Congress “Unifying cultures. Connecting business!”
On 19th May, the International Congress of IUCAB took place in the CDH association building in Berlin. The result was enthusiastic participants and international networking.
The Congress was organised on occasion of the 70th anniversary of IUCAB.
Mr. Olivier Mazoyer, IUCAB President, opened the event and welcomed around 100 Delegates, Stakeholders and Guests. He gave a brief historical review of the development of IUCAB. In addition, the Secretary General, Mr. Christian Rebernig presented the economic importance of commercial agents and the greatest successes of IUCAB in representing the interests of the profession.
Prof. Trond Bergestuen from the University of Wisconsin (USA) presented the results of his multinational study on the relationships between commercial agents, their principals and the key variables to make these relationships more successful. He compared both the US with Europe as a whole and the results of the individual European countries from which agents had participated in the study.
Mr. Bastian Geyer from the Economic Agency presented the economic opportunities of working with companies in developing countries and also informed the participants about the requirements of the Act on Corporate Due Diligence Obligations in Supply Chains.
Mr. Tim Cortinovis, who also acted as moderator of the congress, presented the challenges and the opportunities of the advancing digitalisation for sales in his keynote speech. The participants of the congress then divided into three workshops, in which different aspects of digitalisation were discussed.
Mr. Dirk Ziems from the market research company “conceptm” showed in his lecture on “Global change through various crises” the impact of multi-crises on the attitude to life and consumer sentiments as well as the shift in lifestyle values and effects on different consumption sectors. From this he derived opportunities for commercial agents with different approaches.
Mr. Charles Cohon from the American Member Association (MANA) introduced attendees to the tools he uses in the US to explain to manufacturers why the best way to increase sales is to treat their commercial agents well.
Ms. Olga Froestl from LinkedIn showed the great opportunities for sales companies to expand their business by understanding social selling and to use in particular the data of potential business partners available on LinkedIn.
Finally, IUCAB Vice-President Mr. Ralf Scholz and the previous speakers took part in the concluding panel discussion on the topic “Personal sales – Where is the journey going?”.
