For our major B2C research initiative this year, we’re looking into changing consumer purchase processes.  So much has changed in the b2c world – economic downturn, increasing options, new information and influence sources – that we had to believe the way people buy has changed as well.

We’ll be talking a lot more about our findings at our executive meeting series and webinar series starting this summer, but we certainly have found some surprising things, a few of which we’ll talk about here.

First off – the purchase funnel is dead, or at least a lot less common than we think it is. Read More »

It’s amazing how much the word “innovation” has entered our lexicon this year, and for good reason.  B2B companies are finally seeing the light at the end of the economic downturn and as a direct result are staring at growth goals again—big ones.

Sadly, our budgets haven’t exactly expanded at the same speed as our growth expectations, and product innovation can be expensive (check out our new innovation research to find out how to get more reliably breakthrough innovation).  Luckily, successes from several companies have shown us that we don’t need to rely solely on product or service innovation to create value and growth.  Instead, we can look at commercial innovation: growing the top line with existing capabilities. Read More »

Don’t get me wrong: I believe the smartphone revolution is coming.  At MLC, we’re looking into our members’ experiments in mobile and we’re hearing lots of great success stories (much more to come on that throughout the year).  And if you haven’t yet seen this fascinating Morgan Stanley presentation on changes in tech you should read it as soon as you’re done with my post.  They predict sales of smartphones will exceed all PCs by mid-2012.  Meanwhile Nielsen says smartphones will be roughly 50% of all mobile phone sales in Q3 of this year. Read More »

Here at MLC, this is the year of customer purchasing behavior.   We’re looking at the question of changing customer behaviors  from both a b2c and b2b perspective, with surveys and interviews with our members.  (B2B members, let us know if you want to take part in our survey and get custom results for your industry).  The best part about this is we get to read the latest neuroscience books for work.  Well, OK, I recognize I should probably stay in research if I think that’s the best part.

One of my favorite books so far has been How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer.  He keeps a fascinating blog called The Frontal Cortex, writes for the New Yorker and Wired, and is frequently on NPR radio shows like This American Life and Radio Lab.  He’s not a neuroscientist, but at this point he has learned enough to write authoritatively on the brain.

In this book, he investigates how good our brain is at helping us make the best decisions.  The answer?  Really good, and really bad.  As humans, we have amazing ability to rely on our experience-honed instinct, but those same instincts can lead us far astray.

Here are some of the biggest takeaways from How We Decide: Read More »

At MLC, we’ve just started our major research for B2Bs for 2011 and we’re having a series of research calls with our members.  (Want to participate?  Just let us know).  Through those conversations, we’ve seen a few early trends for 2011, which I offer below, with resources from MLC as appropriate.  And stay tuned – we’ll be providing a lot more information as we launch our customer survey and develop our major research initiative for the year.

Here are the 9 (plus one) trends for 2011: Read More »

Were you at Dreamforce in early December?  If you’re like 30,000 other people (and many MLC members) the answer is yes.  If you’re like me, the answer is… not exactly.  We were busy writing our surveys on customer behavior (B2B members, it’s not too late to get great insight into your customers for free—just email me at <freemank at executiveboard dot com> if you would like more information, or take a look at this document).  As a result, I had to attend virtually.

Thankfully, it is pretty much fully available online, so I’m fully prepared to offer 3 marketing trends observed from Dreamforce – with MLC resources to help you get after them – as well as my opinion about the most interesting salesforce.com announcement for B2B marketers. Read More »

Drum roll please… many of you noticed our recent poll asking where we should focus our research efforts in 2011.  Thanks to you (and particular thanks to those who offered up time to talk to us about your areas of interest) we have our major themes of our research for next year: Read More »

It is amazing how we all share this vision of innovation: innately creative tinkerers, working away alone in a laboratory (probably in a garage somewhere) until, “Eureka!” they solve the problem and create the product the world has been waiting for.

Turns out that’s pretty much all wrong.  At MLC, we’re doing research on innovation right now (help us out by taking this survey and we’ll send you a copy of the results).  Along the way I read The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun and took a look at Steven Johnson’s work on innovation — you can see some of it in this TED talk and the rest in his new book Where Good Ideas Come From.  Together, they show a more accurate picture of innovation.  Here are some of the myths I found most surprising: Read More »

Over 200 attendees, 15 sessions and over 100 mentions of the word ‘differentiate’ later, we’ve reached the end of the joint MLC/SEC conference The Distinctive Purchase Experience.

It was a huge success, with great feedback from our members.  Attendees, you can continue the conversation and get soft copies of all materials by following this link.  Anyone see the conference in tweets by searching #cebsm.

We figured the best way to get across all the cool ideas coming from the conference was list form.  So here goes – the conference in lists. Read More »

Here at MLC we’re very excited about the start of our very first conference for business-to-business companies, called The Distinctive Purchase Experience.  We developed it in cahoots with our sister program the Sales Executive Council and have a fantastic agenda, most of it centered around the proven importance of providing insight through the purchase experience.  It starts Monday afternoon in Las Vegas and we have over 200 members signed up to join us. Read More »