Join triathlete Suzanne Martin, a former BMA/Chicago president and CMO of Revenew, on an early-morning walk/run along Lake Michigan. No need to sign up—just assemble in the hotel lobby a little before 5:30 am. Suzanne will get you back to the hotel by 7:00 am in time for a shower and breakfast.

According to Jonah Sachs, the only brand and cause messages that break through are those that tell great stories - the only thing that has ever moved minds and changed behavior. But the quality of stories, he says, has devolved from ones calling us to adventure, higher values and citizenship to ones playing on fear, insecurity and an endless need to passively consume. Hear Sachs share three simple tools for breaking through and becoming an icon: be interesting, tell the truth and live the truth.

In an increasingly commoditized market, the last bastion of competitive differentiation comes down to your salespeople with their lips moving. This session will offer new research on how marketers can do two things to equip salespeople to have successful customer conversations. One: telling the “right stories” that identify prospects’ “unconsidered needs” and create urgency and uniqueness so they change and choose you. Two: learning the “right skills” to use whiteboard-style visuals (versus PowerPoint) so that their delivery is as different as their story.

Social Selling is hot, and who better to lead a session on how to turn your sales people into influential social sellers online than Jill Rowley, recently cited in Forbes as one of the top 30 social sellers in the world. Drawing on her most recent experience at Oracle, and Eloqua and Salesforce.com before that, Rowley will reveal how firms like IBM, ADP, Thomson Reuters, GE, Oracle and others are teaching their sales teams to leverage social networks to sell.

Aon research shows an engaged workforce drives organic growth but that getting there requires investment in people’s health, financial, emotional and social well being. Learn how workforce engagement has become a top priority at Aon as they share examples of engagement driving campaigns that fully leverage brand and marketing skill sets.

Growth. It is the goal of every marketer and the ultimate measure of success. It goes beyond revenue and focuses on customer engagement. But what are the necessary building blocks for achieving all-important momentum on this front? New research from SAP reveals the three pillars a true growth marketing organization must develop to attain success. This session, led by gyro, will explore the findings as well as best practices from top B-to-B marketers.

Transforming marketing from a cost to a revenue center requires vision and discipline plus new or modified leadership behavior. It’s not just your team members who need to change, it’s your fearless leader! You will learn what’s required of today’s b2b marketing leaders as they assume real revenue accountability. You also will gain a better understanding of the role of leadership in the revenue marketing transformation and identify key needed behaviors.

Consumers, customers, and businesses alike all contribute to the data-driven economy. The volume of data leads to unprecedented innovation, change, and uncertainty. Marketers are now in an enviable position to capture and analyze the information like never before. This experienced panel will share a diverse range of thought and experiences across key marketing themes such as the vision of the new age marketing organization, customer engagement, and advanced demand generation. It’s a balance to embrace and prepare for uncertain change, yet leading change to challenge the status quo.

According to social media expert Gary Vaynerchuk, thanks to massive changes in and the proliferation of social-media platforms, it is no longer enough just to develop high-quality content. It is now about developing high-quality content perfectly adapted to specific social media platforms and mobile devices—content tailor-made for Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and Tumblr. Hear Vaynerchuk , a New York Times bestselling author, provide a blueprint for social media marketing strategies that really work to connect with customers and beat the competition.

The Kellogg professor who brought us Value Merchants , his 2007 treatise on demonstrating and documenting superior value in business markets, has spent three years researching the issue of how non-strategic product or service sellers can win deals with purchasing agents without immediately jumping to price cuts when pressed for deal improvement. Called “Tiebreaker Selling,” the title of a March 2014 article in the Harvard Business Review, the practice involves providing value-added “justifiers” that break ties in your favor.

Corporate responsibility (CR) initiatives have been proven to generate deep workforce loyalty and commitment that, in turn, increase innovation, improve customer services and drive down costs. Learn from a leading global CR communications practitioner how you can enhance your company's performance by tapping into sky-high employee engagement with your corporate responsibility story.

At Lincoln Financial Group, Human Resources and Marketing have forged a formidable alliance. Together, the leadership teams successfully steered this venerable American brand out of the darkness of the recession and into one of the brightest success stories of the company’s century-plus history. Lincoln Financial’s dynamic duo will take the stage to discuss how their unique relationship, the You’re in Charge® message of empowerment and the Chief Life Officer® campaign ignited its staff, its customers and the industry at large.

Once upon a time, Broadway and business had a baby — a mutant offspring called the "industrial musical." Such “musicals,” of which hundreds were made from the 1950s through the 1970s—some sublime, some lame—were used at sales meetings, conventions, etc. In this fun and irreverent session, channel your b2b forebears.

While your brand is one voice with one logo and one mission statement, people’s social media behavior varies wildly across the world. Yes, it’s your content, brand values, calls to action, but it’s their culture. For brands implementing global social media strategies, your efforts won’t resonate unless you think global. Hear four social media professionals from four countries on three continents talk about how global brands can be flexible to the social media interests of individual cultures while maintaining a cohesive voice.

Experienced users are the only people who can tell you the real pros and cons of a marketing automation system. Here is your chance to hear a panel of seasoned veterans with no axes to grind systems to promote give you the inside story of what they learned after they signed the contract. What are the questions they wish they had asked? What turned out to be harder or easier than expected? And what would they do differently next time?

If you're a young professional, be sure to mosey over to Buddy Guy’s Legends, just one block west of the Hilton, at or after 9:00 pm. For up to four hours, until 1 am Friday, you’ll be able to enjoy some of Chicago’s finest blues music, enjoy libations and southern Cajun food and network with your peers as well as many BMA national and chapter leaders. You’ll also be able to meet many of the YPs who led Thursday afternoons final session.