ISBM at the Penn State Smeal College of Business – Academic Institute supporting B2B Research. Switch to the ISBM-Corporate website.

ISBM at the Penn State Smeal College of Business – Academic Institute supporting B2B Research. Switch to 

This course is for PhD Students only who are enrolled in a PhD Program at an Institute for Higher Learning

B2B Engagement

OVERVIEW

The course will discuss the concepts, metrics, and strategy underlying the principles of B2B Engagement with respect to customers, employees and salesforce. Companies possess much data about their customers, employees and salesforce and yet struggle to generate adequate insights. What can B2B firms do to engage their customers, employees, and salesforce and maximize profitability for the firm? Of course, through efficient customer and employee engagement. Furthermore, sales force churn is another big concern in the B2B context. Firms desperately want to retain their best salespeople but face issues in – 1) evaluating the value of a salesperson; 2) taking timely action to prevent attrition of valuable salespeople. Can firms identify their best talent and efficiently plan resource allocation to develop their skills and maximize salesperson generated profitability through retention?

In this course, we discuss specifically, customer engagement, employee engagement and sales force engagement. The content of this course equips the participants with tools to assess the lifetime value of a salesperson, as well as the engagement value of a customer and an employee. Using the framework learned in the course, participants can start research projects on resource allocation planning, training and mentoring salespeople, and pitching the right product to the right client at the right time to maximize firm-level profitability. Using academic journal articles, real-world cases, and examples from a variety of organizations, the course introduces the participants to the principles, practices, and skills required for customer and employee engagement and salesforce management. Participants also get the opportunity to apply what they learn in class to their research by working on in-class exercises that will enhance the understanding of the relevance of the content.

The course will be offered on Tuesdays from 11:00am-1:00pm ET beginning on February 9, 2021 through March 2021.  The course consists of eight sessions of 120 minutes each. If needed, a technology session will be scheduled before the course begins.

Download a copy of the syllabus

INSTRUCTOR:

V Kumar

Dr. V. Kumar is currently the Distinguished Term Professor, and Senior Fellow, Indian School of Business, India; and the Distinguished Fellow, MICA, India. He is also an ISBM Distinguished Research Fellow.