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Distribution Channel Management: Bridging the Sales and Marketing Divide

Optimize Channel Performance

Managers frequently complain about a lack of communication between their marketing and sales executives, often caused by a poorly designed or implemented distribution channel strategy. A well-designed distribution channel strategy takes into account both the salespeople's activities with channel partners and the marketing managers' efforts to better reach and serve end-users.

Distribution Channel Management builds a coherent framework that unites marketing and sales efforts in a collaborative learning environment.

This program addresses the needs of consumer goods and services companies selling through wholesalers and retailers; business-to-business firms working through independent distributors and sales representative firms; retailers seeking to improve efficiency in an increasingly competitive marketplace; and intermediaries seeking to preserve their role in an increasingly fluid channel structure.
Upcoming Sessions (Fee includes lodging and most meals)
Session Date Cost
October 13-16, 2013 $6,300 Apply
April 13-16, 2014 $6,300 Apply
November 2-5, 2014 $6,300 Apply

Program Materials

This program is designed for senior-level executives (managers, directors, and vice presidents) in manufacturing, wholesale, retail, or service firms who have responsibility for creating and managing channels of distribution—or who have broader strategic responsibilities of which channel strategies are a part.

 

During this program, you will learn to:
  1. Gain insights into the role distribution channels play in your company’s business model
  2. Segment your market for optimal channel design
  3. Assess and satisfy the service output demands of your end-users
  4. Optimize the allocation of costly activities among channel partners
  5. Identify gaps in channel performance on both the demand and supply sides
  6. Use channel power to bring about productive change in the channel's operation
  7. Diagnose sources of channel conflict and develop tools for conflict resolution

Distribution Channel Management: A Framework for Design and Management
  1. Channel design issues
  2. Channel coordination issues

Service Output Demands: How (Not Just What) Your End-Users Buy
  1. Identifying which service outputs matter in your market
  2. Using service output demands to segment your market for effective distribution channel design
  3. Targeting the highest-potential channel segments in your market

Optimizing Your Channel Structure to Meet End-Users' Demands
  1. What kinds of channel intermediaries to use
  2. How intensively to distribute
  3. Allocating channel flows and functions to specific channel members

Assessing Demand-Side and Supply-Side Gaps in the Current Channel Strategy
  1. Defining environmental and managerial bounds on optimal channel design
  2. Relating bounds to the creation of channel gaps
  3. Distinguishing between demand-side and supply-side gaps
  4. Identifying and prioritizing strategies for attacking channel gaps

Channel Coordination
  1. Coordination as the goal of channel management
  2. Building channel-wide goals
  3. Benefits of channel coordination

Using Channel Power to Influence Channel Partners' Behavior
  1. Channel power as a means of influence
  2. Sources and uses of channel power
  3. Channel power as an investment in profitability

Identifying and Managing Channel Conflict
  1. Types of channel conflict
  2. Tools for managing channel conflict

Supply Chain Management in the Marketing Channel
Anne Coughlan - Academic Director; John L. and Helen Kellogg Professor of Marketing

Sunil Chopra - IBM Professor of Operations Management and Information Systems

Richard I. Kolsky - Lecturer of Executive Programs

What Past Participants Say

  • "A tremendous seminar. The content, delivery and execution of the program was outstanding."
    - Global Strategist, Samsung
  • "If you sell through channels, this course affords you the vital framework of diagnostics to improve channel efficiency."
    - Manager, Dealer Development, Mitsubishi Caterpillar Forklift America
  • "Market Access Strategies provides invaluable tools and perspectives for any channel problem in any line of business"
    - Senior Account Executive, Leo Burnett
  • "Very useful way of looking at channel management - comprehensive and coherent. Recommended!"
    - International Trade Advisor, UK Trade & Investment
  • "This course puts a focus on channel and supply chain that shows the necessity of this for the long term success of your business."
    - John Deere Company
  • "This program was directly relevant to our business. I used some of the tools before I even left campus! The ROI is clearly there -- I would highly recommend this program."
    - Senior Director, Channel Strategy and Marketing, RadioShack
  • "It's a 'layup' that I'll get a big ROI on the three days at Kellogg, the advanced preparation time, and the time I'll spend putting what I learned to work."
    - Trading Manager, Cargill

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