 | How to Supercharge Your Sales Force Your sales staff is your face; it represents your company to your existing and potential customers. To grow, you have to hire the right salespeople, give them the best tools to bring in the right revenue, and figure out how to pay them. In this session, learn what to look for in a new sales representative, how to measure success, how to develop a compensation plan, and how to reward results. Give your sales strategy a facelift with this intensive overview of effective process management. Speaker: Jeff Krawitz, New York University & Columbia University professor and principle at Customer Manufacturing Group | |
| How to Build a More Competitive Strategy Who are you? What do you do? Why does it matter? Discover a better, more useful, and more powerful way of looking at the market (and your brand) than your competitors. Join brand strategists Warren Church and Amanda Matusak from brand agency Deskey as they share strategic tools and insights that have helped clinets like Proctor & Gamble Healthcare, Fifth Third Bank, Johnson & Johnson, and Starbucks compete more effectively. Speakers: Warren Church, brand strategy VP of Deskey & Amanda Matusak, brand strategy director of Deskey | |
| How to Finance Anything Sometimes, you need a little help—to meet demand, to expand, or just to make payroll. This session brings together an investor, an entrepreneur, a funding expert, and a pitch expert to address every aspect of seeking capital. Is outside funding really for you? What are you willing to give up? Where should you look? What are the common pitfalls? When are banks and VCs more appropriate versus angels? How will you persuade them to fork over the money? Bring your own questions to this very informative session. Speakers: Andy Craig, co-owner of Elevator Speech, Ben Lerer, co-founder of Thrillist, & Steve Mercil, president and CEO of RAIN Source Capital Moderator: Brock Blake, CEO of Funding Universe | |
| How to Spot Problems Before They Attack Norm Brodsky, a serial entrepreneur with seven companies under his belt, believes that numbers run businesses. To do well, you need to get a sense for which numbers are critical and the relationships between them. The numbers can tell you how to earn money as efficiently as possible and how to avoid disaster before it strikes. But, you have to understand the language. In this session, get tactics for squeezing the most out of your books from someone who learned the hard way. Speaker: Norm Brodsky, founder of CitiStorage, Inc. Street Smarts columnist, and co-author of The Knack | |
| How to Motivate Employees and Help Them Work Together Thrillist is a daily newsletter that brings subscribers must-have recommendations from the best of what’s new in 14 markets. College Hunks Hauling Junk has franchises across America that help you get rid of those unwanted items. Both are rapidly expanding businesses built on the power of highly motivated teams that are geographically distant. Hear from company founders Ben Lerer and Nick Friedman how they find the right people, manage them from far away, and get them to work together toward the same goal. Moderator: Jason Del Rey, senior reporter of Inc. Speakers: Nick Friedman, co-founder and president of College Hunks Hauling Junk; & Ben Lerer, co-founder and CEO of Thrillist | |
| How to Find the Most Impact for Your Marketing Buck A marketing strategy based on elaborate store-window displays and catalogs may seem a bit dated in the online era, but this is partly how Lexy Funk more than doubled sales for apparel retailer Brooklyn Industries. Through closely listening to customers, and walking away from standard advice at the right time, Funk and her business partner expanded the business while actually cutting back on advertising spend. In this session, learn where you might be wasting money and how to focus it where it counts. Speaker: Lexy Funk, co-founder and CEO of Brooklyn Industries | |
| How to Shake Cash Out of Your Books George Cloutier lives and breathes budgets and balance sheets for maximum profit. Starting with $42,000 in seed capital, he built an organization of more than 150 employees and $180 million in annual revenue. He wants to help small and midsize businesses across America get their business fundamentals in order to achieve his kind of growth. In this session, Cloutier will present 13 no-nonsense, tough-love maxims that have brought hundreds of businesses on the brink of bankruptcy to top-tier profitability. Speaker: George Cloutier, founder of American Management Services, co-chairman of Partner America, and author of Profits Aren't Everything, They're the Only Thing | |
| How and Why to Grow Slowly According to Jason Fried, constant meetings and long commutes are a waste of time. The staff at 37signals, Fried’s celebrated software company, often works remotely and less than a full 40 hours each week. Fried, company spearhead and minimalism fan, spends his day thinking about how to make business less complicated. Elegance, respect for people’s desire simply to get stuff done, and ease of use are the hallmarks of 37signals’s products. In this session, learn why to say no more than yes and how slow growth might be the way to go. Speaker: Jason Fried, president and co-founder of 37signals | |
12:15 p.m. Lunch
