Salesforce automation has become not a nice-to-have but a must-have system to run sales operations. But it takes more than the basics when it comes to closing a deal in an era where customers want personalized attention. If you are able to provide that attention— ranging from the content to the offer—your chances of closing the deal are improved immensely. Why is that? What do you have to do? What technology tools are out there to help you do that? This vendor panel on sales optimization will give you those answers.

Customers, both corporate and individual, are the drivers of innovation. This concept of customer-driven innovation raises the question: How do organizations effectively predict what would be viable? To achieve that insight, organizations need to gain a holistic view of their customers to understand what is valuable to them. What do customers expect from your brand or products? How often are they purchasing and through what channels? What features do they use frequently, and what do they want more of? Companies need to be proactive in uncovering this information with a customer-obsessed approach. It’s not just what the capabilities of new products are, it’s how and why customers will use them that are of utmost importance. Attend this session to learn how to use customer-driven innovation to meet their evolving demands.

A piecemeal approach to the digital marketplace is doomed to failure. A little social media or channel optimization here, a little web enhancement and an ecommerce app there, leaves an organization distracted by the details of implementing ad hoc and often incompatible initiatives. What is needed instead is a comprehensive and forward-looking digital strategy that encompasses all aspects of digital engagement and enables the organization to anticipate and exploit new opportunities as they arise. Attend this session to learn the components of an effective digital strategy; how to gather digital information about your customers, analyze it, and derive actionable insights from it; and the digital tools available to customize and optimize each individual customer’s experience.

Almost the very definition of small business is “close to customers.” We now live in a digital world, which provides small businesses with an unprecedented opportunity to grow, but, as with all businesses, customers are more demanding than ever before. What technologies are out there to help small businesses meet the needs of their increasingly demanding customers, even when they know them, and provide the tools that help small businesses grow to larger ones?

If you have a mobile device, you’re probably using at least one personal companion, be it Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, or Microsoft’s Cortana. While today these services are mostly used to deliver information about the weather, sports scores, or directions, in the not-too-distant future, you’ll also be asking about the status of your latest deal or for information about a service ticket. This session looks at how virtual assistants will go beyond helping you with the weather by tapping into enterprise data to deliver contextual, realtime insights about customers and prospects. Learn how this will impact the Internet of Things adoption, as devices provide more information that can impact the way we build and extend customer relationships going forward.

What if you could accurately assess the value—and risk—of a potential customer, right from the very first interaction? By taking a datadriven approach and leveraging predictive analytics, you can obtain unprecedented insight into your best customers. Some of the biggest names in banking, media, and retail are already using advanced analytics to better understand today’s omnichannel customer journeys. In this session, learn the use of predictive analytics for lead scoring and propensity modeling to increase the profitability of your marketing efforts, and avoid losing current customers.

Luxottica, the world leader in eyewear, has begun the journey in the personalization space. This session introduces the concept of “next best action” and how it is powering online personalization. Learn how Luxottica Retail North America moved from the predictive models driving campaigns to the next generation of predictive models built to have a more active role in targeting and marketing to the different customers across channels. Find out the analytical part as well as the strategic and technological portion of the personalization implementation project that is currently live.

At the heart of a successful digital strategy is customer information most often found in a CRM database that contains clean, accurate, and comprehensive customer profiles. A solid CRM system allows your organization to leverage customer information to optimize sales, marketing, and service processes, and ultimately drive optimal customer experiences. CRM is also the foundation of your digital strategy. This session covers a “hub and spoke” model to integrate CRM with powerful technology tools into a coherent digital strategy; the role of CRM as the hub containing holistic customer profiles populated with timely, relevant customer information; the role of digital tools as the spokes to include social CRM, and customer journey mapping, branded communities, mobile apps, etc.

Customer loyalty and rewards programs are often thought of as the same, yet supposedly “loyal” customers leave vendors with alarming frequency. In this presentation Denis Pombriant separates the two ideas and shows how rewards programs that once accounted for keeping customers in the fold are losing their grip. He offers a blueprint for a new form of customer loyalty, based on what’s most important to customers. Using recent research and examples from CRM and the technology industries, this talk will change how you think about customers and keeping them loyal.

For a sports team, its on-the-field competitors are very different than its off-the-field competitors. Outside of the stadium, teams have to compete with other forms of entertainment for discretionary dollars (such as concerts, movies, restaurants, plays, etc.). How do sports teams compete? What do they have to know about their fans? What types of new engagement strategies must they deliver? This panel answers these questions and more. Plus, you can hang out with sports people, which is pretty useful and cool.