Customer Business

Whether you're in the trenches or the boardroom, you're going to encounter demanding, dissatisfied, and disagreeable customers. Are your people (and you) prepared to deal with them? Ignore a valid complaint and you could be the next viral sensation for all the wrong reasons. But give in to every demand and you may be consumed with the often petty complaints of your worst customers and wind up pandering to them with freebies, discounts, and special attention.

Technology has evaporated the barriers of complaint. With smartphones and always-on Internet access, consumers complain more often and across more channels, many of them public. This requires a completely new system for instantly finding, evaluating, and addressing these complaints. Jay Baer and Edison Research conducted a landmark study of more than 2,000 consumers and found that not all complainers ("haters") are created equal.

WARNING: This book isn't about how to be better at marketing. It's about building so much customer love that great marketing is just a by-product. So that people line up at your door. And there's nothing you can do to stop them. I've worked with 20,000 influencers and studied exactly how they build their brands. And then used those brands to launch cash-gushing businesses. Then I did it all for myself. It worked. And it can work for you too.

Imagine for a moment that your favorite artist, musician, group, or rock star came into your office or called you today requesting your product or service. What would you say to them? What would you do to serve them? Now ask yourself: When was the last time I treated a customer or a client like a rock star? What would it do for your business if you treat every customer and client like a rock star?

Let’s face it. Today’s users are impulsive and easily distracted. They don’t have the time (or patience) to try and figure things out by themselves. They expect the product to be intuitive, easy, and fast. What’s more, they want more than they paid (or didn’t pay) for, and they want it now.

The Unsold Mindset reveals a counterintuitive approach not just to selling but to life. It’s a journey toward an entirely new mindset—the greatest sellers on the planet aren’t successful because of what they do, they’re successful because of what they think. Being a good person and a good salesperson aren’t mutually exclusive. The Unsold Mindset will change the way you think about selling and the way you think about yourself.

These days, consumers have real power: they can research companies, compare ratings, and find alternatives with a simple tap. Focusing on customer needs isn't a nice-to-have, it's a strategic imperative. The Jobs To Be Done Playbook (JTBD) helps organizations turn market insight into action. This book shows you techniques to make offerings people want, as well as make people want your offering.

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.

What you experience is what you remember. The more emotional the experience, the deeper it is branded into your memory. Experience has a massive impact on buying decisions. Every touch point, every time you or someone in your company engages a customer, it creates an experience - something they remember. When they have a negative experience, they tend to vote with their feet (and their wallets) and head straight to your competitors.

Nobody likes cold calls. And nobody really needs to make them. The Referral of a Lifetime teaches a step-by-step system that will allow anyone to generate a steady stream of new business through consistent referrals from existing customers and friends and, at the same time, maximize business with existing customers.

Workplaces are filled with all types of people, and some of them can be very difficult to get along with. By understanding difficult people and their behaviors, a savvy individual can resolve the awkward and problematic situations they create. Dealing with Difficult People looks at difficult behavior - what drives it and how to cope with it by managing aggression, avoiding awkward situations, and keeping calm. This third edition provides tools and techniques for dealing with difficult customers, difficult people in the digital sphere, and difficult bosses.

Why do so many smart people struggle with marketing? The answer is simple: smart people love complexity, and complexity brews problems. But when it comes to marketing, simple is better. Unfortunately, marketing has become overly complicated. We are bombarded with marketing tools and tactics, gimmicks and fads, and countless social media channels. It’s overwhelming. As a smart person, you don’t want to become a professional marketer. You offer a valuable product or service and want to attract more customers.

Onboarding is the most important part of the customer journey, yet many B2B companies fail to act proactively at the start of the relationship. Instead, customer success teams are stuck making heroic efforts to save accounts and fighting fires when customers inevitably run into problems or get stuck. In Onboarding Matters, Donna Weber shares the Orchestrated Onboarding™ framework that she implements with leading B2B companies to turn onboarding from a missed opportunity into a competitive advantage.

To market your business, reach new customers, and create long-lasting loyalty, you need one indispensable element: CONTENT. Whether it’s bite-sized tweets that allow you to forge relationships on Twitter, blog posts that give your readers must-have advice, ebooks or white papers that engage (and don’t bore), videos that share the human side of your company, interactive webinars that deliver a valuable learning experience, or podcasts that can be downloaded and listened to on the fly (and more!) . . .

Are you good at working with your hands? Do you love creating things? Would you like to start a profitable side hustle, but don’t know where to begin? Maybe you already make and sell your own soap, but you don’t know how to find new customers. No worries: My book, Ultimate Guide to Building a Soap Making Business Empire can give you the knowledge and inspiration to start making and selling your own unique line of handmade soaps.

The latest edition of Instagram for Business for Dummies puts you in the picture on how to showcase your product, craft your narrative, and gather insight into how your customers experience and react to your business. Presented in straightforward, practical language by three Instagram and marketing gurus, you'll swiftly go from setting up your account and profile to applying strategies for creating content that deliver super-engaged customers.

Today's customers think less about products and more about brands, no matter whether those brands are organizational, nonprofit, individuals, or service oriented. Customers also care less about the features of your product—what it has—than about its benefits—what it does for them. While this sounds like common sense, shockingly few organizations actually conduct business this way.

Selling is tougher than ever before. Potential customers are under extreme pressure to do more with less money, less time, and fewer resources, and they're wary of anyone who tries to get them to buy or change anything. Under such extreme conditions, yesterday's sales strategies no longer work. Sales strategist Jill Konrath tells you how to overcome obstacles, get more appointments, speed up decisions, and win sales with today's short-fused, frazzled customers.

The Product Mindset approaches product development from a bold, new direction, based on a shared internal outlook that drives focus, speed, experimentation, and innovation from a wide variety of stakeholders. David DeWolf and Jessica Hall provide you with all the tools you’ll need to revitalize your company’s methodologies, reframe its culture, and help your company thrive in the digital marketplace.

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.