Customer Business

One of the biggest challenges we face as entrepreneurs and innovators is understanding how to make our ideas resonate. We tend to have no shortage of ideas, but we struggle to tell the story of how they are going to be useful in the world and why they will matter to people. Marketing is the way we communicate how our ideas translate to value for people in a marketplace.

Most startups don't fail because they can't build a product. Most startups fail because they can't get traction. Startup advice tends to be a lot of platitudes repackaged with new buzzwords, but Traction is something else entirely. As Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares learned from their own experiences, building a successful company is hard. For every startup that grows to the point where it can go public or be profitably acquired, hundreds of others sputter and die.

Mr. Shmooze is the parable of a man who reveals the secret shared by all superstar salespeople. Selling, in its most exquisite form, is not about "taking", nor is it about "persuading". Selling, believe it or not, is about "giving". Mr. Shmooze gives for a living. He starts by listening and he quickly comes to understand what people really need. His customers love him because he gives more than he takes. They trust him because he is passionate about their interests.

What are companies like Uber, IKEA, Belgo, and Eurostar doing that makes them so profitable? They know how to scale relationships. But online gurus are lying to you about scaling to hundreds of clients without creating an exceptional customer experience. Ben and I created this book with that in mind. When you feel like there is much more to be done in how you serve your clients, we’ve got you. For a long time, marketers--specifically in the online space--have been making bolder and bolder promises.

Most companies treat service as a low-priority business operation, keeping it out of the spotlight until a customer complains. Then service gets to make a brief appearance - for as long as it takes to calm the customer down and fix whatever foul-up jeopardized the relationship. In Uncommon Service, Frances Frei and Anne Morriss show how, in a volatile economy where the old rules of strategic advantage no longer hold true, service must become a competitive weapon, not a damage-control function. That means weaving service tightly into every core decision your company makes.

Still struggling through the financial crisis that began in 2008, consumers aren't buying traditional sales approaches anymore. So how do salespeople, corporate communicators, managers, and marketers sell their ideas, products, and services to a generation of customers who are more skeptical and less influenced by conventional marketing than ever before?

In their acclaimed best seller The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and his colleagues at CEB busted many longstanding myths about sales. Now they've turned their research and analysis to a new vital business subject - customer loyalty - with a new book that turns the conventional wisdom on its head. The idea that companies must delight customers by exceeding service expectations is so entrenched that managers rarely even question it. They devote untold time, energy, and resources to trying to dazzle people and inspire their undying loyalty.

In this book, Melissa Perri explains how laying the foundation for great product management can help companies solve real customer problems while achieving business goals. By understanding how to communicate and collaborate within a company structure, you can create a product culture that benefits both the business and the customer. You'll learn product management principles that can be applied to any organization, big or small.

Exceeding expectations rather than simply satisfying them is the cornerstone of the Disney approach to customer service. Now, in honor of the 10th anniversary of the original Be Our Guest, the Disney Institute, which specializes in helping professionals see new possibilities through concepts not found in the typical workplace, is revealing even more of the business behind the magic of quality service.

The best financial advisors are well equipped to succeed regardless of market conditions. Based on interviews with 15 top advisors, each doing several million dollars worth of business every year, The Million-Dollar Financial Advisor distills their universal success principles into 13 distinct lessons. Each is explained step-by-step for immediate application by veteran and new financial professionals alike.

Companies have invested thousands and even millions of dollars in CRM technology over the past decade, but frontline salespeople and sales executives alike are still groping for solutions. The problem of drift - a common phenomenon in which a prospect simply forgets about the product offering and goes dark - is persistent and rampant. Technology doesn't change behavior on its own. Behavior is changed by adopting better habits. The fact is, 44 percent of salespeople give up after one follow-up attempt. That sad reality presents a genuine opportunity.

In the age of email and instant communication, great sales copy is indispensable to closing a deal. But too many sales letters end up in the junk file or the wastebasket. In this new edition of his top-selling work, author Dan Kennedy explains why some sales letters work and most don't. And he shows how to write copy that any business can use.

From services to products, online to in-person, small-scale to multinational, your customers' loyalty depends on how you interact with them. Transform Customer Experience is your ultimate guide to putting your customer first. Author and CX expert Isabella Villani shows how you can implement a customer strategy from planning to execution.

Another extraordinary business fable from the New York Times best-selling author Patrick Lencioni. This new book in the popular Lencioni series shows what it takes to gain a real and lasting competitive edge.

The New Gold Standard takes you on an exclusive tour behind the scenes of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. Granted unprecedented access to the company's executives, staff, and its award-winning Leadership Center training facilities, bestselling author Joseph Michelli explored every level of leadership within the organization.

No is perhaps the most important and certainly the most powerful word in the language. Every day we find ourselves in situations where we need to say no: to people at work, at home, and in our communities; because no is the word we must use to protect ourselves and to stand up for everything and everyone that matters to us. This indispensable audiobook will give you a simple three-step method for saying a Positive No.

In Pick Up the Phone and Sell: How Proactive Calls to Customers and Prospects Can Double Your Sales, sales expert, consultant, and Wall Street Journal best-selling author Alex Goldfayn delivers a comprehensive road map to one of the most important weapons in any salesperson's arsenal: the phone. From the author of Selling Boldly and 5-Minute Selling, the book teaches you techniques to supercharge your sales by making the proactive call the tip of your selling spear.

As a salesperson your product knowledge is extensive, but that's not enough. If you fail to ask the right questions - the ones that uncover a customer's real needs - you will never close the deal. Questions that Sell reveals advanced questioning techniques that will help you sell your products or services based on value to the customer, rather than price - and increase your success rate as a result.

Magnetic Marketing® is a radical, dramatically different sea-change in the way new customers, clients, patients, or prospects are attracted and in the way products, services, businesses, and practices are advertised. It is a “change movement” that has established itself in over 136 different niches, business categories, industries, and professions, but is still also a “best kept secret”.

If you don’t offer great customer experience, your main competitors will take away 50% of your business. Period. Gone are the days in which businesses could simply offer an "OK" experience and get away with it. In today’s hypercompetitive environment, companies can no longer be just B2C or B2B. They must become B2Me—more personal, more relevant.