REPORT

In late 2007, the CMO Council set up a membership organization, CLOSE: The Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness, to convene sales and marketing to discuss the importance and best practices of aligning the two functions. A major part of the effort is a dedicated website – closebiz.org – that features the latest academic and field research, real-time news and information from The Wall Street Journal affecting sales and marketing professionals, and interactive tools to bring the two sides together for informal, important dialogue. A vital part of the effort are six global events – one each in New York, London, Sydney, Sao Paulo Paris and San Francisco – that gather top sales and marketing professionals to discuss the issues, hear directly from experts in the field, and be given a chance to discover practical, “do it now” answers to the problems at their specific corporations (visit closebiz.org for learnings from these events). This paper summarizes the learnings from the third event held in Sao Paulo, Brazil on April 29, 2008.