Customer Business

More than two generations ago, the venture capital community convinced the entrepreneurial world that writing business plans and raising venture capital constituted the twin centerpieces of entrepreneurial endeavor. They did so for good reasons: the sometimes astonishing returns they've delivered to their investors and the astonishingly large companies that their ecosystem has created. But the vast majority of fast-growing companies never take any venture capital. So where does the money come from to start and grow their companies?

The lifeblood of your business is repeat customers. But customers can be fickle, markets shift, and competitors are ruthless. So how do you ensure a steady flow of repeat business? The secret--no matter what industry you're in--is finding and keeping automatic customers. These days virtually anything you need can be purchased through a subscription, with more convenience than ever before.

Will Guidara was twenty-six when he took the helm of Eleven Madison Park, a struggling two-star brasserie that had never quite lived up to its majestic room. Eleven years later, EMP was named the best restaurant in the world. How did Guidara pull off this unprecedented transformation? Radical reinvention, a true partnership between the kitchen and the dining room—and memorable, over-the-top, bespoke hospitality.

In The Customer Service Revolution, DiJulius points out how numerous companies have made customer service their biggest competitive advantage, are dominating their industries, and have made price irrelevant. As a result of this customer service revolution, people are being treated differently, better, and in a way like never before. This is a result of how companies and management are treating their employees and how employees are treating each other and the customer - which ultimately permeates into people’s personal lives at home and in their communities.

Negotiation is an essential element of almost all of our interactions - personally and professionally. It’s part of how we establish relationships, work together, and arrive at solutions for our clients, our organizations, and ourselves. Simply put, those who don’t negotiate well risk falling victim to those who do. Throughout his career, success expert Brian Tracy has negotiated millions of dollars worth of contracts. Now, with this concise guide, you too can become a master negotiator.

In this audiobook, you'll learn a structured and sustainable approach to continuous discovery that will help you answer each of these questions, giving you the confidence to act while also preparing you to be wrong. You'll learn to balance action with doubt so that you can get started without being blindsided by what you don't get right. If you want to discover products that customers love—that also deliver business results—this audiobook is for you.

The Lean Product Playbook is a practical guide to building products that customers love. Whether you work at a start-up or a large, established company, we all know that building great products is hard. Most new products fail. This book helps improve your chances of building successful products through clear, step-by-step guidance and advice.

The subscription business model is hot - from software to music to movies to diet programs, investors and public markets want businesses that create recurring payments from unlimited customers. The old sales and marketing methods can handle attracting new customers for growth; however, only in the last five years has a discipline emerged that views growth in relation to retention, not just sales.

This audiobook explains why people buy - and how to use that knowledge to improve pricing, increase sales, and create better, "brain-friendly" brand messaging. Become a more effective leader with the practical tools in this book.

Stories That Stick provides a clear framework of ideals and a concise set of actions for you to take complete control of your own story, utilizing the principles behind the world’s most effective business storytelling strategies. Telling these stories well is a simple, accessible skill anyone can develop. With case studies, company profiles, and anecdotes backed with original research, Hall presents storytelling as the underutilized talent that separates the good from the best in business.

How Clients Buy is the much-needed guide to selling your services. If you're one of the millions of people whose skills are the "product," you know that you cannot be successful unless you bring in clients. The problem is, you're trained to do your job-not sell it. No matter how great you may be at your actual role, you likely feel a bit lost, hesitant, or "behind" when it comes to courting clients, an unfamiliar territory where you're never quite sure of the line between under- and over-selling. This book comes to the rescue with real, practical advice for selling what you do.

What do How to Win Friends and Influence People and Sell! have in common (other than Dale Carnegie)? They're both based on the premise that relationships are what matter. In this age where media is social and funding is raised by crowds, the sales cycle has permanently changed. It's no longer enough to know your product, nor always appropriate to challenge your customer's thinking based on your online research. In Sell!: The Way Your Customers Want to Buy, Dale Carnegie & Associates reveal the real modern sales cycle.

In today's competitive business climate, you can't just satisfy your customers. You need to give them experiences that they won't forget. The Cult of the Customer is your guide to creating a customer-focused culture that turns satisfied customers into customer evangelists. Author Shep Hyken has spent 25 years studying great companies and the evangelists they create. He describes how to design a strategy that leads both customers and employees through five distinct cultural phases-from "uncertainty" to "amazement".

Drawing on his experience as a psychiatrist, business consultant, and coach, author Mark Goulston combines his background with the latest scientific research to help listeners turn the "impossible" and "unreachable" people in their lives into allies, devoted customers, loyal colleagues, and lifetime friends. Just Listen provides simple but powerful techniques listeners can use to really get through to people.

This book triggers you to think and act strategically, shows what you can learn from business models inside and outside your industry, and urges you to apply those learnings to make your own shift.

It takes a special kind of magic for a challenger brand to achieve seemingly impossible customer-centric results. It’s that magic that makes Australian telecommunications company Macquarie Technology world leaders in award-winning customer experience. Joseph A. Michelli—the bestselling author of books about brands renowned for their stellar service and outstanding growth, such as The Ritz-Carlton, Mercedes-Benz, and Starbucks—was so impressed by Macquarie’s ability to deliver transformative customer experiences that he felt compelled to share this book.

The authors unveil research that identifies Mobilizers and provide a roadmap for how sales and marketing teams can find them, engage them with disruptive insight, and leverage them to drive consensus across the customer organization. Once you have identified the Mobilizers among your customers, almost any rep, with the right coaching, tools, and marketing support can start a chain reaction that leads to a whole organization getting on board with even the most provocative ideas.

They say you shouldn't ask your mom whether your business is a good idea, because she loves you and will lie to you. This is technically true, but it misses the point. You shouldn't ask anyone if your business is a good idea. It's a bad question, and everyone will lie to you at least a little. As a matter of fact, it's not their responsibility to tell you the truth. It's your responsibility to find it, and it's worth doing right.

With emerging technology transforming customer expectations, it’s more important than ever to keep a laser focus on the experience companies provide their customers. In The Customer of the Future, customer experience futurist Blake Morgan outlines 10 easy-to-follow customer experience guidelines that integrate emerging technologies with effective strategies to combat disconnected processes, silo mentalities, and a lack of buyer perspective.

Based on six years of research, Harvard Business School Professor Thales Teixeira shows how and why industries are disrupted and what established companies can do to respond - as well as what potential start-ups must master if they hope to gain a competitive edge.