So, what about the future? Where is sales going to be five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road and all? So, I think a good way to think about this is sort of two-pronged. The first is that for the foreseeable future business and commerce is going to continue to be around, it's going to be a very important part of our society, and sales is part of that. So, we continue to see the importance of sales as being something that will be a focus of business for many, many years to come. Now, that said how sales is done, and what exactly sales people do is going to change. In particular, we talked about the role of technology, and it's going to alter the way sales goes about what it does and all. So, one of the things that I think sales managers need to do is in one part kinda keep their eye out on the environment outside of just what they do. In particular, be mindful of the fact of changes that you see that are occurring in society, and how that might impact what you're doing. We expect that the sales operations manager their job is going to continue to evolve, and this specialization is going to help you in a couple of different ways. Number 1, we are going to give you the tools that you need in order to perform this particular job and teach you not only just what these tools are, but how to use those tools. So, one will give you the things that you need to be able to succeed. But we're also trying to kind of embrace what's going on in the broader world around us, and in particular helping you to kinda have the right attitude or the right footing that you need in order to succeed. Recognize that what happens today is no guarantee that it will happen exactly the same way tomorrow. We all have to be really light on our feet, we have to be able to evolve and change. In particular, I would say that you need to keep a focus on customers. The more you understand customers, and what their needs are everything else naturally kind of falls into place. I think the sales operations manager is going to face a number of interesting challenges in regards to recruitment. In particular, perhaps one of the biggest challenges that is going to occur is that as time goes on you're going to be recruiting people from later generations. We talk about now millennials are about to become the driving force in the business world sort of as baby boomers begin to retire. Each of these generational cohorts have different values, different ways that they like to work and, what they expect out of their job. This really requires then a different orientation by that sales operation manager. So, I think that understanding the needs of the future worker is going to be a real critical success factor. I think the other thing that is important is that we are increasingly morphing towards more of a network kind of society. You see it used to be like I think the fundamental building block in business was the firm, and either you worked for the firm or you didn't. Right? The world was comprised of a bunch of different firms. Today you're seeing more and more people that are kind of being out on their own. They sort of through freelance and like the Uber type model, are in a sense working for different organizations that working relationship is very different than their traditional employer-employee type of contract that used to exist in the past. I think that's going to make the job of managing these people a little bit more difficult because the manager doesn't have as much control over those people as they once did back in the good old days. So, how will this specialization helps you to build your sales management skills? I think in twofold. First and foremost we have to provide you with a foundation. We're going to give you, and talk about the tools that are are used in the business of sales management. One has to simply be familiar with what these are before you can actually practice them. But then we also are going to give you the opportunity to sort of either see how these skills are used in the real world, or ways in which you can actually apply them and sort of assignments, and discussions, and that type of thing. So, that is a certain practice component to that. Those two things together building of knowledge and practicing those skills is what ultimately is going to help you to build your own skill set. So, much of what I did in my 25-year career in the private sector was very sales-oriented and all. I'm often asked what were some of my greatest successes that I achieved in the private sector? Now, it's very easy for me to point at certain clients that I was involved with and helping to convince them to use the firm that I worked for and all. I can also kind of point to the different types of communication programs that we did for some of these clients, and the impact that these people had. But what I think of my greatest successes was actually more about developing the people that have worked for me over the years. At this point I take a tremendous sense of pride that many of these people have gone on to have incredible careers in the marketing and the sales area. Have gone on to enjoy great successes and recognition for them and all. I'd like to think I kind of played a small role in that, and to me looking at that next generation of business leaders brings me the greatest satisfaction. So, much of what I did in my 25-year career in the private sector was very sales-oriented and all. I'm often asked What were some of my greatest successes that I achieved in the private sector? Now, it's very easy for me to point at certain clients that I was involved with and helping to convince them to use the firm that I worked for and all. I can also kind of point to the different types of communication programs that we did for some of these clients, and the impact that these people had. But what I think of my greatest successes was actually more about developing the people that have worked for me over the years. At this point I take a tremendous sense of pride that many of these people have gone on to have incredible careers in the marketing and the sales area and have gone on to enjoy great successes and recognition for them and all. I'd like to think I kind of played a small role in that, and to me looking at that next generation of business leaders brings me the greatest satisfaction. So, one of the things that I was involved with over the years was helping clients to develop international marketing communication strategy. So, what this typically involves are companies that are international to begin with, and they're looking to compliment their international operations with marketing communications and all. So, there are two very fundamental ways that companies tend to approach this task. The first is where one has one message, one particular strategy, and attempt to run that strategy around the world and a Kind of a one size fits all particular approach. The other strategy is where one tries to tailor its message to particular markets or particular regions of the world and what they want to do. Now much of the decision that goes into how you approach that particular strategy is a function of your marketplace itself. So, if you have a fairly uniform market around the world and probably a one size fits all strategy can kind of work. In some cases you might find that there are certain countries or certain regions of the world that are perhaps more developed and for that reason have very different types of communication needs that need to occur in those particular regions than in others and all. So, perhaps the most important factor in international expansion and international market communication strategies and all, has to do with where you want to put that particular focus and all. So, I'm reminded I have a close friend involved in the industrial ceramics business and all. They were a US-based manufacturer and all. Now, over the years they had been very successful but then particularly as manufacturing moved away from the United States and into other countries their business began to kind of shrink a bit and all. So they were to some degree almost forced into expanding internationally and all. So, they decided they needed to grow internationally, and they started to do some research, and looked at different markets, and trying to figure out where they wanted to go. They spoke to experts in the industry and all. Through all that research and discussion decided that their initial place of market entry would be the United Kingdom. Right? So they began to pursue- Customers in the United Kingdom that involved traveling to the United Kingdom regularly and paying sales calls on customers and that type of thing. What they found was that it was a really hard road, really hard to break into that marketplace and in particular what they discovered was that a lot of the customers in the United Kingdom, were concerned about the length of the supply chain, because their manufacturing operations were in the United States and so forth. So, they kept struggling and moving along and so forth. Time went on, and they somewhat serendipitously had the opportunity to make a couple of sales calls in the country of Germany. Alright, and so my friend was in a particular customers' office and was going through his standard sales presentation and all. Interestingly, one of the things like in industrial ceramics or ceramics, these things that are made, that then you use to pour molten metal into and to make particular objects and all. One of they talk about precision castings and all. So, one of those things would be let's say turbine blades for generators and jet engines and that type of thing. So, what's really important in the manufacturing of those, is that these industrial ceramics have to be incredibly pure. They can't have like minerals and other kinds of elements in there. That would be like a really bad thing when the molten metal is poured into it and so forth. So, one of the things that you have to provide to a customer is a thing called a trace mineral aalysis. So, they take that industrial ceramics and they put it into a laboratory, and they examine to find traces of minerals and elements that really shouldn't be in there. One of those elements is the element Bismuth, b-i-s-m-u-t-h, it's Bi on the periodic table. This German customer took a look at my friend's lab results and all ends and pointed at the Bismuth number and said, ''There must be some mistake, that number is way too low.'' My friend didn't think that that was the case, but said, ''Well, let me go back and check with our lab and make sure that things are right.'' So, he goes back to the United States, goes to the lab, even talks with them and finds out that the analysis was exactly correct. That the information was exactly as reported null. So, he calls back to the customer and says, ''Well, I just want you to know that the trace mineral analysis came back and it is what it is,'' and he said to my friend, ''Do you realize that your industrial ceramics are by a magnitude better in quality than what's available by our domestic market?'' In other words, I guess the people in Germany had really high Bismuth content and so forth. What that story talks about really was that in Germany, my friend had an incredible competitive advantage and suddenly started getting tons and tons of sales out of Germany. Doesn't it sometimes make you wonder though why the devil did they start in the United Kingdom? They really belonged in Germany in the first place. Selection of where you're going to focus your international efforts is super important. So, why did I get into sales? Why am I still doing it and teaching it and all? I think that for me, the part that I really have enjoyed about sales is really the idea that you're helping customers, you're solving problems. To the extent that I can show a customer how they can make their operations better, or more efficient, or whatever it is that they're trying to do and actually be able to deliver on that is incredibly satisfying and rewarding and all. However, back about 15 years ago or so, I so had the fortune of accidentally discovering teaching. I was asked to teach a course, and I was still working in the corporate world, but I thought that would be sort of a neat thing. What I discovered was, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. So, I made the decision to shift completely into the academic world now. I guess what I'm hoping to do is influence the next generation of leaders in the world. So, what motivates me to sell? I think it primarily is about trying to help people. Trying to solve problems, trying to show people how they can do things better faster, cheaper, whatever the thing is. To me that's what really gets my motors humming and all. I really, I view that ability of helping people to be something incredibly rewarding. So, what made me want to keep moving up the ladder to become the person I am today? I think it's a combination of things. Certainly, as you move up the ladder, one gets greater salaries, and economic rewards, and that type of thing. I don't think I'm any different than many other people, I do like money and that's always been a nice thing to have and all. But I think it's also really as I moved up the ladder, I was able to have greater influence and my span of control moved to a bigger group of people. I think that ability to be able to have more and greater impact is been a very powerful motivator for me. So, what is the best thing about being a sales operation manager? I think personally, it allows you to have a sense of ownership over the entire enterprise. That's why one has to depend upon salespeople to actually do the selling and all. Ultimately, you are the leader. To some degree, I think sales operation manager is like a person conducting a symphony. That conductor doesn't play a single musical instrument, but actually coordinates and brings all of those disparate musical instruments together to make beautiful music.
