The Ultimate Route to Market


Book Description

Global systems integrators, outsourcers and consulting firms are responsible for directly leveraging or influencing most IT investment in large corporations. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), software companies and other technology providers aspire to create mutually successful partnerships with the large influencers due to their ‘business case’ driven approach, their early stage engagement in the sales cycle, their C-Suite relationships with large multi-national enterprises, and the often-giant scale of the typical technology spend that their projects and engagements drive. The projects that these companies deliver are specialist and complex, meaning that companies who aspire to work successfully in the sector require skill, knowledge and a sophisticated alliance approach to gain credibility and maintain long term sustainable relationships. The Ultimate Route to Market provides an insight into the practices, construct and culture of global consulting firms, systems integrators and outsourcers and provides a suggested framework for a successful alliance with them. Here, Ian Shanahan provides organisations with an overview of the global systems integrator, outsourcer and consulting firm sectors, provides insight into their culture and expertly explains alliance best practice methodology. This is a must read for anyone that aspires to understand the market, how it works and how they become desirable to the large IT services companies, so that they can execute alliance engagements to the sector in a measured, methodical and low risk way.




Adventure Capitalist


Book Description

Drive . . . and grow rich! The bestselling author of Investment Biker is back from the ultimate road trip: a three-year drive around the world that would ultimately set the Guinness record for the longest continuous car journey. In Adventure Capitalist, legendary investor Jim Rogers, dubbed “the Indiana Jones of finance” by Time magazine, proves that the best way to profit from the global situation is to see the world mile by mile. “While I have never patronized a prostitute,” he writes, “I know that one can learn more about a country from speaking to the madam of a brothel or a black marketeer than from meeting a foreign minister.” Behind the wheel of a sunburst-yellow, custom-built convertible Mercedes, Rogers and his fiancée, Paige Parker, began their “Millennium Adventure” on January 1, 1999, from Iceland. They traveled through 116 countries, including many where most have rarely ventured, such as Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Angola, Sudan, Congo, Colombia, and East Timor. They drove through war zones, deserts, jungles, epidemics, and blizzards. They had many narrow escapes. They camped with nomads and camels in the western Sahara. They ate silkworms, iguanas, snakes, termites, guinea pigs, porcupines, crocodiles, and grasshoppers. Best of all, they saw the real world from the ground up—the only vantage point from which it can be truly understood—economically, politically, and socially. Here are just a few of the author’s conclusions: • The new commodity bull market has started. • The twenty-first century will belong to China. • There is a dramatic shortage of women developing in Asia. • Pakistan is on the verge of disintegrating. • India, like many other large nations, will break into several countries. • The Euro is doomed to fail. • There are fortunes to be made in Angola. • Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are a scam. • Bolivia is a comer after decades of instability, thanks to gigantic amounts of natural gas. Adventure Capitalist is the most opinionated, sprawling, adventurous journey you’re likely to take within the pages of a book—the perfect read for armchair adventurers, global investors, car enthusiasts, and anyone interested in seeing the world and understanding it as it really is.




Grow


Book Description

Ten years of research uncover the secret source of growth and profit … Those who center their business on improving people’s lives have a growth rate triple that of competitors and outperform the market by a huge margin. They dominate their categories, create new categories and maximize profit in the long term. Pulling from a unique ten year growth study involving 50,000 brands, Jim Stengel shows how the world's 50 best businesses—as diverse as Method, Red Bull, Lindt, Petrobras, Samsung, Discovery Communications, Visa, Zappos, and Innocent—have a cause and effect relationship between financial performance and their ability to connect with fundamental human emotions, hopes, values and greater purposes. In fact, over the 2000s an investment in these companies—“The Stengel 50”—would have been 400 percent more profitable than an investment in the S&P 500. Grow is based on unprecedented empirical research, inspired (when Stengel was Global Marketing Officer of Procter & Gamble) by a study of companies growing faster than P&G. After leaving P&G in 2008, Stengel designed a new study, in collaboration with global research firm Millward Brown Optimor. This study tracked the connection over a ten year period between financial performance and customer engagement, loyalty and advocacy. Then, in a further investigation of what goes on in the “black box” of the consumer’s mind, Stengel and his team tapped into neuroscience research to look at customer engagement and measure subconscious attitudes to determine whether the top businesses in the Stengel Study were more associated with higher ideals than were others. Grow thus deftly blends timeless truths about human behavior and values into an action framework – how you discover, build, communicate, deliver and evaluate your ideal. Through colorful stories drawn from his fascinating personal experiences and “deep dives” that bring out the true reasons for such successes as the Pampers, HP, Discovery Channel, Jack Daniels and Zappos, Grow unlocks the code for twenty-first century business success.




Traversing the Traction Gap


Book Description

Traction. Startups Need It. Learn How To Get It. Vision, groundbreaking ideas, total commitment, and boundless enthusiasm characterize most startups, but they require capital to go from promising product to scalable business. More than 80 percent of all early-stage startups fail. Most of them can build a product, but the vast majority stumble when it comes time to take those products to market due to poor “market engineering” skills. Traversing the Traction Gap exposes the reasons behind that scary failure rate and provides a prescriptive how-to guide, focused specifically on market engineering techniques, so startups can succeed. The go-to-market hurdle is insurmountable to many startups. Just when they most need to establish a foothold in the market, they run short on time and money. This is the Traction Gap, that period of time introducing a new product into the marketplace and being able to scale it during a rapidly closing window of opportunity. Traversing the Traction Gap is a practical guidebook for navigating the tumultuous early life of a startup. Based on real-life examples, the advice from Cleveland and the members of the Wildcat Venture Partners team provides a roadmap and metrics for succeeding where others have failed.




The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published


Book Description

Now updated for 2015! The best, most comprehensive guide for writers is now revised and updated, with new sections on ebooks, self-publishing, crowd-funding through Kickstarter, blogging, increasing visibility via online marketing, micropublishing, the power of social media and author websites, and more—making The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published more vital than ever for anyone who wants to mine that great idea and turn it into a successfully published book. Written by experts with twenty-five books between them as well as many years’ experience as a literary agent (Eckstut) and a book doctor (Sterry), this nuts-and-bolts guide demystifies every step of the publishing process: how to come up with a blockbuster title, create a selling proposal, find the right agent, understand a book contract, and develop marketing and publicity savvy. Includes interviews with hundreds of publishing insiders and authors, including Seth Godin, Neil Gaiman, Amy Bloom, Margaret Atwood, Leonard Lopate, plus agents, editors, and booksellers; sidebars featuring real-life publishing success stories; sample proposals, query letters, and an entirely updated resources and publishers directory.




The Membership Economy (PB)


Book Description

The "membership" business models of Netflix, Weight Watchers, and other industry giants revealed—and how you can use them to lead your company to the top of the food chain For decades, consumers and businesses have joined clubs, bought products and accessed services using a subscription model. But it has only been in recent years that the model has been transformed and perfected through massive changes in technology. The Membership Economy shows how nimble companies that focus on ongoing, formal relationships over one-time transactions are thriving. By renting, lending, or offering access instead of just "ownership," organizations can leapfrog industry leaders. In terms of strategic business models, this is one that allows for breakthrough growth. With great case studies from American Express, LinkedIn, CrossFit, SurveyMonkey, and more, this book will show you how to radically rethink how your organization can build loyalty, viral growth, and recurring revenue.




A Practical Guide to Event Promotion


Book Description

This Practical Guide to Event Promotion offers the reader a short and succinct overview of the range of marketing communication materials from print to social marketing that can be used to promote an event successfully to the correct target markets. It includes invaluable advice on how to identify the type of communication tools most applicable to the type of event that is being promoted and its target market; how to effectively use and implement these; useful tips on things to avoid; as well as suggested time frames to use before, during and after the event. Examples of best practice and insights from events marketers are integrated throughout. Although full of practical information, a strong theoretical base underpins the advice included on how event managers can apply communication and persuasion theory to key audiences. This book will be a useful resource for Events Management students putting on an event as part of their course and for assessments, and those wanting to convert general theory into practical skills they will use in the workplace.




The 4 A's of Marketing


Book Description

The authors present a powerful and tested approach that helps managers see a business’s every action through the eyes of its customers. This approach is organized around the values that matter most to customers: Acceptability, Affordability, Accessibility and Awareness. Taken together, these attributes are called the "4A’s." The 4A framework derives from a customer-value perspective based on the four distinct roles that customers play in the market: seekers, selectors, payers and users. For a marketing campaign to succeed, it must achieve high marks on all four A’s, using a blend of marketing and non-marketing resources. The 4A framework helps companies create value for customers by identifying exactly what they want and need, as well as by uncovering new wants and needs. (For example, none of us knew we "needed" an iPad until Apple created it.) That means not only ensuring that customers are aware of the product, but also ensuring that the product is affordable, accessible and acceptable to them. Throughout this book, the authors demonstrate how looking at the world through the 4A lens helps companies avoid marketing myopia (an excessive focus on the product) as well as managerial myopia (an excessive focus on process). In fact, it is a powerful way to operationalize the marketing concept; it enables managers to look at the world through the customer’s eyes. This ability has become an absolute necessity for success in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace.




The Best Hits on Route 66


Book Description

Inspiring, practical, and entertaining, this is the premier guide to all the off-the-radar stops along America’s Mother Road that you simply must not miss. Author Amy Bizzarri, a Route 66 expert and enthusiast, provides a comprehensive list of 100 unique stops that you’ll want to take a moment to explore as you journey along the highway’s 2,500 miles. The Best Hits on Route 66 also includes specialized itineraries with themes that make it easier than ever to plan a road trip to remember. Check out: - Gearhead's Guide to Route 66 - Hollywood on 66 - Native American History on Route 66 - Mother Road for Music Lovers - The Mother Road with Kids - Natural Wonders of Route 66 - Speedy 66: Chicago to Santa Monica in Six Days - and Supernatural 66




Product-Led Growth


Book Description

"Product-Led Growth is about helping your customers experience the ongoing value your product provides. It is a critical step in successful product design and this book shows you how it's done." - Nir Eyal, Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of "Hooked"