Business Research

Did you know that nearly half of salespeople fail to meet their quotas every year? Or that many of the most common sales behaviors drive down sales performance? In today's fiercely competitive marketplace, you can't afford to lose sales that should be yours. But with so much conflicting advice from self-proclaimed "gurus", how do you know which sales strategies actually work? Leading sales trainer, researcher, and CEO of Hoffeld Group David Hoffeld has the answer.

How can we create and market creative works that achieve longevity? Holiday explores this mystery by drawing on his extensive experience working with businesses and creators such as Google, American Apparel, and the author John Grisham as well as his interviews with the minds behind some of the greatest perennial sellers of our time.

Customers everywhere describe their interactions with companies in a deeply personal way: We hate our banks, love our smartphones, and think the cable company is out to get us. What is actually going through our brains when we make these judgments? Customer loyalty expert Chris Malone and top social psychologist Susan Fiske have discovered that our perceptions arise from spontaneous judgments on warmth and competence, the same two factors that also determine our impressions of people.

Milton Friedman is one of the most famous economists in history. His writings and theories on everything from capitalism and freedom to deregulation and welfare have inspired movements, influenced government policies, and changed the course of America’s economic history. Now, acclaimed Friedman biographer Lanny Ebenstein brings together 20 of Friedman’s greatest essays in The Indispensable Milton Friedman: Essays on Politics and Economics.

Authentic influence is about more than creating a strong initial connection - it's about sustaining professional relationships long after an agreement has been reached. Based on their commitment to listening, genuine engagement, and the pursuit of win-win outcomes, authors Mark Goulston and John Ullmen share a new method that business leaders can use to examine priorities, learn about the needs of key players, earn others' attention, motivate others to hear more, and add value with question and actions.

What is it that made Starbucks an overnight sensation and separated it from other coffee house companies? Why do many products with great product innovation, perfect locations, terrific customer experiences, even breakthrough advertising, fail to get the same visceral traction in the marketplace as brands like Apple and Nike?

Since founding Fixup, a pop-up repair shop, Sandra Goldmark has become a leader in the movement to demand better "stuff". She doesn't just want to help us clear clutter - she aims to move us away from throwaway culture, to teach us to reuse and repurpose more thoughtfully, and to urge companies to produce better stuff. Although her goal is ambitious, the solution to getting there is surprisingly simple and involves all of us: have good stuff, not too much, mostly reclaimed, care for it, and pass it on.

Business, like any adventure, begins with a leap into the unknown. Brian Tracy's first dream was of a journey. Not a leisurely drive to the beach or a weekend campout-a wide open adventure that would take him 17,000 miles from his home on Canada's Pacific Coast all the way to South Africa. His journey - a harrowing series of false starts, long days, and narrow escapes- taught him about "becoming unstoppable," not only in pursuing adventure but in daily life and business as well.

Why are you captivated by some people but not by others? Why do you recall some brands yet forget the rest? In a distracted, overcrowded world, how do certain leaders, friends, and family members convince you to change your behavior? Answer: fascination, the most powerful way to influence decision-making. It's more persuasive than marketing, advertising, or any other form of communication. And it all starts with seven universal triggers: lust, mystique, alarm, prestige, power, vice, and trust.

If you've ever used ZipCar, Amazon Prime, Spotify, NetFlix, Groupon, Weight Watchers, SurveyMonkey, United Mileage Plus, Pinterest, or Twitter, you are part of The Membership Economy, an increasingly popular model that author Robbie Kellman Baxter sees as the inevitable result of technological advancements, social trends, and a generation in transition. The Membership Economy argues that we are now moving away from ownership, but we still want the benefits that come with access.

Brevity is confidence. Length is fear. This is the guiding principle of Smart Brevity, a communication formula built by Axios journalists to prioritize essential news and information, explain its impact and deliver it in a concise and visual format. Now, the co-founders of Axios have created an essential guide for communicating effectively and efficiently using Smart Brevity—think Strunk and White’s Elements of Style for the digital age.

This audiobook provides evidence-based answers to the key questions asked by marketers every day. Tackling issues such as how brands grow, how advertising really works, what price promotions really do and how loyalty programs really affect loyalty, How Brands Grow presents decades of research in a style that is written for marketing professionals to grow their brands.

An informative and entertaining account of how actions send signals that shape behaviors and how to design better incentives for better results in our life, our work, and our world.

In this thought-provoking and entertaining book, Tom Asacker, author of Sandbox Wisdom and A Clear Eye for Branding, pulls back the curtain on the workings of the mind and reveals the hidden logic to motivating behavior, both in ourselves and in others.

Smart and accessible, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding is the definitive text on branding, pairing anecdotes about some of the best brands in the world, like Rolex, Volvo, and Heineken, with the signature savvy of marketing gurus Al and Laura Ries. Combining The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding and The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding, this book proclaims that the only way to stand out in today’s marketplace is to build your product or service into a brand - and provides the step-by-step instructions you need to do so.

We are just witnessing the start of the radical changes in retail that will revolutionize shopping in every way. As Amazon and other disruptors continue to offer ever-greater value, customers' expectations will continue to ratchet up, making winning (and keeping) those customers all the more challenging. In The Shopping Revolution, Barbara E. Kahn, a foremost retail expert and professor at the Wharton School, examines the companies that have been most successful during this wave of change and offers fresh insights into what we can learn from their ascendance.

At the end of 2008, Ford Motor Company was just months away from running out of cash. With the auto industry careening toward ruin, Congress offered all three Detroit automakers a bailout. General Motors and Chrysler grabbed the taxpayer lifeline, but Ford decided to save itself. Under the leadership of charismatic CEO Alan Mulally, Ford had already put together a bold plan to unify its divided global operations, transform its lackluster product lineup, and overcome a dys­functional culture of infighting, backstabbing, and excuses.

Spread through the public in the form of popular stories, ideas can go viral and move markets - whether it's the belief that tech stocks can only go up or that housing prices never fall. Whether true or false, stories like these - transmitted by word of mouth, by the news media, and increasingly by social media - drive the economy by driving our decisions about how and where to invest, how much to spend and save, and more. But despite the obvious importance of such stories, most economists have paid little attention to them. Narrative Economics sets out to change that.

Revolutionary retail guru Paco Underhill is back with a completely revised edition of his classic, witty, best-selling book on our ever-evolving consumer culture—full of fresh observations and important lessons from the cutting edge of retail, which is taking place in the world’s emerging markets.

Hi, I’m Wes Bush, founder of the Product-Led Institute. And in Product-Led Growth, I show you how you can cut your acquisition costs and scale further than you ever thought possible...by making your product the tool that helps you acquire, convert, and retain customers. But what does it mean to be "product-led"? How do you know if a product-led growth strategy makes sense for your business? And most importantly, how do you execute it? You’ll find answers to all of these questions inside this audiobook.