2. Agenda
• Overview
– Marketing: What it is and what its not
– Sales: The types of Sales people
– B2B vs. B2C
• Career Paths
– Roles, Functions, Industry Expectations
– Key Competencies and Knowledge Requirements
– Key Success Factors
• Career Preparation
– Leveraging your MBA: Electives, Projects, Networking, Books, Key Takeaways
– Special Note 1: Career Transition
– Special Note 2: Career Details for Digital Marketing Path
• Interview Prep
3. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.
- Peter Drucker
5. Overview
What Marketing Still Is:
Understanding Customer Needs
By Having a Dialogue With Customers
By Creating Relationships
Coming Up with Great Ideas to Fulfill Those Needs!
Listen to Your Customers
Innovation, Design Thinking, Incremental improvements, Rebranding
Creating a great value offering and convincing the customer of its value
Market Insights, Marcom, Campaigns, Advertising
Establishing a long term rational and emotional bond with the customer
Customer Experience Journey and Management
In-person
Mass Com
Personalized
BTL
6. Overview
What Marketing Is NOT:
– Empty Gimicks
– Entertainment
– Sales without creating a relationship
– Advertising
7. Sales- The Eight Types of Salespeople
• Narrators- Great at volume selling!
• Socializers- Superb at schmoozing and opening doors!
• Aggressors- Negotiation Sharks!
• Storytellers- Highly Customer Focused
• Focusers- Product / Domain Experts
• Consultants- Great Listeners and Problem Solvers
• Closers- Smooth Talkers
• Experts- Veterans. Extensive relationships, effortless sellers.
8. B2B vs. B2C
B2B B2C
Marketing
Hyperfocused
Longer Cycles
More information heavy
Must address ROI concerns
Need all relevant info fast
Impulsiveness is a factor
Influenced by Advertising
End goal is customer loyalty
Sales
Needs Continuous Training
Much smaller lead pool
Multiple Stakeholders
Focus on Longterm
Focus on short term
Transactional relationship
Shorter Sales Cycles
Works brilliantly with DM
9. Career Paths
Marketing Career Paths (not an exhaustive list):
Planning: Market Research Analyst, Market strategy manager
Execution: Field/offline marketing manager, media manager, product marketing manager,
digital marketing manager, Brand manager
After-sales: CRM, Customer Excellence Manager, Account Manager
Sales Career Paths
Channel Sales Manager (Enterprise, Digital, Institutional etc.)
Regional Sales manager/head
Business Development Manager / Account Manager
Sales Support / Pre-sales manager
10. Key Competencies
General Requirements
1. The ability to work with data. The more comfort with data analysis the better.
2. Strategic thinking (Analytical, systematic, able to plan without flights of fancy).
3. Teamwork, team management.
Role Specific Requirements
Planning Execution Post Sale
ROI Calculation √√ √ -
Comp. & Mkt Analysis √√√ √√ √√
Channel Expertise √√ √√√ √
Domain Expertise √√ √√ -
People & Communication Skills √√ √√ √√√
11. Key Success Factors
All Marketing Professionals start as interns or executives. Yet some become CMOs while
others do not. What sets them apart?
- Ability to Communicate, Resonate, Elevate
- Ability to constantly learn and evolve: Omni-channel, 4Es, digital, emerging tech
- Ability to Plan, Visualize, Execute
- Ability to deliver on key metrics
- Ability to work in leadership or team member roles within cross-functional teams
As for Sales Professionals, the Key Success factors are…
- Meeting / Exceeding targets for new, existing, and more-from-existing customers
- Penetrating strategically important accounts, geographies and sectors.
12. Career Preparation
So you decided you want to be an intrepid sales, marketing or BD professional!
That’s Great!
Now What?
13. Recommended Coursework
1. Customer Analytics
2. Sector-specific (eg high-tech, luxury, hospitality) marketing strategy/management class
3. Digital Business Transformation
4. Digital Advertising
5. Social Media Analytics
6. Cross Cultural Communication
7. Advanced methods of marketing research
8. Brand Management
14. Books
Good marketers are always hungry to keep updating their knowledge about new concepts,
techniques and generally keen to be some of the best informed people in a room. Still, a few
classics are recommended starting points for the reading journey:
1) Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
2) Positioning by Al Ries
3) Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith
4) Buy.logy by Martin Lindstrom
5) The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy
6) Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
7) To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink
15. Useful Projects
Today’s Marketing and Sales processes are more intertwined than ever! A good marketing
professional anticipates their sales team’s challenges. In addition good marketing not only
supports sales, but prepares future markets and identifies potential alliance partners.
- Identify your interest: Is it research, campaigns, brand management (i.e. General
Management), or all-around digital marketing?
- Do a project: academic, internship or even self-created that exposes you to omni-channel
marketing, or makes you dive deep into a digital marketing experience.
16. Special Note #1
How to transition safely and successfully to a Marketing career:
- Recruiters hire “safe bets”. This leads to stereotyping and makes transitions harder.
Good roles are relatively few, and hotly contested! Needless to say, practice hard!
- However, an MBA is a rare instance of a significant transition possibility
- To be considered, a person with a non sales/non marketing background should:
- Highlight their translatable past successes
- Showcase excellence in academics and projects in relevant subjects
- Demonstrate interest in the field through extracurricular activities like
entrepreneurship, joining and contributing to marketing clubs, etc.
- Easiest to transition to customer-facing role in same domain. Next difficult to move to
role to a role in new domain. Hardest to get selected by an FMCG, but B2B def. possible.
17. Special Note #2
About Digital Marketing
- One of the hottest fields at the moment.
- Consists of:
- Online Marketing
- SEO, SEM, SMM, Content Marketing, PPC, Affiliate Marketing, Emails
- Offline
- Phones, Texts, Digital Billboards, Word-of-mouth, Digital Product Demos etc.
18. Interview Prep
Typical Placement Interview types
- Behavioral / Situational: They will be seeing if you have a customer facing attitude
- Resume based: The resume is a funnel, an arrow that points to the relevant areas of
specialization of the candidate.
- Case Study: Sometimes used, but usually may be a “short” case study.
- Guesstimate questions
Practice! Practice!! Practice!!!
