Customer Success

In Honest to Greatness, serial Inc. 5000 entrepreneur Peter Kozodoy shows how today’s greatest business leaders use honesty - not as a touchy-feely core value, but as a business strategy that produces game-changing, industry-dominating success.

From my humble beginning as a market trader's daughter to a fashion stylist in Paris, I have carved out a career that most people could only dream of. Over the years, thousands of people have asked me for the secrets of my “Sue-cess” and it's only now that I feel the world is ready to understand. Charity Shop Sue's Tools for Management and Success is a guide that will illuminate your path to becoming a better manager and a better human person.

While employees may possess the knowledge and skills to do their jobs, they are unaware of what best-selling customer service author Steve Curtin calls job purpose: how their specific tasks contribute to the organization’s reason for being. They understand what to do and how to do it, but not why they do it. Curtin offers a fresh tool to overcome this challenge. Instead of just having assignments to work on, they now have a purpose to work toward. Service quality goes from transactional to exceptional.

The world of marketing is undergoing major change. Sophisticated algorithms can test billions of marketing messages and measure results, and shift the weight of campaigns - all in real time. What’s next? A complete transformation of marketing as we know it, where machines themselves design and implement customized advertising tactics at virtually every point of digital contact.

What if a company were so treasured and trusted that people literally took to the streets - by the thousands - to save it? That company is Market Basket, a popular New England supermarket chain. After long-time, CEO Arthur T. Demoulas was ousted by his cousin Arthur S. Demoulas, the company's managers and rank-and-file workers struck back. Risking their own livelihoods to restore the job of their beloved boss they walked out, but they didn't walk far. At huge protest rallies, they were joined by loyal customers - leaving stores empty.

When it comes to negotiation, there is an ugly double standard. As women, if we make concessions to further a deal, we're viewed as weak. But if we play hardball, we can be seen as overly aggressive - and the strategy backfires. No wonder most women hate negotiating.

Does your business feel lifeless in today's fast-paced marketplace? Tired of struggling to stand out? Can't seem to clarify your message? You may be a zombie and not even know it. Zombies are confused, haphazard, and indistinguishable. Businesses act like zombies when empty communications alienate customers, supporters, and partners. The Zombie Business Cure gets to the heart of many communication problems: identity.

In Rules to Break and Laws to Follow, marketing gurus Don Peppers and Martha Rogers challenge you to break the rules and propose a whole new way of thinking about how to create real shareholder value in today's competitive environment, operating with today's technologies.

Fred Reichheld's 2006 book The Ultimate Question - that question being, "How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?" - challenged the conventional wisdom of customer satisfaction programs. It coined the terms "bad profits" and "good profits" and pointed to a faster, much more accurate way of gauging customers' real loyalty to a company. Richard Owen and Laura Brooks are co-developers, along with Reichheld, of the methodology behind answering the question.

Every year, managers at companies large and small are finding it harder to compete with the likes of Google and Amazon, who are stealing their customers and cornering every conceivable market and service. There is, however, a way for companies to survive - and win - in this era of digital behemoths. Choose Your Customer is a powerful customer-targeted guide that can help managers level the playing field against their biggest competitors.

If there were a single great “secret” to being an elite sales professional, surely one of the millions of attendees of BrianTracy’s sales seminars would have spilled the beans by now. There isn’t a secret. But there is a set of consistently successful selling techniques that most companies don’t teach their salespeople, and which most entrepreneurs and independent sales pros think they don’t have time to learn.

Conversation Marketing will help you connect your brands, not just to the minds of your consumers, but to their hearts. Slick slogans and catchy ads may still work in some instances, but today's discerning consumers demand more. They want information and a reason to connect with a brand before they act. They want a conversation.

When it comes to strategies, salespeople usually veer toward one of two extremes: operating analytically…or by the seat of their pants. In this groundbreaking audiobook on sales creativity, listeners will learn how to integrate the right-brain aptitude for innovation with the left-brain affinity for logic and process. The result is a fresh, dynamic approach that addresses customers' needs while expanding the salesperson's entire way of thinking.

What makes the world's most successful individuals so good at their jobs? What do they do that others don't? The Connectors answers those questions with the kind of straightforward wisdom that business strategists so often overlook. Forget marketing tactics or business school best practices. Those are handy, but it's really people - and the relationships you build with them - that form the cornerstone of long-term success, sales growth, and excellence.

Like the ocean, the marketplace constantly changes and today's cresting reward becomes tomorrow's crashing risk. Before you venture out, take a lesson from the experts: big wave surfers. Like successful entrepreneurs, they rely on preparation, passion, and persistence - and they relish a challenge. So it's no surprise that countless surfers have pioneered products and launched thriving businesses (GoPro cameras, O'Neil, Reef, Quicksilver).

Good sales relationships don't just happen. They must be nurtured and developed. From ancient trade routes to modern Internet platforms, sales is one of the world's oldest professions. Throughout the ages, there have been as many ways to sell as there are customers who want to buy. But whether you're a novice or seasoned sales person, no matter what your product or service there is one truth that crosses all boundaries in selling. Selling depends on a relationship.

Whether at work or at home, success is something we strive for in all aspects of our lives. And while there are a number of obvious things you should be doing in order to achieve your goals and reach success, there are also some not-so-obvious ones. Entrepreneur Voices on the Science of Success offers data and research-backed tools and tactics for both business and personal achievement from entrepreneurs and small business owners including Tim Ferris, Brian Tracy, and Reid Hoffman.

Negotiation is the middle ground between capitulation and stonewalling, a back and forth between two parties trying to reach agreement. If a price or other term is nonnegotiable, there is no give and take, just "take it or leave it". You may think you are negotiating, but if the other side isn't playing, you aren't either. Regardless of the industry, situation, or product, the two most common mistakes negotiators make are: 1. They give ground too easily, and 2. They get nothing in return.

Customers are speaking loud and clear through a myriad of mediums. Evidence shows that customers will no longer stand for the hurried and complacent service that has become the norm. They are looking for a positive, memorable experience. Organizations that provide that level of service will earn their loyalty. Customers base their decisions on nothing more than a positive or negative review of your product and/or service. Pay Attention! paves the way.

The technology industry regularly invests billions of dollars into products that will never find mainstream consumer success. They fail because of one simple reason: poor marketing. The industry is leaving billions of dollars on the table because most companies don’t know how to turn their customers into brand evangelists.