Interview with management consultant and sales trainer Markus Milz, keynote speaker at the Foreign Trade Day (AWT) on March 24 in Jena.
Mr. Milz, you are a keynote speaker at our Foreign Trade Day, where we want to give our Thuringian SMEs impulses on how they can position themselves even better in international business…
Markus Milz: My core competence is providing support in sales, marketing, and strategy specifically for SMEs. The three essential tasks of a company are delivering performance, securing performance, and marketing performance – and I am very happy to provide valuable support for the latter.
The world is changing rapidly; in light of turbulent developments in geopolitics and the global economy, the challenges for medium-sized enterprises are rising quickly. Are business leaders prepared for this?
When I give lectures to medium-sized companies, I often ask the audience: Who among you believes that our world has changed more in the past six years than in the twenty years before – and then many hands shoot up. But when I then ask whether the companies are taking this into account, with new strategies, new skills, new corporate structures, I often see concerned faces. And indeed: When I look at the organizational charts of companies from 20 years ago and today, I see frighteningly little change. Outside, change is raging; inside, it's business as usual – that cannot lead to success. At the AWT, I want to give Thuringian companies impulses on how they can tackle today's challenges even better.
What are the central challenges for SMEs in times like these? Where are the “treasures” that can be activated to improve one's business?
Not only has the pandemic forced us all into digitalization, companies today generally have an incredible potential of digital tools that they should be using much more. Many still remain in old structures in marketing and sales, perhaps using four or five channels to address customers, such as brochures, website, trade fair appearances. But by now, by my estimate, there are over a hundred channels that can be used. Keywords here are AI, social selling, intelligent aggregation of data and information, or corporate influencer marketing.
What additional tools are available to support marketing?
Let's take the topic of language barriers in international business: In the past, I needed employees who spoke Vietnamese to handle, for example, the Vietnamese market; today, with the help of digitalization and language programs, I can reach people in Vietnam much more easily. Or consider working in networks: With AI and intelligent IT agents, I can now initiate networking requests, schedule appointments, make contact with international partners in a short time, and build connections that I would never have had access to before! Moreover, there are now many ways to utilize the large amount of data that is available. Many speak negatively of a "data flood" and "data protection," but I speak positively of a "data treasure" that is at our disposal.
If you follow your explanations, the impression arises that the challenges represent less of a problem and more of an opportunity.
Absolutely. If companies powerfully leverage the many opportunities available today, adapt their corporate structure accordingly, bring the necessary skills into the company, and employ motivated people, then the foundation for sustainable entrepreneurial success in markets worldwide is laid. That is what I want to convey at the AWT, provide impetus and encourage – I am looking forward to the event.
By the way: Registrations for the 18th Thuringian Foreign Trade Day in Jena are still possible via the AWT website until March 17. In this context, we would particularly like to point out still vacant individual appointments with country experts, which you can also reserve via the AWT page can be reserved.
