Book Description
"Account planning exists for the sole purpose of creating advertising that truly connects with consumers. While many in the industry are still dissecting consumer behavior, extrapolating demographic trends, developing complex behavioral models, and measuring Pavlovian salivary responses, Steel advocates an approach to consumer research that is based on simplicity, common sense, and creativity--an approach that gains access to consumers' hearts and minds, develops ongoing relationships with them, and, most important, embraces them as partners in the process of developing and advertising.
A witty, erudite raconteur and teacher, Steel describes how successful account planners work in partnership with clients, consumer, and agency creatives. He criticizes research practices that, far from creating relationships, drive a wedge between agencies and the people they aim to persuade; he suggests new ways of approaching research to cut through the BS and get people to show their true selves; and he shows how the right research, when translated into a motivating and inspiring brief, can be the catalyst for great creative ideas. He draws upon his own experiences and those of colleagues in the United States and abroad to illustrate those points, and includes examples of some of the most successful campaigns in recent years, including Polaroid, Norwegian Cruise Line, Porsche, Isuzu, "got milk?" and others.
The message of this book is that well-thought-out account planning results in better, more effective marketing and advertising for both agencies and clients. And also makes an evening in front of the television easier to bear for the population at large."
Customer Reviews:
Excellent book, concise and insightful........2007-02-15
Really, I suppose, the type of book a planner should write.
It is a great introduction to what a planner is and does. A good textbook for anyone involved in advertising or dealing with ad agencies. A brilliant "manual" for planners.
The best planning book I've read to date.......2007-01-12
There is a huge shortage of good account planning books. This effort by Jon Steele makes up for it. He is a man passionate about advertising (that's evident throughout the book) and very good at it too.
Jon covers the theoretical and practical aspects of account planning thoroughly and provides insights and advice for planners at all levels, account management staff, creative staff and clients.
Reading this book will show you how to improve the quality of your advertising product. It has certainly helped me do that at the agency I work for in New Zealand. One of the best buys I've made on Amazon.
Perfect.......2006-11-15
Perfect! The book is absolutely AWESOME! A nice way of teaching a lesson about advertising!
Excellent Introduction But Too Consumer Focussed.......2005-01-07
Without a doubt, this is the difinitive book on the art of account planning. Having been an account planner myself, I can assure you that no other book comes close in terms of providing 1) an overview of the discipline 2) a realistic account of how planning functions in everday situations within the agency 3) is done in an extremely readable and clear format unlike many other advertising strategy/research books which are more strategic textbook. Steel's book reads like a biography which is a testiment to his skill as a writer and as a planner.
However, I do have a few issues with this book in that it places too much emphasis on the power of the consumer in the planning process. I have known many non-planners who have read this book and come away with the idea that everything the consumer says and does is the word of God and planning is nothing more than a glorified consumer tape recorder. This in turn makes the planner's job more difficult in some respects as they in turn must justify all of their work with,"the consumer said this." Often, agency personal new to planning desperately want to strictly classify this multi-faceted discipline and often put it in in a smaller box (consumer) than it is suited for (incidentally, this often says something about the quality or lack thereof of those who you are working with).
The reality (for me anyway) is that account planning encompases many different skills and functions of which listening and interpreting what the consumer says is just one. Consumers are only a rear view mirror in that they can tell you what happened in the past but cannot predict the future. They are also extremely literal and what they say is not always what they mean or feel which is why instinct (a dirty word in many advertising circles) is so essential. Many great brands and briefs utliize a strong point of view rather than direct and literal consumer insight which is counter to the case studies that Steel uses to explain the 'planning process.'
Overall, this is an excellent 'introduction' into account planning. In a sense, the dilema that this book creates though, is also why planning is such a wonderful discipline. A planner's job cannot be easily classified in a sentence because there are so many diverse skills required of a first-rate planner.
HighlyRecommended!.......2004-06-04
Successful ad campaigns are not linear developments where a business need meshes straightforwardly with an effective creative approach and actually produces successful tangible results. Instead, building memorable, provocative advertising campaigns is such a complex, political task, both rational and emotional, that a successful campaign is a wonder. Veteran advertising expert Jon Steel contends that building a good campaign is the common sense responsibility of the account planner - the new nexus of the consumer, agency creative staff, client and researchers. Steel shows the pitfalls of misguided research and creative arrogance as he explains that a good business-oriented account planner can help produce wonderfully effective, often simple, ad campaigns. His witty, erudite book concludes with its best case study: a look inside the successful "Got Milk" campaign for the California milk industry. We recommend this book to those who buy and sell advertising and to anyone working at an ad agency.
Book Description
For advanced undergraduate and MBA courses in Supply Chain Management.
This book brings together the strategic role of the supply chain, key strategic drivers of supply chain performance, and the tools and techniques for supply chain analysis. Every chapter gives suggestions that managers can use in practice and all methodologies are illustrated with an application in Excel. Fully updated material keeps the book on the forefront of supply chain management.
Distribution networks (Chapter 4); Sourcing (Chapter 13), discusses different sourcing activities including supplier assessment, supplier contracts, design collaboration, and procurement; Price and revenue management (Chapter 15); Early coverage of designing the supply chain network—after developing a strategic framework, readers can discuss supply chain network design in Chapters 5 and 6 and then move on to demand, supply, inventory, and transportation planning; Information Technology in the Supply Chain (Chapter 17).
For business professionals managing the supply chain.
Customer Reviews:
A good solid supply chain basics book.......2006-05-23
We use this book for supply chain training to new entrants at our firm. It is quite a good supply chain basics book - covering the topic in all its breadth. the coverage is perhaps a slightly less strategic and more technical than our needs - but that is understandable given the background of one of the authors. However, to be fair, it is the best book that we have found on supply chain management to get the people up to speed on the basics.
Price too high.......2004-08-25
What I got was a second Indian Reprint, it costs around $4 in India, but I had to pay around $35 (shippment not inlcuded in this amount)! What an arbitrage!
Good reference material for practitioners.......2003-02-17
I found this book to be a great source of reference for managers. It is not really a good teaching source, as I thought it already starts with a fair amount of assumed previous knowledge and jargon.
The sections that are most well developed are the ones on inventory management and transportation logistics, where I found examples that were directly applicable to situations I encountered in a retail environment. The portion on forecasting was not as useful, and the part on e-business seemed somewhat contrived. Overall, this is the best reference I have found that does not require a heavy amount of mathematical familiarity.
Excellent book overall but..........2003-01-08
I refered and used this book in 2 grad level courses. The first was a business school course on SCM (with an above average quantitative focus for a B-school course) and again for a fully quatitative SC Engineering course. While I was initially very impressed with the book, using this over 2 semesters has raised a few gripes.
For the qualitative issues on SCM {make no mistake, these 'fluff' aspects are very important} there is no other equal. Chopra and Meindl do an outstanding and comprehensive job. They also bring out the importance of using scientific, quantitative techniques for SCM. This however is where my gripes start.
Having brought out the importance of quantitative tools for use in SCM, they do only a moderate job on explaining these tools. For example, the chapter on forecasting (only the most simple and commonly used models are explained) is unnnecessarily complex and confusing. The topics covered are adequete but need revision. Treatment of inventory management also could be more detailed and better explained.
This is an excellent book but for more comprehensive learning (if you want an understanding of the quantitative aspects too), I think this book needs supplementing (say with course notes) or another book like "Modeling the Supply Chain" by Shapiro.
Peter Meindl - The Godfather of modern supply chain mgt.......2001-11-27
Written by one of the leading minds in the field, Peter Meindl of I2 technologies has a lot to teach. This is an excellent text and as a fellow Dallas/Ft. Worth resident, I would enjoy meeting him. If you are an MBA student with a concentration in Operations Management, this text should be required.
Meindl, a management team member of I2, has helped develop I2 into the undisputed champion in enterprise software. While SAP may have the market share with their archaic DOS based application, I2 has windows functionality and everything that matters. They have raised the bar with their supply chain knowledge, leading solutions, and collaborative knowledge in supply chain strategy. This text will give you a big step forward in becoming a Supply Chain leader.
Book Description
A world-renowned innovation guru explains practices that result in breakthrough innovations
"Ulwick's outcome-driven programs bring discipline and predictability to the often random process of innovation."
-Clayton Christensen
For years, companies have accepted the underlying principles that define the customer-driven paradigm--that is, using customer "requirements" to guide growth and innovation. But twenty years into this movement, breakthrough innovations are still rare, and most companies find that 50 to 90 percent of their innovation initiatives flop. The cost of these failures to U.S. companies alone is estimated to be well over $100 billion annually.
In a book that challenges everything you have learned about being customer driven, internationally acclaimed innovation leader Anthony Ulwick reveals the secret weapon behind some of the most successful companies of recent years. Known as "outcome-driven" innovation, this revolutionary approach to new product and service creation transforms innovation from a nebulous art into a rigorous science from which randomness and uncertainty are eliminated.
Based on more than 200 studies spanning more than seventy companies and twenty-five industries, Ulwick contends that, when it comes to innovation, the traditional methods companies use to communicate with customers are the root cause of chronic waste and missed opportunity. In What Customers Want, Ulwick demonstrates that all popular qualitative research methods yield well-intentioned but unfitting and dreadfully misleading information that serves to derail the innovation process. Rather than accepting customer inputs such as "needs," "benefits," "specifications," and "solutions," Ulwick argues that researchers should silence the literal "voice of the customer" and focus on the "metrics that customers use to measure success when executing the jobs, tasks or activities they are trying to get done." Using these customer desired outcomes as inputs into the innovation process eliminates much of the chaos and variability that typically derails innovation initiatives.
With the same profound insight, simplicity, and uncommon sense that propelled The Innovator's Solution to worldwide acclaim, this paradigm-changing book details an eight-step approach that uses outcome-driven thinking to dramatically improve every aspect of the innovation process--from segmenting markets and identifying opportunities to creating, evaluating, and positioning breakthrough concepts. Using case studies from Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, AIG, Pfizer, and other leading companies, What Customers Want shows companies how to:
- Obtain unique customer inputs that make predictable innovation possible
- Recognize opportunities for disruption, new market creation, and core market growth--well before competitors do
- Identify which ideas, technologies, and acquisitions have the greatest potential for creating customer value
- Systematically define breakthrough products and services concepts
Innovation is fundamental to success and business growth. Offering a proven alternative to failed customer-driven thinking, this landmark book arms you with the tools to unleash innovation, lower costs, and reduce failure rates--and create the products and services customers really want.
Customer Reviews:
Simple and Disciplined Approach to Obtaining Customers' Wants.......2007-07-21
This is an excellent book that lays out a simple but disciplined approach to capturing what customers' want. With all the sources out there communicating how to do the voice of the customer, this book starts off by challenging that approach as being ineffective and then lays out what the author proposes as a better approach through the understanding of the customers' jobs that they are trying to perform, the outcomes (or key metrics that they use to measure how well a product or service completes a job) and the opportunities or those outcomes that are either underserved or overserved. The opportunities are the areas that a company should focus on to be successful in innovation. The author does this by sharing examples from different organizations that resulted in success. All in all a very refreshing approach to focusing on the customer and worth the read for all the innovators out there.
Purpose for Gathering Voice of the Customer (VOC) Data.......2007-06-08
Proposes a different purpose for gathering VOC -- that is, focusing on the customer's desired "outcome" of the job to be accomplished. I was very delighted to read about this approach since it allows more objectivity in designing final solutions. However, it appears the author fails to capture that this is infact VOC data collection. Students of Six Sigma know that VOC data collection is not about writing down what the customer "says". It is about uncovering true "needs" (or whatever term you want to use) directly from the customer and not some secondary party ill-equiped to articulate those "needs".
Good but not great.......2007-01-18
If you are new to market research or product innovation, this book is practical and easy to read and I recommend it. No need to read further in my comment.
For the more experienced reader: As a businessperson, I was disappointed in this book. At first I was carried away; Ulwick is a good writer. I was so excited, I restared the book and took notes. That is when I realized that this is essentially a marketing tool for his company. Ulwich doesn't give insight into how to find the "50-150" criteria he mentions beyond saying that good marketing researchers are important. Furthermore his comments about customer-driven innovation are incorrect. While I agree with him that many companies behave as he describes, this is because, as with other business tools/concepts, customer-driven innovation is misunderstand and misused. Most of what he talks about is identical to what I tell employees during training. What I got out of this book was a handful of sentences about focusing on the job your customer needs done, the constraints and the criteria by which customers will measure your "solution".
Most Practical Approach.......2006-11-11
This book offers the most practical approach to developing an innovation strategy of the many I have read.
It is one of the few that offers tools and ideas that can be put immediately to work in a business.
Cutomer Service Training.......2006-10-07
Innovation is primal to success and business growth. Offering a proven alternative to failed customer driven initiatives, this wonderful book offers you the tools and strategies to unleash innovation, lower costs, and reduce failure rates and create the products and services customers really want.
Book Description
Bag the Elephant! is more than a strategy book; it's packed with proven guidelines, tools, and techniques. Throughout the book you'll find stories, derived from the author's real-world experience, that show you how to put the strategy to work.
Customer Reviews:
Where's the beef: a lot of sizzle, very little meat here.......2007-10-07
The over-the-top positive reviews here astound me because while this book has some merit it is certainly not the best book on the topic and offers very little for the labor of reading it. The book's format is a classic sizzle over the steak sales technique: colors, pictures and odd printing over content, verbosity over wisdom. This book has little to offer field salespeople and nothing to offer non-B2B companies.
Certain ideas are useful for managers, such as: execute flawlessly, one mistake you're out, excellent customer service will keep the business, and team selling is critical even necessary for winning big accounts. Much of the wisdom is common sense: selling to a big company results in substantial growth; be careful about putting all your eggs in one basket; and mismanaging customer expectations can cost you the business and all the hard work that went into getting it.
On the positive side this author is clearly a sales professional. If you need to learn how professionals act in corporate sales there are tips and insights here. Large account selling is very different than the kind of selling say Brian Tracey or Tom Hopkins teach about. Planning, targeting, clarity of message and pricing, flawless execution and relentless follow-through and documentation are all needed. If you're new to corporate sales start with "Strategic Selling" and then perhaps this book. If you're in corporate sales and you don't already know this material, or act and look like Kaplan, you're in for a tough slog.
For overcoming the real challenges of prospecting and B2B selling that every salesperson can use I recommend "Selling to Big Companies" and "Value Forward Selling." As Sandler pointed out in his selling methodology, most systems will work if they are applied consistently and well. Getting in the door to develop the relationship and the sale is the critical step. Both of those books specialize in that, as does "Selling against the goal."
If you want to go hunting for big business revenue, this is the why and how guide to success........2007-08-06
It is obvious that Steve Kaplan really understands the processes and organizational support needed to not only land business with big accounts, but also to grow the account, sustain your business with them, and not have the big company become a liability to your other business. He shares all his information very clearly and simply, but never simplistically. There are even lots of cute pictures of him with a real life elephant to illustrate his points. Yes, they are a tad cutesy. However, they are easily forgivable because of the valuable of the serious information provided.
Sure, he provides a program for landing that important first sale, but he also stresses the importance of matching the right kind of salesperson to that account. He also shows you how to get additional business with other customers within a huge account. And he stresses aspects of working with their internal bureaucracy that less experienced businesses will not know.
For me, the material on how to design your business to properly support a big account is key to your success and a likely area where many businesses slip up in the excitement of landing that first big contract. I also think his discussion of the very real dangers of letting a big account dominate your revenues is spot on.
A very good book on sales for those looking to up their revenues by selling to big companies.
Bag the Elephant!: How to Win and Keep Big Customers.......2007-07-15
Bag the Elephant: How to Win & Keep Big Customers states that all businesses have three potential futures: the snail trail, the arc of the shooting star, and the bag the elephant track. Most businesses follow the snail trail. They put in long hours servicing a large number of small clients always trying to keep one step ahead of bankruptcy.
Some talented entrepreneurs become shooting stars. These individuals find a unique niche that propels their business into instant success. However, since these businesses don't have the foundation to support such growth, they soon find themselves in a game of catch up. Like shooting stars, these businesses usually die a quick death.
A few businesses follow the Bag the Elephant track. These businesses land and keep the big customers whose large orders will carry the business. This strategy not only increases the business short term growth but also assures long term security. Bag the Elephant: How to Win & Keep Big Customers focuses on this final strategy giving step by step instructions, helpful tips, and straightforward ideas on how to not only attract the big customers but how to build a strong foundation to support and keep these big customers.
BAG THE ELEPHANT is packed with tips and motivational advice........2007-01-07
If you want to land a big account with an impressive sales and marketing strategy which gets that one big customer which can increase profits dramatically, the tips in BAG THE ELEPHANT: HOW TO WIN & KEEP BIG CUSTOMERS is for you. Steve Kaplan is founder of The Different Maker, which provides business tools to help companies small to large. From charging fees and assessing service offerings and competition to profiling sales personnel and approaching a customer relationship like a partnership to ensure big benefits to both sides, BAG THE ELEPHANT is packed with tips and motivational advice.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Great Strategies for Thinking (and handling) Big Customers.......2006-02-25
At just over 200 pages, Bag the Elephant took me a considerable amount of time to actually finish. While the principles are presented quite simply, it's jam packed with tips and strategies that take some time to digest.
The elephant in questions is the large corporate client. The one that brings in the big money. Bag the Elephant walks you through the process of first understanding the elephant, to "Romancing" them and then on to leveraging them for even more gain for you. While focusing primarily on the Big accounts, the principles here can easily be applied to small and medium size accounts, if that is where your target audience is.
Kaplan also dives into common mistakes many people make with their clients and teaches you how to avoid them. I found the fifth mistake most enlightening. Many feel that if they just had that one elephant, then they would be rolling in the dough. But what many forget is that with big elephants come big expenses, and often times, if cards have been misplayed, you'll find profits decreasing rather than increasing after bagging your elephant.
This book is a must read for anybody hoping to hit it big by snagging an elephant of their own. And if you're just a small guy, maybe it's time you start thinking bigger.
Book Description
With this book your students will learn step-by-step how to develop and implement a successful marketing strategy for health care facilities.
Book Description
Web-focused strategies for turning a company’s customer list into its most powerful competitive advantage
For more than a decade, Strategic Database Marketing has been a popular and authoritative how-to on database marketing, referred to every day by marketing practitioners around the world. Featuring dozens of innovative, workable strategies, it has shown marketers how to profitably manage customer relationships, retain loyalty, increase the incremental profits from each customer in the database, and more.
Fast-changing tools and technologies require author and database marketing pioneer Arthur Hughes to update the book’s data and techniques. This substantially revised third edition features:
- A completely new chapter on modeling and appended data
- New details on fast-changing Web technologies and marketing
- Updated material on prospecting, warehousing, and filtering
- In-depth discussion of prospect databases, one of marketing’s newest and most promising innovations
Customer Reviews:
Useful content, but not well written.......2007-08-01
For anyone who's looking for a well-written reflection on state-of-the-art direct marketing, this is not the right book. Yet, Arthur Hughes' 'Strategic Database Marketing' still has its merits.
It's a straight-forward introductory text that covers many aspects of direct marketing - mostly from an old-economy point of view. The good thing about this approach is that Hughes explains many procedures in detail that have proved to be useful over many years of practice (as he lets the reader know on many occasions, he has worked in direct marketing for a long time). And while the dull writing-style occasionally makes the content of the book seem dated, most of the ideas discussed in the book still apply. For example, Hughes does a good job explaining lifetime-value calculations, the Recency-Frequency-Monetary approach, regression analysis and other useful tools for anyone involved in direct marketing.
Unfortunately, it's not an enjoyable book. The biggest drawback is that Hughes doesn't come across as an agile intellect. He's good at explaining procedure, but rather clumsy in discussing ideas. Adding to that is his over-reliance on examples taken from his own private life (you'll learn many things about his wife that you never wanted to know) and his strange need to praise the superiority of the American economy whenever possible. If you can look past that, 'Strategic Database Marketing' may well be worth reading for any professional marketeer.
Practical & technical enough for instant application.......2006-01-22
I love this book. Working as a data analyst in the CRM department, this book teaches me all the practical caculation/ideas for my work.
So far, this is the only book on the market that view database marketing from a quantitative point of view. On the other hand, it also instills the relationship marketing mind-set to the readers. For the rest of books avaliable in the markertplace on CRM/Database marketing, either it's too theoretical or IT. This is the best I read so far.
Fantastic Updated 3rd Edition .......2005-10-23
My approach to marketing was totally changed by reading this book; I was able to refine a jumble of thoughts into a clear, cohesive strategy. If you are at all exposed to marketing at work, Hughes will give you the ability to prioritize what is most important in your job.
Hughes has just released a new edition of this classic. It is thoroughly updated to include developments of the last half decade (the failure of CRM in many applications, advancements in Web and e-mail marketing, etc). Every marketer and entrepreneur should read this book to learn how and why lifetime value is so important and how to build your company's strategy around it.
The best thing about this book is that it covers the technical details adequately, but is still readable enough that you do not need an MBA to understand it.
Exceptional Coverage of Important Marketing Concepts.......2003-08-15
Hughes makes it exceedingly clear why customer loyalty and lifetime value are such critical marketing concepts. Hughes helps marketers understand why our hyper-focus on customer acquisition needs to be adjusted to consider retention and upsell as well.
In particular, Hughes explains:
* What Lifetime Value (LTV) is, why it matters, and how to calculate it
* The importance of testing programs and how best to go about it
* Segmenting your customer base by loyalty and LTV
* How tactics should differ for each segment
* Practical tips for creating a successful database marketing campaign.
Case studies and ROI numbers are used throughout the book. A must read for marketing proessionals.
The Master Book.......2001-05-26
This book is the main book for my Internet Marketing Class at Mercy College's MS in Internet Business Systems program. It includes all necessary topics such as database marketing, banner advertisement, calculating LTV and RFM Email Marketing and best practices. This book is a must read for anyone in direct marketing field.
Book Description
In this visionary book, C. K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy explore why, despite unbounded opportunities for innovation, companies still can't satisfy customers and sustain profitable growth. The explanation for this apparent paradox lies in recognizing the structural changes brought about by the convergence of industries and technologies; ubiquitous connectivity and globalization; and, as a consequence, the evolving role of the consumer from passive recipient to active co-creator of value. Managers need a new framework for value creation. This book is about the emerging "next practices" in value creation.
Increasingly, individual customers interact with a network of firms and consumer communities to co-create value. No longer can firms autonomously create value. Neither is value embedded in products and services per se. Products are but an artifact around which compelling individual experiences are created. As a result, the focus of innovation will shift from products and services to experience environments that individuals can interact with to co-construct their own experiences. These personalized co-creation experiences are the source of unique value for consumers and companies alike.
In this emerging opportunity space, companies must build new strategic capital-a new theory on how to compete. This book presents a detailed view of the new functional, organizational, infrastructure, and governance capabilities that will be required for competing on experiences and co-creating unique value. This is the future of competition.
Customer Reviews:
Future of marketing..........2006-06-19
Caveat - I see most things from a marketer's prospective, hence, I read this book in that context. I think the ideas of Prahalad and Ramaswamy are the future of marketing. If you take a look at a few of today's successful companies, including Amazon.com and eBay for instance, you will see that one of the reasons they have been so successful is because they worked with their customers. I think the book should be required reading for anyone going into the marketing field.
Nothing insightful that is worth the onerous read.......2005-06-22
The authors have created a massive text that does not add much to the earlier paper they had published. The book has mainly two messages - maximizing customer experience is the basis of value creation and firms have to be experience-driven rather than product-centric. (BTW, these are the author's buzz words not mine
).
They cite cases that have no hard links to their messages but a tenous connection. There is no proof or metrics to show that this is the way to go.
I am sure the academics have the luxury of writing long books to sustain their tenureship compared to us real-world practioners, where things have to work now or in the next quarter for us to go anywhere in the corporate world. Sorry, academics.
Breakthrough Thinking for higher IQ managers.......2005-04-23
The concepts presented in the book are deceptively easy to gloss over. I do not blame the reviewers at this site who did not 'get it'.
This is not something one can expect to read and understand over a coast-to-coast flight like most of the popular business books one tends to find at the airport book stores.
It is heavily intellectual content and for those who do 'get it', the payoffs can be huge, as have been documented by the real-life examples presented in the book. There are no quick fixes here and no 'if you have problem A, do X' type remedies, nor the 'company A did X and it worked for them' type anecdotal evidence.
Real-life examples have been used to demonstrate the backbone of the theory. This is necessary because there is no evidence of the concept of co-creation present yet in the collective *consciousness* of the managers today (it does happen accidentally, though).
Now you must be wondering how I can be so emphatic about stating my opinion. Well, I have had the fantastic opportunity to do some work on this subject during my MBA program through the B-school class offered by one of the authors at Ross Business School, as well as the opportunity of doing independent research on the subject matter of this book.
I can assure the prospective reader that the material requires serious mental exercise, and the theory and frameworks are not easy to grasp or implement. The reason for this is that the implementation of the concepts being presented requires some serious inside-out redesign of the organization, processes, systems as well as value appropriation contracts..
However, for those interested in finding out about which direction to look to innovate, especially the entrepreneurial types, this is an excellent opportunity to learn something new and apply it to the extent your own organizational processes, systems and capabilities will allow, or create ground-up organizations, processes, systems and capabilities to take advantage of the opportunities to the fullest.
Sunil Chhaya, Ph.D.
Disappointing.......2004-08-01
C.K. Prahalad must be getting a bit long in the tooth. Or perhaps he has had difficulty in recent years finding a co-author as talented as Gary Hamel. Whatever his excuse, his latest book is a disappointing throwback to specious management bestsellers of the 80s and 90s. Prahalad's book is long on clichés and short on insight. The central thesis of the book is a rehash of Kotler's better articulted work on the prosumer. Given all of their emphasis on "value co-creation" the book seems woefully short on profitability and ROI numbers. I couldn't find any case studies that showed the value in value co-creation. At the same time, truly innovative and competitive "value co-creation" businesses - Linux, Apache and the whole open source software movement which Microsoft now finds so threatening - are barely mentioned. Are we just to take the authors' word for it that companies adopting a "C-type" structure are automatically profitable? Hmm. Maybe it depends on whether these firms adopt "X,Y, or Z-type" management. Can lucrative consulting gigs be far behind?
must read for 21st century human.......2004-07-15
Alvin Toffler has indicated customization is future trend. He is(was) right.
The future of competition shows what, why, and how ( sometimes, who) about the future of product and service. What a corporation must do in order to integrate cusomter's experience into their production process and how to organize the company in order to do it. A must read book for 21st century human, why? because any interaction is an experience and if you extend the metaphor of product, any interaction is a 'product'. If you have been of good reputation, you will 'sell' well on whaterver you say or do. Because people 'buy' it.
Book Description
ROI selling works within a company's existing sales methods to increase the effectiveness and production of their sales force.
Current economic conditions are forcing everyone from large corporations to smaller privately held companies to maximize their revenue streams from new and existing customers. To be successful, firms today must outsell their competition and exceed customer expectations-thus creating long-term satisfaction and loyalty.
While basic sales methodologies instruct salespeople on the nuts and bolts of the sales process-who to approach in an organization, when to ask questions, and what to ask-ROI Selling takes them to a new level. Using a unique ""360 Degree Measurement"" technique, this guide provides practical tools for turning valuable customer feedback into a compelling case for their products and services.
Sales professionals will be able to demonstrate to the customer how their products and services will produce a more successful and tangibleoutcome than the competition. Techniques from ROI Selling are currently being used to effectively increase the productivity of sales forces in a variety of industries, and they have been licensed by the authors of Solution Selling as part of their training programs that reach thousands of sales professionals each year.
Through the use of actual case studies, ROI Selling provides stories, success criteria, and actual statistics on value estimation to aid readers in building compelling ROI models for their own products and services.
Customer Reviews:
Should be part of every enterprise sales and marekting managers well thumbed library.......2007-05-01
As part of our mantra at Rocket Builders to bring metrics into sales and marketing I was asked to review this book. A very valuable book for those in the enterprise sales market and/or markets where the customer needs material that really shows the ROI from using your goods and services. This includes customers who have become "jaded" by implementations that took longer and cost more than budgetted with little to show for it. They will love the part where you can show them the cost of waiting/not deciding. (So will you)
Not a book for the faint of heart as it is quite thorough and all encompassing wrto getting and using metrics in sales. It is definitely written with VP sales and CFO in mind. The very last chapter discusses ROI used in marketing and despite the brevity, it is a useful chapter. If I was to point to one flaw, it is that this book, like so many others in sales , does not address how and why most marketing materials do not really help the sales process. The problem is as much due to sales as marketing. But that is the subject for another day(s)?
Chapters are quick, short and perhaps a bit too concise in explanation. It takes a while to get through and I would not recommend it as an airplane book. You need quiet, time and reflection to use this. If you do, the results should be very useful to you
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Making money with ROI Selling.......2006-09-09
Having been a sales mentor for 7 years, and having sold large solutions into the Enterprise for 23, this book has been exactly what I have been looking for. The need to quantify value in an easy, neutral fashion, and have your prospect do it with you, is exactly how the deals are being done today in this overheated, competitive technology market.
I have adapted my practice to ROI selling, brought it to my clients, and have found new clients because of it. One of the best elements of the book is the ability to engage with the author, and actually get his help. In several instances, I did this, and it was very competitive and highly professional.
I recommend this to vendors selling software and technology, CEO's who have to buy those solutions, and executives who need to sell there projects to their own C-level. With tools like ROI Selling, you can more easily advance your business and career. Great work!
ROI Selling.......2006-07-19
Written with the professional in mind: very understandable and credible step by step process for gathering and collecting customer information which will be used in the ROI presentation. Very useful for all sales prefessionals - regardless of experience.
Ten times worth it !!.......2006-04-07
I really recommend it to any person who wants to learn how to build a solid Roi Model. This is the best tool to show your prospects/customers a truly value justification based on real information from their own company. Improve loyalty 100%!!
I am glad I found this book!
Congratulations to the author!
ROI Selling Experience.......2006-02-14
ROI Selling: I recommend for any individual working on or thinking about implementing value justification/ROI documentation into the sales process. As more and more sales situations increase in complexity the greater the need for a valid credible documentation of ROI will be needed. Customers do not have a sohpisticated method of valuing a solution, those sales professionals that can provide a credible model will win more than lose.
The methodology is great. The process the book uses is very nice to follow and not only is helpful on a general level but is providing actionable results.
My only wish is to have more examples from real life that could be packaged on a cd-rom. However the handful that are provided are a great starting point from which to build.
Even if you think you have a good ROI model you should get this book to validate your model.
Book Description
This book includes real-life examples from over 70 respected organizations, small and large, representing a multitude of industries using stories to drive results. Leaders from organizations such as Microsoft, Lands’ End, Verizon, U.S. Air Force, and World Vision demonstrate the strong positive influence stories can have. No abstract theories or platitudes are conveyed here. The book spells out how Kevin Roberts, CEO worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, achieved sustained sales growth after several mergers and downsizings caused the organization to fall on hard times. It also shows how Erik Shaw, president and CEO of FivePoint Federal Credit Union, overcame resistance to an organizational name change, resulting in membership growth exceeding the national average.
Customer Reviews:
Once Upon a Time.......2007-08-30
"Once Upon a Time"--when we hear that phrase, it brings back magical memories of someone reading a story to us during childhood. Suddenly, we have warm thoughts of fantasies, fairy tales, princesses, and pirates.
As a professional speaker, I have recognized for a decade that people never outgrow their love of stories. I share stories with my audiences to maintain interest, motivate listeners, change opinions, and relay information.
Prior to my speaking career, I spent twenty-three years in management. For the most part, I shudder when I recall boring meetings, with presenters suffocating participants with an endless avalanche of facts and stats--with nothing in between to inject variety and liveliness.
That's why I welcome this book. Silverman illustrates that stories fit every type of business situation. "Facts," Sylvia L. Lovely says in the Introduction, "inform, but stories resonate." She explains: "Stories connect us in profound ways that go beyond mere intellect and get to the
deeper currents that move us to reflection and inspiration."
This book offers numerous examples from corporate leaders who use stories for training, sales, fostering traditions, reinforcing policies, generating teamwork, mentoring, facing change, clarifying complex financial transactions, and instilling an organization's mission and values.
Even as she supplies many model stories, Silverman still encourages readers to constantly unearth stories from their own locales. They're there, just waiting to be discovered and told.
Wake Me When the Data is Over recognizes that stories cannot replace data--but they can make the necessary data interesting, even compelling.
The Complete Communicator: Change Your Communication-Change Your Life!
Wake me up when the data is over.......2007-03-31
I found this book to be full of practical guidance about how to use storytelling more effectively in business settings. The book reinforced many of beliefs about the use of story as well as providing a great deal of evidence about its effectiveness. I recommend this book to those who wish to be more effective communicators in business.
storytelling and the wider applications.......2007-03-29
I found this book to be extremely useful in exploring the various applications of storytelling. As a practitioner in the field of organisational storytelling, I am always exploring various applications of the use of story. Lori's research into how organisations have used it has really helped me in my thinking around the applications of this powerful business tool and helped me bring this learning to our Australian clients.
Wake me up when you get to some substance.......2007-02-25
Wake me up when you find some substance to this book! The entire book seems to be a "who's who" of people who use storys, complete with their job titles, degree listings etc. I found virtually no help in how to create or use stories. I found this book boring and a complete waste of my time!
treasures.......2007-02-15
Very stimulating, indeed! Provides a panorama of practical applications of story telling in the private or public sector, derived from interviews with people who use the approach in their daily work.
Book Description
Create an effective, comprehensive communications strategy in an age of information overload
Fax, e-mail, 1-800 numbers, the Internet, infotainmentâwith so many new and traditional media available, it should be easy for a nonprofit to connect with its constituents. Yet each new technology brings new challenges, adding more messages, more voices, and more information to the clamor. Nonprofits now have to compete harder than ever to win the attention of a media-jaded public. That's why it is crucial that today's nonprofits develop comprehensive, coordinated communications plans that are detailed enough to cover all the bases, yet flexible enough to compensate for the unexpected. Strategic Communications for Nonprofit Organizations shows you how.
In this book, Janel Radtke introduces all-important communications concepts and issues in plain English. Taking a wholly practical, in-the-trenches approach, she combines expert insights, real-life case studies, and clear, step-by-step instructions to demonstrate nonprofit communications strategies that work. She provides:
- An easy-to-follow, 7-step program for developing a comprehensive, multifaceted communications plan
- A disk containing all the worksheets, forms, surveys, and self-assessment tools you need to create a total communications plan
- Techniques for matching the message with the medium and for adapting both to specific purposes, such as fund-raising, advocacy, public education, PR, and more
Strategic Communications for Nonprofit Organizations helps you coordinate and streamline communications efforts. It provides proven techniques for guaranteeing that you send the right message to each constituency group or audience, and that you hit your mark every time.
Customer Reviews:
Radtke hits the mark.......2000-12-04
Radtke takes a generally vague term "P.R" and makes specific, detailed entry ways that prove essential in the creation of a public relations framework. The text concentrates on breaking up tasks into manageable units from the creation of the perfect mission statement to completion of an internal audit. The internal audit is a great example of the way Radtke approaches every angle of the P.R. question; Radtke isn't just focused on demographics (or psychographics or geographics--all are explained here) or target audiences but she also encourages readers to investigate the inner workings of their specific organization. By examining the specific organization (from the number of phones to the personality of the staff) Radtke helps you design the most appropriate plan for your non-profit group. The accompanying C.D. helps you utilize the detailed models in the text and it's terribly easy to use, making the learning process much more fun. My only complaint would be that the information presented is a bit dense, making steady reading somewhat difficult. However, I reccomend Lawrence Wallack's straight forward "News for a Change" as an aid to Radtke's detailed vision. However, Wallack doesn't tackle as many issues as Radtke and her text still stands alone.
Books:
- Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords (Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords)
- Understanding Nutrition (with CD-ROM and InfoTrac) (Understanding Nutrition)
- Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking
- Writing Effective News Releases...: How to Get Free Publicity for Yourself, Your Business, or Your Organization
- YOU: The Owner's Manual: An Insider's Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger
- Your First Year in Network Marketing: Overcome Your Fears, Experience Success, and Achieve Your Dreams!
- Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands
- Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective, 6/e, with PowerWeb
- Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective, 6/e, with PowerWeb
- Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective, 6/e, with PowerWeb
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Marketing Management
- Beyond the Blues: A Guide to Understanding And Treating Prenatal And Postpartum Depression
- Take a Walk on the Dark Side: Rock and Roll Myths, Legends, and Curses
- Supervisory Management: The Art of Inspiring, Empowering, and Developing People
- The Sources of Innovation
- Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
- When in Germany, Do as the Germans Do: The Clued-In Guide to German Life, Language, and Culture
- Mergerstat Review Price to Earnings Ratios 2002
- The Economics of Financing of Media Companies
- The Less-Than-Perfect Horse: Problems Encountered and Solutions Explained
General
| Business & Investing
| Subjects
| Books
Hey, Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Ads, Second Edition
Perfect Pitch: The Art of Selling Ideas and Winning New Business (Adweek Books)
Art of Client Service
Hitting the Sweet Spot: How Consumer Insights Can Inspire Better Marketing and Advertising
Ogilvy on Advertising
