Topics of the SeLC 2010

"Conversations make markets – New Learning as a Success Factor for Value Creation"

Successful companies not only communicate with their customers, they have conversations with them, they listen to find out what customers want. Companies create value by translating these customer conversations into products and procedures. The individualization of markets implicates a growing demand for direct marketing strategies, good communication skills and expeditious reactions to customers´ wishes. An authentic presentation, a customer- oriented image and a good reputation are important factors for success during customer conversations.

In 2000, the "Cluetrain Manifesto" titled “Markets are Conversations“. Today, 10 years later, markets are extremely cross-linked and communication speed and density have become so high, that one could say that “Conversations make Markets“.

Markets build on direct communication and relationship management with existing and potential customers. Companies who do not master this business facet, will lose competitiveness.

Conversations between customers and companies are a mirror of modern society:

• people are networked and permanently part of direct or indirect communication
• teamwork and result-sharing has become the rule
• purchase decisions are highly dependent on peer-group consensus
• the limits between work and personal time are being blurred

Customer perception input initiates learning processes, changes and innovation inside the companies. Learning and education are decisive for the question how fast and how good companies are at translating customers wishes into value creation.

Learning has become an interactive, highly communicative and networked process, picking up whatever is happening on our virtual and globalized markets on a daily basis. The content of the new learning processes is unknown. The participants of market conversations are constantly making decisions about what they want to learn with whom, where and when. Learning has become a conversation with customers, colleagues, providers, employees and superiors, it is part of value creation itself.

Consequently, in-company learning is taking place more and more directly on the job, outside formal vocational training processes. Qualifications that result from this kind of learning are important for future success, but do also demand organizational changes on different levels. Mastering the rules of successful conversation also in continuous education and learning processes will be the basis for success in the “Conversations make Markets“- approach.