2024 Post-Conference: Session Descriptions, Files & Audio Recordings

Below are presentations, handout materials and audio recording files for sessions at the 2024 ERA Conference.

Please note: only sessions that took place in the main ballroom have audio recording files available.  These include: the keynote session presentation, all four general sessions and five breakout sessions that were hosted in the main ballroom. Also provided are Walter Tobin’s ERA Update and all awards presentations.

Questions? Contact ecollins@era.org.

Stacy Hanke — “Build Trust and Connection to Create Influence Monday To Monday®”

Learn how to ignite connection in your world!

In our heavily distracted and disconnected world, our ability to lead effectively, problem solve, and inspire connection is being tested every day. Communication is at the core of everything we do. Stacey Hanke’s engaging and fun keynote will give you the tools to communicate in a memorable way to influence action Monday to Monday®.

In this presentation, Hanke shares how connection and consistency are critical to communicating with influence and impact. Connection is about creating a meaningful experience for your listener to influence them to act while consistency creates a reliable personal brand, allowing your listeners to trust that you will show up for them the same way. Together, they create authenticity and foster trust.

Audiences will learn how to:

• Influence others even when not physically present
• Build a consistent brand that differentiates you from the competition.
• Maintain continual growth in the ability to communicate with influence and impact.
• This keynote is immediately actionable and gives structure to make sure it sticks. Hanke will help shift the way you communicate to ignite deeper connection and trust!

Andrew Busch — “Future Economy: Growth Opportunities”

The world is going to see more economic change in the next 5 years than we have seen in the last 100 years. Just as the US was getting over the worst of COVID, Russia invaded and China shutdown ports due to COVID. War in the Ukraine, inflation soaring, interest rates spiking, supply chains crashing are all examples of the speed of change. But how did we get here? More importantly, where do we go from here?

Andy provides the context needed to understand the forces at work creating momentum for change in the economy and your business. AI, climate subsidi

es and co-bots are just a few of the extraordinary tools/spending being leveraged right now. Are you aligning yourself for what will occur? Andy literally wrote the book on large, catastrophic events and how they impact our markets, economy and world. As a futurist and economist, Andy dives deep into exploring how innovation, policy changes and societal shifts (war) drive opportunities for clients. He provides context by doing a “where we’ve been, where we are and where we’re going” for the economy. He takes the trends super charged by COVID & war, then applies them to your industry via a case study to show where money is flowing, and opportunities are growing.

Cam Marston — “Selling Across the Generations”

The first rule of selling remains steadfast: Know your customer. With five distinct generations playing active roles in the buying decisions of companies worldwide, that tenet is increasingly difficult to fulfill. It is no longer enough to be personable with your customer and knowledgeable about your product.

Changing dynamics require changing strategies.

To succeed in today’s business climate, you need to approach each buyer with an informed generational perspective — recognizing the underlying biases, values and expectations that pave the way to “Yes.”

An expert on selling to millennials, speaker Cam Marston shows you how to create fast and genuine connections with new customers, sell to your customer’s expectations, build trust between generations, and avoid communication pitfalls.

Throughout the presentation you will learn how companies are effectively engaging generational sales techniques to appeal to the unique decision-making traits of each generation and how to develop a solid sales process based on generational biases and business preferences.

Brent Adamson — “Creating Customer Confidence to Make the Sale”

In today’s marketplace, the number one problem companies need to solve in order to increase the likelihood of closing a sale is a lack of customer confidence. Brent Adamson uses his 19+ years of experience and research within B2B and B2C sales to bring you the secret to always closing.

The last three years have created deep unending uncertainty across industries and the biggest loss isn’t in profits or personnel; it’s a loss of confidence customers experience within themselves. You’ve done your job of instilling confidence in yourself and your product/service, now what you need to do is build the customer’s confidence in themself and their ability to make large-scale decisions on the behalf of their company.

After years of research, Adamson discovered the four significant forces that are eroding and undermining customer confidence:
1. Decision Complexity —While any big decision has some degree of complexity, this only compounds as more and more stakeholders get involved, each with their own competing interests and metrics.
2. Information Overload — Not only are customers being exposed to high quantities of information, but it’s also high quality. This creates friction and confusion and eventually will stall the sale.
3. Implementation Uncertainty — While this is often an after-effect of a sale, implementation uncertainty increases regret and decreases confidence, leading to more problems down the road.
4. Value Opacity — When a value is unclear, or opaque, there is generally a wide gap between the value promise and the value realized by the customer.

More importantly, he figured out how to overcome them. The best sales teams and organizations will use the customer’s lack of confidence to set themselves apart from other teams. This is an opportunity to become a source of confidence creation for your customer and a time to build trust. To do this, you must create frameworks around each point of insecurity. When you solve what they are craving, you give them the ability to believe in themselves and the empowerment to make large-scale decisions for their company.

Crystal Washington, CSP, CSAE — “The Future is NOW: Technology & Trends that will Revolutionize”

Are you ready for what lies ahead? Stop shaking the Magic 8-Ball and get ‘Crystal’ clear on the future of your industry.

In this high-energy session, technology futurist Crystal Washington will show you exciting, practical ways that technology will rock your world over the next ten years. Best of all, she’ll deliver her discussion in PLAIN English. Hey Alexa and Siri, no need to translate!

In this session, you will:

– Identify buzz-worthy human behavior that impacts how organizations innovate
– Discover the top five technologies that could interrupt or revolutionize our industry
– Walk away with the ability to trigger new tactics while staying ahead of the trends

Click on the session below to link to its presentation files.

Speaker: Matthew Amato, Global Manager, Marketing & Public Relations, IBS Electronics Inc.

Presenter: Sam Richter, CSP, CPAE, Founder/CEO SBR Worldwide LLC, Know More Sales

Moderator: Steve Cholas, Executive Director Enterprise Solutions, EETech Group

Panelists: Thomas Hayes, Product Owner, Engineer, Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems LLC; Kevin Payne, Senior Global Category Sourcing Manager, Fortune Brands Innovations Inc.

Moderator: Andrew Schwarz, Western Area Sales Manager, 3Peak

Panelists: Mary Benetti-Condon, Distribution Sales Manager, Bel Fuse; Uwe Knorr, Senior Director Business Development, SamacSys; Maryellen Stack, Director of Marketing Communications, Sager Electronics

Speakers: Wendy Covey, CEO & Co-Founder; Morgan Norris, Senior Brand and Content Strategist; TREW Marketing

Moderator: Terri Straube, Vice President, Distribution Manager, Straube Associates

Panelists: Lani Chau, Digital Strategist, SJ Associates; Tim Kilfoil, President, JF Kilfoil Company; Zak Nelson, Director of Marketing, ArKco Sale Inc.

Moderator: Cesare Giammarco, Consultant, Sales Management Consulting LLC

Panelists: Doug Canterbury, President, Luscombe Engineering; Zach DeVillers, President, Brainard-Nielsen Marketing; Amy Rathsburg, President, Rathsburg Associates

Speaker: Mark Noon, Speaker, Executive Coach, Author; Leadership10

Speakers: John Hutson, CPMR, President, MacInnis Group; Holly Myers, Director, Supplier Marketing and Product Management, Sager Electronics

Moderator: Mark Wachtel, President, SJ Associates

Panelist (all from SJ Associates): Ted Batchelder, Field Sales Engineer; Charles Bobby, Field Sales Engineer; Lani Chau, Digital Strategist; Joe Ciolino, Field Sales Engineer; Ava Dunford-Groves, Field Sales Engineer; Ida Greenlee, Field Sales Engineer; Wendy London, Field Sales Engineer; Rashon Lopez, Field Sales Engineer; Ryan Nogueira, Field Sales Engineer; Jennifer Smith, Field Sales Engineer; Jeff Tilley, Field Sales Engineer

Moderator: Bob Gourdeau, Vice President, Sales – Americas, Kyocera AVX

Panelists: Lou Copley, Vice President – Americas Sales, Avnet; Adam Grigor, President, Tech Trek Ltd.; Dawn Manhart, Senior Director, Global Distribution and Marketing, Knowles

Speaker: Daniel Litts, President/Owner, Sandler Training

Speaker: S. Craig Jackson, Jr., Deputy Director, Indiana University Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research

Moderator: Alan Ahern, President, Crowley Associates

Panelists: Mike Budde Jr., President, Budde Marketing Systems Inc.; Dave Foster, Director of Sales, Ohmite Manufacturing; Peter Heigis, CEO, Metal Cloud; John Mitchell, President, Repfabric; Jeff May, President, Founder, Logix Sales & Marketing; Scott Mayo, Senior Partner, Empowering Systems; Mike Slater, Vice President, Global Business Development, DigiKey