Book picks similar to
CustomerCentric Selling by Michael T. Bosworth
business
sales
non-fiction
entrepreneurship
Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue
Nick Mehta - 2016
Business relationships are fundamentally changing. In the world B.C. (Before Cloud), companies could focus totally on sales and marketing because customers were often 'stuck' after purchasing. Therefore, all of the 'post-sale' experience was a cost center in most companies. In the world A.B. (After Benioff), with granular per-year, per-month or per-use pricing models, cloud deployments and many competitive options, customers now have the power. As such, B2B vendors must deliver success for their clients to achieve success for their own businesses.Customer success teams are being created in companies to quarterback the customer lifecycle and drive adoption, renewals, up-sell and advocacy. The Customer Success philosophy is invading the boardroom and impacting the way CEOs think about their business. Today, Customer Success is the hottest B2B movement since the advent of the subscription business model, and this book is the one-of-a-kind guide that shows you how to make it work in your company. From the initial planning stages through execution, you'll have expert guidance to help you: Understand the context that led to the start of the Customer Success movement Build a Customer Success strategy proven by the most competitive companies in the world Implement an action plan for structuring the Customer Success organization, tiering your customers, and developing the right cross-functional playbooks Customers want products that help them achieve their own business outcomes. By enabling your customers to realize value in your products, you're protecting recurring revenue and creating a customer for life. Customer Success shows you how to kick start your customer-centric revolution, and make it stick for the long term.
Sam Walton: Made In America
Sam Walton - 1992
And it's a story about believing in your idea even when maybe some other folks don't, and about sticking to your guns." It's the story of how Walton parlayed a single dime store in a hardscrabble cotton town into Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world. The undisputed merchant king of the late twentieth century, he never lost the common touch. Here Walton tells his extraordinary story in his own inimitable words. Genuinely modest, but always sure of his ambitions and achievements, Walton shares his thinking in a candid, straight-from-the-shoulder style."Here is an extraordinary success story about a man whose empire was built not with smoke and mirrors, but with good old-fashioned elbow grease."
The Sell: The Secrets of Selling Anything to Anyone
Fredrik Eklund - 2015
Since then, he’s become the top seller in the most competitive real estate market on the planet, brokering multimillion-dollar deals for celebrities, selling out properties all over the city, and charming audiences around the world as one of the stars of the hit Bravo series Million Dollar Listing New York.Now, for the first time, Fredrik shares his secrets so that anyone can find success doing what they love. According to Fredrik, even if you don’t consider yourself a salesperson, you’ve been in sales your whole life because every day you are selling your most important asset: yourself. Whenever you influence, persuade or convince someone to give you something in exchange for what you’ve got—whether it’s a luxury home, a great idea at work, or your profile on Match.com—you are selling. And if you know how to sell the right way, you can live your dream. That is what The Sell is all about. Blending personal stories, hilarious anecdotes, and the expertise he’s gained from his meteoric rise, Fredrik has written the modern guide on becoming successful, a book that tells you how to recognize and cultivate your true talents and make the ultimate sell. From the importance of being your most authentic self to looking like a million bucks even if you don’t have a million bucks (yet!), he shows how intangible factors like personality and charm can get you noticed and make you shine. He also shares his tips and tricks for preparing, persuading, and negotiating so that in any of life’s dealings, you’ll come out a winner. Whether you work on Wall Street or at Wal-Mart, aim to become the top seller at your company or want to impress a first date, The Sell will help you have more personal and professional success, lead a rich and fulfilling life, and have fun along the way.
Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility
Patty McCord - 2018
McCord helped create the unique and high-performing culture at Netflix, where she was chief talent officer. In her new book, Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility, she shares what she learned there and elsewhere in Silicon Valley.McCord advocates practicing radical honesty in the workplace, saying good-bye to employees who don’t fit the company’s emerging needs, and motivating with challenging work, not promises, perks, and bonus plans. McCord argues that the old standbys of corporate HR―annual performance reviews, retention plans, employee empowerment and engagement programs―often end up being a colossal waste of time and resources. Her road-tested advice, offered with humor and irreverence, provides readers a different path for creating a culture of high performance and profitability.Powerful will change how you think about work and the way a business should be run.
Outbound Sales, No Fluff: Written by two millennials who have actually sold something this decade.
Rex Biberston - 2017
In the past 30 years, there has been an incredible amount of research and growth in the sales profession to help modern sales professionals better serve their customers. However, after reading Rory Vaden's New York Times Bestseller "Take The Stairs" and learning that "95% of all books that are purchased are never completely read" and "70% of all books ever purchased are never even opened" we wanted to write a book that everyone could read and take action on immediately.This book is a step-by-step guide for the modern sales professional. We want to give you the framework, knowledge, and skills to fill a sales pipeline with highly qualified opportunities. It's all practical advice - no cutesy stories, no rants, and no product pitches.There are really only two ways to fill a funnel: inbound leads or outbound prospecting. We focus this book exclusively on outbound prospecting, because it's the half of the formula that an individual sales rep can control (that's why so many sales job descriptions include the phrase "we're looking for a hunter").
Becoming Facebook: The 10 Challenges That Defined the Company That's Disrupting the World
Michael Hoefflinger - 2017
But for the people who actually molded this great idea into a game-changing $300 billion company, the experience was far more tumultuous and uncertain than we might expect.Mike Hoefflinger was one of those Facebook insiders. As a computer engineer turned marketing innovator who worked with COO Sheryl Sandberg, Hoefflinger had a front-row seat to the company's growing pains, stumbles, and reinventions.Becoming Facebook tells the coming-of-age story of the now venerable giant. Filled with insights and anecdotes from crises averted and challenges solved, the book tracks the company's development, uncovering lessons learned on its way to greatness: How Facebook recovered from its "disastrous" IPO ● How the growth team achieved the impossible ● Why Facebook's News Feed ads were the company's most important business decision ever ● How Google+ attacked and lost ● Why—and how—Instagram and WhatsApp were added to the mix ● What the company does to win the talent wars ● What makes Zuckerberg, Sandberg, Cox, and other A-teamers tick ● Which products and technical advancements are on the horizon and why ● And much moreIntimate, fast-paced, and deeply informative, Becoming Facebook shares the true story of how Zuckerberg joined the ranks of iconic CEOs like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Jeff Bezos—as Facebook grows up, overcomes setbacks, and works to connect the world.
The Secret of Selling Anything
Harry Browne - 2012
You're probably tired of being told "you can do it if you just believe you can."You're probably tired of reading about tricks that made a particular sale ~ tricks that may have been appropriate to a particular situation, but not yours ~ and even if they were appropriate, how would you have thought of them at the right time?If you've read books on selling before or listened to "sales experts," you're probably tired of being pumped with hot air ~ told how you must "come alive," be full of enthusiasm, dominate the world around ~ all the things that don't happen to be a part of your basic nature.Well, this book isn't anything like that. In fact, this book was written to refute many cliches of selling that have been accepted without question for years.This book will prove to you, I hope, that the stereotyped image of the "born salesman" is a mistake. You don't have to remake your personality and become super-enthusiastic, super-aggressive, domineering. Not only are those traits not necessary, they are actually a hindrance to making sales.And you won't have to develop that uncanny ability to come up with the right answer at the right time ~ that super-human knack of having the brilliant flash of insight that is so prevalent in books on selling. Sure, given several days to think about it, the writer of a sales book can always come up with a solution to a sales problem. But how does that help you when confronted face-to-face with a question that must be answered now? This book will show you that you don't need such skills.This book can truly revolutionize your selling career ~ but only because it will show you that you no longer need to waste your time developing skills that are of no value to a salesman. For example, here are some of the points that will be made in the course of this book:-- Contrary to the accepted mythology, enthusiasm is not a virtue; it destroys more sales than it creates.-- "Positive thinking" is an unrealistic fallacy. The salesman who thinks negatively has a far greater chance for success than the so-called "positive thinker."-- Sales success does not come from convincing people to buy things they don't want.-- The salesman who always has an answer for every objection is also probably plugging along with a very low income.-- Extroverts don't make the best salesmen; they are invariably outsold by introverts.-- To be a good salesman, you don't have to be a "smooth talker".-- Another all-time sales fallacy is the statement "When the going gets tough, the tough get going". When the going gets tough, I usually take a vacation.-- The desire to be able to motivate others is unrealistic and foolish. A really-great salesman will never try to motivate anyone.Perhaps all of this sounds so far removed from what you've heard about selling through the years that you wonder how it could possibly be true. I intend to demonstrate the validity of these statements in two ways.First, my own experience verifies their worth. Almost invariably, in any selling experience where I've found myself, I have outsold everyone else around me ~ usually while working far fewer hours.In addition, I've seen these principles work for a few others, too ~ a very few, for they are unknown to most people.But there is nothing mysterious about them ~ and that brings us to second way in which I will demonstrate their validity. I will prove them to you. We will deal with life logically and carefully in this book. Everything will be proven in terms of the real world as it is ~ in ways we can both understand.
The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done
Peter F. Drucker - 1966
Drucker reminds us, is the ability to "get the right things done." This usually involves doing what other people have overlooked as well as avoiding what is unproductive. Intelligence, imagination, and knowledge may all be wasted in an executive job without the acquired habits of mind that mold them into results.Drucker identifies five practices essential to business effectiveness that can, and must, be learned: Managing time Choosing what to contribute to the organization Knowing where and how to mobilize strength for best effect Setting the right priorities Knitting all of them together with effective decision-makingRanging widely through the annals of business and government, Peter F. Drucker demonstrates the distinctive skill of the executive and offers fresh insights into old and seemingly obvious business situations.
Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works
A.G. Lafley - 2013
But it is hard. It’s hard because it forces people and organizations to make specific choices about their future—something that doesn’t happen in most companies.Now two of today’s best-known business thinkers get to the heart of strategy—explaining what it’s for, how to think about it, why you need it, and how to get it done. And they use one of the most successful corporate turnarounds of the past century, which they achieved together, to prove their point.A.G. Lafley, former CEO of Procter & Gamble, in close partnership with strategic adviser Roger Martin, doubled P&G’s sales, quadrupled its profits, and increased its market value by more than $100 billion in just ten years. Now, drawn from their years of experience at P&G and the Rotman School of Management, where Martin is dean, this book shows how leaders in organizations of all sizes can guide everyday actions with larger strategic goals built around the clear, essential elements that determine business success—where to play and how to win.The result is a playbook for winning. Lafley and Martin have created a set of five essential strategic choices that, when addressed in an integrated way, will move you ahead of your competitors. They are:• What is our winning aspiration?• Where will we play?• How will we win?• What capabilities must we have in place to win?• What management systems are required to support our choices?The stories of how P&G repeatedly won by applying this method to iconic brands such as Olay, Bounty, Gillette, Swiffer, and Febreze clearly illustrate how deciding on a strategic approach—and then making the right choices to support it—makes the difference between just playing the game and actually winning.
Pitch Perfect: How to Say It Right the First Time, Every Time
Bill McGowan - 2014
It’s essential to be pitch perfect—to get the right message across to the right person at the right time. In Pitch Perfect, Bill McGowan shows you how to craft the right message and deliver it using the right language—both verbal and nonverbal.Pitch Perfect teaches you how to overcome common communication pitfalls using McGowan’s simple Principles of Persuasion, which are highly effective and easy to learn, implement, and master. With Pitch Perfect you can harness the power of persuasion and have people not only listening closely to your every word but also remembering you long after you’ve left the room.
Words That Change Minds: The 14 Patterns for Mastering the Language of Influence
Shelle Rose Charvet - 1995
Do you work and live with people who are hard to convince? Who dismiss ideas before even thinking about them? Do you want to know how to influence people, without being manipulative? Want to find out how people get motivated, make decisions, to be more persuasive with everyone? Learn how to use the right words with the right people, and get through the “Communication Wall” Have you ever felt like you were talking to a wall? Well, that’s a very accurate description of what’s happening when 2 people are communicating! Everyone has a metaphorical “Communication Wall” around them to protect them from “bad people”. But in all of our walls, we have left some bricks out, to let the “good people” communicate with us. The problem in communication is not the wall, because the wall is standard equipment that everyone has. The problem comes from the holes where the bricks have been left out. The holes come in specific shapes, unique to each person. And if you want to communicate with that person, you need to use words, and behavior that fit exactly with the holes in the other person’s wall. Shelle Rose Charvet, best-selling author of Words That Change Minds shows you how to match your language to people around you (in your work, with your colleagues, your boss and your clients, and at home, with your partner, family and other relationships). Learn the persuasion psychology, spark interest and enthusiasm and get what you want. In Words That Change Minds you will: - Learn the influence science and practice. - Discover the ways people unconsciously get motivated, process information and make decisions. - Decode any communication problem and solve it. - Find out how to pry open mental space in even the most closed of minds. - Create rapport and credibility with anyone. - Avoid inadvertently saying or doing the wrong thing. - Get practical applications for sales, marketing, recruiting, negotiation, teaching, training, communication at work, conflict resolution. - Increase your impact in interpersonal communication, teamwork, and in mass communication. Words That Change Minds is based on the Language and Behavior Profile, (LAB Profile® for short) – a powerful tool that enables you to understand, predict and influence behavior by de-coding the language people use. You can directly influence people one-on-one, in groups and even in mass communication by customizing your language to match their subconscious Motivation Patterns. Increase your impact, improve relationships and reduce conflicts, by using the Words That Change Minds. The NEW 3rd edition of Words That Change Minds has more than 50% new material; examples, research, advanced applications, with 7 completely new chapters, including: 1. How to Complete a LAB Profile® 2. Conversational Coaching with the LAB Profile® 3. Understanding and Working with Combination Patterns 4. Solving Communication Problems 5. Influencing Strategies and Techniques 6. The LAB Profile® of Conflict 7. LAB Profile® Inventions and Tools, and more. Interested? Just scroll up and get your copy today! About the author: Shelle Rose Charvet is a bestselling author and the international expert on Influencing Language.
Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School
Philip Delves Broughton - 2005
Twenty percent of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are HBS graduates, as are many of our savviest entrepreneurs (e.g., Michael Bloomberg) and canniest felons (e.g., Jeffrey Skilling). The top investment banks and brokerage houses routinely send their brightest young stars to HBS to groom them for future power. To these people and many others, a Harvard MBA is a golden ticket to the Olympian heights of American business.In 2004, Philip Delves Broughton abandoned a post as Paris bureau chief of the London Daily Telegraph to join nine hundred other would-be tycoons on HBS's plush campus. Over the next two years, he and his classmates would be inundated with the best--and the rest--of American business culture that HBS epitomizes. The core of the school's curriculum is the "case": an analysis of a real business situation from which the students must, with a professor's guidance, tease lessons. Delves Broughton studied more than five hundred cases and recounts the most revelatory ones here. He also learns the surprising pleasures of accounting, the allure of beta, the ingenious chicanery of leveraging, and innumerable other hidden workings of the business world, all of which he limns with a wry clarity reminiscent of Liar's Poker. He also exposes the less savory trappings of b-school culture, from the 'booze luge' to the pandemic obsession with PowerPoint to the specter of depression that stalks too many overburdened students. With acute and often uproarious candor, he assesses the school's success at teaching the traits it extols as most important in business: leadership, decisiveness, ethical behavior, work/life balance.Published during the one hundredth anniversary of Harvard Business School, Ahead of the Curve offers a richly detailed and revealing you-are-there account of the institution that has, for good or ill, made American business what it is today.
a Combo Prospecting: The Powerful One-Two Punch That Fills Your Pipeline and Wins Sales
Tony J. Hughes - 2018
But Combo Prospecting will...by showing how to combine time-tested sales processes with cutting-edge social media strategies and clever technology hacks. The book reveals today’s new breed of Chief Executive Buyers, the channels they use, the value narrative you need, and the mix of methods that works. With actionable insights in every chapter, it explains how to:Do deep-dive research into social ● Locate leverage points that matter ● Secure decision-maker meetings ● Earn executive engagement ● Build a knockout, online brand ● Nurture a network that helps you thrive ● Profit from referrals ● Publish insights that set you apart and steer the agenda ● Employ an efficient, lethal library of scripts and templates ● And much, much moreWant to wildly exceed your quota? Combo Prospecting is a potent playbook that will pack your pipeline and turn you into a selling champ.
The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators
Jeffrey H. Dyer - 2011
This innovation advantage will translate into a premium in your company’s stock price—an innovation premium—which is possible only by building the code for innovation right into your organization’s people, processes, and guiding philosophies.Practical and provocative, The Innovator’s DNA is an essential resource for individuals and teams who want to strengthen their innovative prowess.
How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business
Douglas W. Hubbard - 1985
Douglas Hubbard helps us create a path to know the answer to almost any question in business, in science, or in life . . . Hubbard helps us by showing us that when we seek metrics to solve problems, we are really trying to know something better than we know it now. How to Measure Anything provides just the tools most of us need to measure anything better, to gain that insight, to make progress, and to succeed." -Peter Tippett, PhD, M.D. Chief Technology Officer at CyberTrust and inventor of the first antivirus software "Doug Hubbard has provided an easy-to-read, demystifying explanation of how managers can inform themselves to make less risky, more profitable business decisions. We encourage our clients to try his powerful, practical techniques." -Peter Schay EVP and COO of The Advisory Council "As a reader you soon realize that actually everything can be measured while learning how to measure only what matters. This book cuts through conventional cliches and business rhetoric and offers practical steps to using measurements as a tool for better decision making. Hubbard bridges the gaps to make college statistics relevant and valuable for business decisions." -Ray Gilbert EVP Lucent "This book is remarkable in its range of measurement applications and its clarity of style. A must-read for every professional who has ever exclaimed, 'Sure, that concept is important, but can we measure it?'" -Dr. Jack Stenner Cofounder and CEO of MetraMetrics, Inc.