Objective

Business-to-business markets constitute about half of the transactional value of the US economy (for example, think about how many B2B transactions happen in the supply chain of a car manufacturer for all the parts before the end consumer purchases a car from a dealer). Many of our students end up working in B2B markets. For example, most financial transactions are B2B transactions (think about mergers and acquisitions, the much larger share of institutional investors in mutual and hedge fund markets, venture capital funds, private equity funds). In addition, critical divisions of many seemingly B2C companies run B2B marketing operations (think about how the revenue-generating divisions of Facebook or Google are, in fact, B2B operations, selling ads to other businesses either directly or through other businesses acting as intermediaries). While B2B operations have similarities with B2C operations, there are also fundamental differences (e.g., the decision-making processes involved in procurement decisions for organizations are much more complex than individuals' decisions to purchase a good or service for themselves). Nevertheless, most marketing and strategy courses are focused on B2C markets across top US business schools.

Sales and personal selling suffer from a similar lack of attention in business education. Personal selling is the primary form of go-to-market for many companies, especially in B2B markets, with salespeople representing 10% of the US's entire workforce. Each year US organizations spend more than $800 billion to manage their salesforce (roughly four times what they spend on advertising). Besides employees hired for formal sales positions, the job description of many others either directly or indirectly involves some form of selling. For example, a large part of a CEO's job is selling to various stakeholders (ideas and company's vision internally and to investors, and company's unique value proposition and branding externally to distribution partners and customers). Given its importance, it is surprising how many of our MBA students graduate without ever taking a course on selling!

The main objective of this course is to remedy the lack of exposure in our students to B2B marketing and sales by teaching them (a) the main considerations in marketing and selling to other businesses (e.g., how to analyze the buyer behavior, choose the right go-to-market strategy), (b) the main considerations in personal selling and managing a sales team (e.g., how to hire effective salespeople and design a compensation plan for them), and (c) how to align marketing and sales strategy with broader corporate strategy.

Who Should Take This Course?

Students who think they will be involved in sales functions and managing salespeople, some aspects of their jobs will involve selling, or students who will be involved in B2B industries. The course will be particularly beneficial for students who plan to work in professional services like management consulting, most finance-related positions, and manufacturing.

Content

The course consists of numerous cases, short lectures on selling, and a personal selling workshop. The cases cover various industries, from electric vertical takeoff and landing machines (eVTOLs, a.k.a. flying cars!) to heavy construction equipment, enterprise software, and professional services. Below are the main topics that we will cover and examples of what is included within each topic:

1. Business marketing: Go-to-Market system, channel development and management, product line management, analyzing buying behavior and value propositions
2. Personal selling and sales force management: personal selling tactics, sales force design, sales force compensation (e.g., using salary, commission, bonus, quota, over-achievement rewards to motivate salespeople)
3. Aligning strategy, marketing, and sales in B2B markets: pricing, key account management, novel technologies in B2B marketing and sales (e.g., IoT and AI)

Grading

The grading of this course will be based on class participation (50%) and a final exam (50%).

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