in Restaurant, Hotel, and Institutional Management and his Master’s degree from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California in 1991. His dissertation work at Purdue University looked at relationship sales preferences of ruralpolitan buyers and was completed in 2007.

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Senior Management Workshop: How to Wrangle Market Share From Your Competitors

Thursday, April 19, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m.

 

How To Wrangle Market Share From Lazy Competitors. The world's top economists are predicting a dismal 1-2% average growth through 2015. So, the only way to grow your organization is to take market share away from your lazy competitors. Ross can show you how progressive companies are getting 15-25% growth; even when their available market is stagnant or declining.

The Take A Ways:

How to Legally "Spy" on Your Competitors: How do you get more share? You must capitalize on your competitors' weaknesses. Because the Internet and social media publish such vast public information and conversation, Ross will teach you how to legally "spy" on your competitors so you can see what they are doing right or wrong - see what kinds of innovations and best practices they are using that you may not be - and discover what they're customers are responding to. Also, Ross can coach you about your own Internet Reputation Management to make sure you keep the share you've already earned.

How to Keep the Culture From Destroying You: If you ignore cultural changes in technology and buying trends, the public consciousness has the power to destroy you, virtually overnight. "They" will gladly buy goods and services from your competitors. Ross will teach you how to spot new buying habit trends - trends that are hiding in plain sight - before it's too late.

Customer Urgency is Replacing "Service": Broadband connections and sophisticated e-commerce sites have conditioned your clients and customers to believe they can buy anything (and everything) they want "on demand." Urgency and Empathy are more important to them than what we used to consider "service." In fact, if you don't respond at Internet Speed, your customers and clients will consider you lazy, substandard, and undeserving of their business. Ross can coach you how to deliver more urgency and empathy in order to retain current customers...and attract new business.

User-Generated Leadership: It's Your Future: We've all heard that we should use "The Crowd" (crowd sourcing) to help us determine the next direction for our products and services. But which crowd? When do you ask? And, when is it a fatal error to listen to the Internet Herd? Ross will help you navigate this treacherous (yet potentially profitable) terrain - and cite inspiring case studies that will guide you into more profitability.

Contrarian Thinking WINS During a Recovery: While economic turmoil debilitates some companies, it unleashes creativity in others. Uber-savvy businesspeople know the "old school" ways are gone forever - so they have learned to embrace unconventional wisdom. You’ll hear inspiring ideas (and rationale) like, “Discounting is over" "Quality dictates the new economy” “Don’t follow predictions, follow the science” “Social networks can’t just be our chat room. They have to be our knowledge base.” Ross will unveil specific 'contrarian tactics' and show you how these outliers are trailblazing new channels for profiteering.

Ross Shafer

Ross Shafer grew up in the Pacific Northwest and graduated from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington where he studied business management and played varsity football (linebacker). After college, he took a job as a training manager for a department store (Yard Birds) and was able to save $10,000. He took that money and launched his life as an entrepreneur. His first venture was as the owner/manager of America’s only Stereo and Pet Shop in the small town of Puyallup, Washington (population 5,000 at the time).

Cleaning pet cages wasn’t as appealing as it sounded to Ross, so after 3 years he closed the store and took a job as an advertising manager for the 28 store Squire Shops retail clothing chain in Seattle, Washington. Writing ad copy and concocting campaigns paid the bills, but at night Ross haunted local comedy clubs in search of a career in joke telling. After years of slogging around the comedy circuit, he won the Seattle International Comedy Competition and immediately became an opening act for performers like Crystal Gayle, Eddie Rabbitt, Nel Carter, Neil Sedaka, and Dionne Warwick.

In l985, Ross pitched a TV show idea to the NBC affiliate in Seattle (KING). It was a risky idea to emulate a local Letterman-like comedy talk show. Regardless, ALMOST LIVE was born and for the next 5 seasons Ross hosted the show while he and his team collected 36 Emmys. They won the Esquire Magazine dubious Achievement Award one year for attempting to change the Washington State song to Louie, Louie. During those years Ross also hosted an afternoon drive radio show on the 50,000 watt KJR-AM.

In l988, Ross was wooed by the Fox network to take over The Late Show. The Late Show was a nightly talk show that competed with The Tonight Show and David Letterman. The show lasted a year and Ross next found himself in New York co-hosting Days End on the ABC network. It was here that he sat beside Matt Lauer and Spencer Christian as they interviewed the movers and shakers of New York and the world. Dick Clark told Ross, Always have a back up plan, my boy, TV is terminal and predictably Days End was cancelled. Ross always wondered what happened to Matt Lauer? Ha!

The next stop for Ross was hosting the revised Match Game on the ABC network. Love Me, Love Me Not followed and numerous TV pilot projects.

By this time, Ross was headlining all of the leading night clubs and casinos. He produced a highly acclaimed comedy album about the Clinton administration titled Inside The First Family. He also wrote a comedy cookbook that became a best seller; Cook Like A Stud - 38 recipes men can prepare in the garage with their own tools.

By l994, Ross heard Bill Gates give a speech where he said, Someday you will all be watching television on your telephones. Ross took that message to heart and he made the decision to leave TV and get back to his corporate training roots. Human nature and the human condition were always fascinating to him because that’s what comedians do. They study the laughter and tears business. To date Ross has produced (14) Human Resource training films on Customer Service, Motivation, Leadership, and Peer Pressure. He has authored the business books, Nobody Moved Your Cheese, Customer Empathy, The Customer Shouts Back, and his newly released Are You Relevant? 12 Reasons Smart Organizations Thrive in Any Economy.

Today, Ross is one of the most sought after Keynote speakers and seminar leaders on the subjects of Customer Empathy, Personal Motivation, and Business Relevance. The father of two grown sons, Adam and Ryan, he lives in Denver, Colorado with his wife Leah and their daughter Lauren.