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German Chapter

Markus Schwarz, President

Service Sales and Marketing: A Report from the Chapter’s 59th Conference
Actively selling services and setting up professional services marketing tools are becoming increasingly more significant initiatives in today’s business landscape. The 59th Conference of AFSMI’s Germany Chapter was a prime forum for in-depth discussions on these very topics. A wide variety of competent and practical lectures given by well-known services managers and experts, as well as exciting discussions among attendees, inspired a deep exchange of ideas.

Arranged by EMC GmbH in Schwalbach, Germany, the conference was presented by Nikolaus Bremerich, chairman of the AFSMI Germany Chapter. 

The first lecture by Ralf Banczyk, regional service account manager with EMC, dealt with the selling of customer-oriented services in the sector of memory products. Particularly, he focused on how services can be adapted to continuously changing customer demands.

The next lecture was given by Thilo Veenema, head of marketing and products at QSC AG, a premium supplier of B2B telecommunications. Thilo presented the solutions that have proven to be worthwhile in practice at QSC for successfully identifying, segmenting, addressing, and developing service customers.

Results of the recent Marketing Partner Consulting GmbH study on Selling Industrial Services were then presented by Dr. Michael Stiller, manager of the consultancy. The study demonstrates why selling industrial services in the machinery industry has fallen short of possibilities to date. Dr. Stiller rounded out his lecture with clear-cut approaches to meeting this challenge.

Konrad Sommer, business unit manager of Océ Business Services GmbH, then took the stage, providing a relevant discussion on the specific requirements brought about by the expansion of services that must be fulfilled by adapting work and employee profiles in services sales.

A lively Q&A session followed the technical lectures. The quantity and quality of questions posed by audience members clearly demonstrated the great interest in the exchange of experiences and information around the sales and marketing topic.

For more information on the Germany Chapter, contact Markus Schwarz at m.schwarz@afsm.de.