“Just some friendly advice, you should consider joining for your own professional development. It is not formal training, but honestly, you will learn more from the other people than you will in a formal training. Also, it provides a network of contacts to tap into as you grow your function to the next level.

Probably, the most important thing, it is a great networking opportunity for you and it will be really helpful in your new role as well. I would not advise you to join if I didn’t think it was worth the money. In fact, I have to justify participation to my management each year as they try to reduce the budget. I always advise my management to cut something else, the Share Group is too valuable to my personal development.”

“Many of you will remember that I started with basically nothing, and built my budget, my research efforts, and my physical team (from 1 to 6), into a meaningful support system for my organization. I could not have done it without the support of my CMS friends and peers. Thank you for all of your support and helpful suggestions over the years! You served as a great sounding board that provided me with knowledge and grounded me in realistic expectations. This invaluable information helped me build a pragmatic and efficient category management approach, and helped me to discourage unrealistic expectations for a company of our scale.”

“Over the past year and a half, I have been a part of an outstanding share group that meets two times per year. I am new to the group, but CMS has worked with us for a long time. I cannot tell you how much I have learned and the relationships that I have secured because of this group. Last time Ken and I were together he mentioned that he had a similar group for the training department. I passed along your name and number to Ken in case you would be interested. I promise you if the training group is anything like the broker group, you will not be disappointed.”

“Just wanted to drop a note to let you know that I am in a new assignment in Shopper Marketing. I can honestly say that attending these share groups over the last 3 years has been one of my favorite things to do in the past role as Team Leader. Hopefully I will be back someday and see some of you again at these groups. Please keep in touch and let me know if there is anything I can ever do to help any of you out. While I did not get to meet all of you, I am sure we would all have become friends just as I was lucky enough to do with many of your colleagues.”