Selling is people management

Professor Christian Schmitz presented a recent study.Managers and senior employees from sales and distribution were addressed for the Sales Power Conference, which took place for the first time on November 8 and 9 at the GDI in Rüschlikon. The topic was a hit, as Uwe Tännler, President of the conference organization Swiss Marketing Forum, was able to ascertain in front of a full hall during his welcome address on the second day.Professor and presenterProf. Dr. Christian Belz, Director of the Institute for Marketing at the University of St. Gallen, led through both days. At the same time, he presented a "heat map" at both conferences. On the first day on the topic of strategic sales, on the second day on operational sales.Sales management must be oriented to what happens in the interaction between sales and the customer, explained Belz. Strategy and implementation could never be separated. And, "selling is people management."Study First-Line Sales ManagerPeople management is the keyword for the subsequent presentation by Prof. Dr. Christian Schmitz from the Ruhr University in Bochum on "First-Line Sales Managers: Growth and Implementation Impulses on the Last Mile of Sales Management". Schmitz presented the findings of the study of the same name, which he authored together with Christian Belz and Dr. Matthias Huckemann, Managing Director of Mercuri International, and which was recently published.The study shows that team leadership in sales is central to increasing success.High-performing first-line sales managers can increase sales performance by an average of 33 percent.A summary of the study can be downloaded at here as PDF download