It’s something I think most people in the business world can agree with, but there’s a distance between “agree” and “implement” – and a significant gap in organizations’ ability to commercialize transformational ideas. According to Steinberg, “…earmarking significant money for idea generation is challenging for most businesses because of the accountability and financial transparency required by financial analysts, shareholders, and employees – an ingrained ‘what will you do for me next quarter?’ MORE >>

The idea is to build an emotional connection with consumers so that they’re more likely to buy your product; brand extensions then serve to increase share of wallet. MLC members can learn how some of our smartest members have grown their brands intelligently in the cases below: How Brown-Forman established a repeatable framework for building brands. They always say it’s better to strive to succeed, rather than simply avoid failure. Looking for failure? Here’s a blueprint: Grow stupid.  What’s the point of a brand, if not growth? Ignore your consumers.  MORE >>

This is the strategy of finding good business. The critical flaw in this rationale is that pursuing business that is well-aligned and ready to move forward is pursuing a customer who is well-informed, likely pursuing other suppliers, and best positioned to have price leverage. Winning commercial organizations will build a capability spanning sales and marketing that is centered on engaging customers with such insight. (the following is a guest post from Nick Toman, head of the Sales Executive Council, our sister program for heads of sales. We look forward to your input! MORE >>

We’ve just had a hugely informative panel discussion on building a commercial insight engine with Lori Morell and Fran Walsh from Kimberly Clark-Professional as well as Keith Clements and Paul Brown from DENTSPLY. DENTSPLY: “We deferred kick-off until we’d built the foundations – deeper knowledge about customers and their business, for example.  Then we brought all divisions together to exchange knowledge, build a complete picture of the customer ecosystem and brainstorm insights.”. DENTSPLY: “We ran a pilot with a few reps from each section of the business (i.e., MORE >>

In the meantime, I want to share a few findings from the Enterprise Council on Small Business , one of our sister CEB programs.  Intuitively, since satisfied customers are more likely to result in future new and repeated business, the combined value is too high of a bar to meet.  Third, remember that when it comes to relationship building, and I’m talking about any kind of relationship, money can’t buy love… which brings me to my next point. In your channel partners’ eyes, “ease of doing business” is the most important component to your relationship. MORE >>