Customer Development

Most startups don't fail because they can't build a product. Most startups fail because they can't get traction. Startup advice tends to be a lot of platitudes repackaged with new buzzwords, but Traction is something else entirely. As Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares learned from their own experiences, building a successful company is hard. For every startup that grows to the point where it can go public or be profitably acquired, hundreds of others sputter and die.

These days, virtually anything you need can come through a subscription. Far beyond Spotify and Netflix, companies in nearly any industry, from home contractors to florists, can build subscriptions into their business. Subscription is the key to increasing cash flow, igniting growth and boosting the value of your company. Whether you want to transform your entire business into a recurring revenue engine or just pick up an extra five per cent of sales growth, The Automatic Customer will be your secret weapon.

You know your product is awesome, but does anybody else? Forget everything you thought you knew about positioning. Successfully connecting your product with consumers isn’t a matter of following trends, comparing yourself to the competition, or trying to attract the widest customer base. So, what is it? April Dunford, positioning guru and tech executive, will enlighten you.

We all say things we shouldn't. What is important is how we deal with the gaffe. If a slip-of-the-tongue at a family gathering, office meeting, or social setting causes you to inadvertently embarrass or offend someone, the strategy presented here, will help you to smooth things over as quickly as possible. But what about when you really mess up?

Working Backwards is a practical guidebook and a corporate narrative, filled with the authors’ in-the-room recollections of what “Being Amazonian” is like and how it has affected their personal and professional lives. They demonstrate that success on Amazon’s scale is not achieved by the genius of any single leader, but rather through commitment to and execution of a set of well-defined, rigorously executed principles and practices - shared here for the very first time.

Conventional wisdom says most startups need to be in Silicon Valley, started by young engineers around a sexy new idea and backed by VC funding. But as Mikkel Svane reveals in Startupland, the story of founding Zendesk was anything but conventional. Founded in a Copenhagen loft by three 30-something friends looking to break free from corporate doldrums, Zendesk Inc. became one of the hottest enterprise software companies, rapidly growing with customers in 150 countries. But its success was anything but predestined.

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.

Many photographers and small business owners feel pressure to discount their products and services, especially when times are tough. After all, how else will they keep up with the low prices offered by their discounting competitors? What they don't realize is that discounting is the last thing they should be doing if they want to win big. Worth Every Penny encourages you to explore and use the boutique model, which is designed to maximize your advantages over discounting competitors.

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.

In an era defined by rapid technological advancements, businesses are increasingly turning to Artificial Intelligence (AI) to drive growth, innovation, and competitive advantage. From automating routine tasks to providing deep insights into customer behavior, AI has the potential to transform every aspect of business development and sales. However, the journey to integrating AI effectively into business processes is fraught with challenges, requiring a comprehensive understanding of AI technologies, strategic planning, and a commitment to ethical practices. This book, "Harnessing AI for ...

Inside our clothes we are all naked - and sometimes we should sit in a business meeting and think how ridiculous we would all be if we saw ourselves like that.This thought is the ultimate counter to pomposity - and that's an enemy to all of us. If you keep in mind how ridiculous we all are, then, strangely enough, the world becomes a kinder, more reliable place, and you start to understand people, and how to influence them and persuade them in a different way.And that is vital. Business development is primarily about people - and when you boil it down, it is about changing people's minds. ...

This book will transform your career! The 40 Best Sales Techniques Ever is packed with the skills, secrets, and tips that top earners use to beat their quota and make more money. Written by Jonathan Jewett, a sales professional who’s spent 20 years selling software to blue-chip companies, this comprehensive guide will equip you with the power to close the big deals, fill your pipeline, sell more to existing customers, and put rocket to the top of the leader board every quarter. Benefits of this book include: Achieve career success with actionable, field-tested sales techniques Learn the ...

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.

It's a rainy day in Seattle, and on the third floor of First Guarantee Financial, people have stopped believing they can make a difference. To new manager Mary Jane Ramirez, the challenge of bringing life back to her unenthusiastic and unmotivated team seems impossible, until she discovers an incredibly successful workplace down the street where the employees are so alive and passionate that people stop just to watch them work!

Fast-paced and down-to-earth, Delivering Happiness shows how a different kind of corporate culture is a powerful model for achieving success, and concentrating on the happiness of those around you can dramatically increase your own.

No matter how much repeat business you get from loyal customers, the lifeblood of your business is a constant flow of new accounts. Packed with tested strategies and anecdotes, New Sales. Simplified. offers a proven formula for prospecting, developing, and closing deals. With refreshing honesty and some much-needed humor, sales expert Mike Weinberg examines the critical mistakes made by most salespeople and executives, then provides tips to help you achieve the opposite results.

Building a successful company is hard. Smart entrepreneurs know that the key to success isn't the originality of your offering, the brilliance of your team or how much money you raise. It's how consistently you can grow and acquire new customers. Traction will teach you the 19 channels you can use to build a customer base and offers a three-step framework to figure out which ones will work best for your business. No matter how you apply them, the lessons and examples in Traction will help you create and sustain the growth your business desperately needs.

In this book, Melissa Perri explains how laying the foundation for great product management can help companies solve real customer problems while achieving business goals. By understanding how to communicate and collaborate within a company structure, you can create a product culture that benefits both the business and the customer. You'll learn product management principles that can be applied to any organization, big or small.

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. Today, every business can choose to be a hospitality business—and we can all transform ordinary transactions into extraordinary experiences.

No is perhaps the most important and certainly the most powerful word in the language. Every day we find ourselves in situations where we need to say no: to people at work, at home, and in our communities; because no is the word we must use to protect ourselves and to stand up for everything and everyone that matters to us. This indispensable audiobook will give you a simple three-step method for saying a Positive No.