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.

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.

There's a Customer Born Every Minute reveals the lost wisdom of famous entrepreneur and showman, P. T. Barnum. Barnum was much more than a showman; he was a dedicated businessman and entrepreneur with a razor-sharp mind. In this delightful and absorbing new edition, Joe Vitale reveals the secrets of Barnum's success and shares the 10 key business practices that Barnum developed and lived by.

Coleman offers a system designed to dramatically increase customer retention and as a result, the bottom line. He identifies eight distinct emotional needs customers undergo during the 100 days following a purchase, whether it's as small as a new drink at Starbucks or as big as a house. If you can understand and anticipate these phases, you can use a myriad of techniques - in-person, email, mail, and video - to cement a long and valuable partnership.

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.

Customer Data and Privacy: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review will help you understand the tangled interdependencies and complexities and develop strategies that allow your company to be good stewards, collecting, using, and storing customer data responsibly.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Art of Selling to the Affluent, 2nd Edition offers a detailed landscape of today's affluent. Put yourself ahead of the competition by knowing how the recession has affected purchasing behavior and where the opportunities are moving forward.

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.

Who do you want your customers to become? According to MIT innovation expert and thought leader Michael Schrage, if you aren’t asking this question, your strategic marketing and innovation efforts will fail. In this latest HBR Single, Schrage provides a powerful new lens for getting more value out of innovation investment. He argues that asking customers to do something different doesn’t go far enough - serious marketers and innovators must ask them to become something different instead.

Discover the secrets of written persuasion!

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.