"We Are GSM" Video - Meet Professor Olivier Rubel

Bridging the Gap: How to Align Marketing and Sales in B2B Firms

I do research, mostly in marketing. Over the years, I've been focusing my research more and more on problems related to marketing, sales and technology. For example, one of my research projects right now has to do with cross-functional coordination between the marketing department and the sales department in B2B firms. The issue in this kind of setting is usually marketing and sales disagree on what is a good prospect for the company. So, there's a lot of tension going on between the two departments.

How Blood Banks Use Marketing to Build a Lifesaving Donor Network

So, early in my career, I worked with blood banks. The problem for a blood bank is that they are responsible for collecting blood, which is then supplied to different hospitals or health care organizations, so on and so forth. So to do that, they basically need to create donors. The primary tool for doing that is marketing. I've collaborated with blood banks to basically look at how they design marketing programs and how they manage their marketing budgets to try to figure out a way to optimize how they should do marketing optimally.

Challenging Students to Find Passion: Insights from a 15-Year GSM Veteran

I've been at the GSM for over 15 years now. I've taught various courses at different levels. Right now, I'm teaching the core marketing class for MBA students. I'm also teaching Analytic Decision Making for our MSBA students in San Francisco. In the past, I’ve taught Marketing Strategies, Market Research, and Sales and Channel Management. I bring my research into the classroom, such as using data collected from my blood bank study to enhance my core marketing class.

My advice would be, "Come with an open mind." Be ready to be challenged and to get out of your comfort zone. The other thing would be to be passionate and find your passions about what you want to achieve. You can work in fintech, you can work in wherever. What is important is to find the things that basically would make your heart beat one day after another. Because once you graduate and you work, you're going to work for a very long time. And, one good way to make this time enjoyable and fruitful is to basically do something with passion and with your heart.

Kids Say the Cheesiest Things

So one day my wife, two kids and I were in France, in the small town called Fontainebleau, an hour south of Paris. So my kids are half French, half American. But we live here, so they're more culturally, I would say, more American. A beautiful street, Kingly Street. Being a good Frenchman, I say, “Let's go into the cheese store.” I go in the cheese store. I’m like, “Mmmm, it smells really good." And my two small American kids are like, “It stinks!” I thought I failed the French education at that point.

We Are GSM.