Brian is the Senior Vice President of North American Sales for IKON, a 4.4 billion dollar company.  Mr. Edwards is responsible for developing and executing IKON’s sales strategy in North America and will share his experience from over 20 years in sales and management at IKON.

His key points included:

• Companies who are not significantly differentiated from their competitors and who are not building a clear brand identity today likely won’t be around tomorrow. Brian will show how IKON uses “assessment, solutions, implementation, and support” to make the difference in their marketplace

• Today’s customers want consultative support to leverage technology to improve their business, not just hardware. Brian will demonstrate that you can’t build a solution until you have a good understanding of the customer’s needs, their workflow, and ways you can improve their workflow efficiency and productivity

• Benchmarking your success: In other words, set specific goals for each promotion or strategy. Think beyond revenue… measure margin contribution, market share, and customer acceptance of solutions

Dr. Marciano will introduce her "baseball" strategy for bushiness growth opportunities. She will apply her Harvard Business Review case study approach to keep your company growing in ways that are faster and smarter than your competitors.

Her key points:

• The crucial link between a firm’s competitive strategy and the industry environment

• Establishing a long-term sustainable competitive advantage

• Growing your firm into new markets only if there are synergies with existing activities

• Optimizing your activities to make a difference and not to overgrow

Jack brings over 30 years of proven marketing, branding, and promotion experience to discuss the importance of brand to business growth. His clients have included: Polaroid, Lever Brothers, Cadbury Schweppes, James River, A&W, General Foods, Lipton, British Airways, Colgate Palmolive, Burger King, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Fromageries Bel, and NBC to name a few.

His key points were:

• Consistency, passion, and your brand; these are the key elements business growth

• The 2 most important components in your company: your people and your brand

• Your brand protects you against competitive attacks, market fluctuations, and price wars

Eddie has more than 20 years of award winning general and marketing management experience in building some of America's great brands, including Dunkin' Donuts, Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods, Ben Hogan, Top-Flite, Spalding, and Merrill Lynch among others. He is currently the principal of APEX GROWTH STRATEGIES, which helps companies and private equity firms identify and maximize strategies for profitable growth

His key points included:

• How leveraging your existing competencies will consistently yield the most effective and efficient new business development program

• Identifying those competencies that:

  • can be extended into new areas of opportunity
  • be embraced by your organization
  • differentiate you from the competition (while at the same time creating sustained value)
    .
• The key in identifying core competencies. He will demonstrate how companies in different industries have successfully grown their business by building upon existing strengths to enter new segments

Dr. Matthews will discuss the critical stages of growth and how the senior management team needs to evolve from stage to stage. Jana will offer you key insights for smart, sustainable growth, with a minimum of turbulence along the way.

Her key points were:

• Are you focused on the right things at the right time as your company continues to grow?

• The good and bad news about growth-Avoid the classic “traps” that many companies fall into just when things “look great”

• Insights for smart, sustainable growth, and a minimum of turbulence along the way