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The sales team can often make or break the success of new brands or products. This comprehensive guide provides strategies, models and checklists to help managers and directors strengthen the relationships of their firm´s sales force with their own or other brands, maximizing turnover and profit in the long run.

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1. How brand relationships influence daily business operations 2. How relationships between salespeople and brands become emotional 3. How top management can win salespeople´s heart - the four strategies 4.How brands can make frontline salespeople´s heart beat 5. Top 10 ´heart-winners´ through brand perception 6. How brands can benefit from strong sales force - brand relationships 7. Why retailers should establish strong relationships between salespeople and private brands 8. How salesperson characteristics influence their relationships with brands 9. Do managers think like salespeople? 10. Sales force - brand relationships: a given phenomenon or a building process? 11. Implications for brands and retailers

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Dr. Michaela Merk is an international marketing and retail expert. She is the founder of Merk Vision & Partners, a global consultancy and training agency for brands and retailers in the luxury, cosmetics and fashion sectors. She has held top management positions with international responsibility at corporations such as L´Oréal, Estée Lauder Companies and Marionnaud.

Using her broad experience in online and offline marketing from brand building, retailing to top management, she advises and trains international companies worldwide such as L´Oréal, Lacoste, Hermès, Shanghai Jahwa (China) and has worked with BCG, Roland Berger, and Bain & Company. She gives seminars and lectures at conferences and events worldwide and teaches at business schools in Europe, Middle East and Asia (including ESSEC, Sorbonne, IFM, Sup de Luxe, Beida and East China Normal University). Dr. Michaela Merk is associate professor in management at the leading University Paris Dauphine and member of the research laboratory ´Brand and Values´ at Sorbonne Graduate Business School, where she also obtained her PhD. The leading speakers´ agency ´Speakers Excellence´ counts her among the top 100 trainers in Europe.

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