Since Sam Walton's death in 1992, Wal-Mart has gone from being the largest retailer in the world to holding the top spot on the Fortune 500 list as the largest company in the world. Don Soderquist, who was senior vice chairman during that time, played a crucial role in that success. Sam Walton said, "I tried for almost twenty years to hire Don Soderquist . . . But when we really needed him later on, he finally joined up and made a great chief operating officer." Responsible for overseeing ...

Competitive advantage. The value chain. Five forces. Industry structure. Differentiation. Relative cost. If you want to understand how companies achieve and sustain competitive success, Michael Porter’s frameworks are the foundation. But while everyone in business may know Porter’s name, many managers misunderstand and misuse his concepts.Understanding Michael Porter sets the record straight, providing the first concise, accessible summary of Porter’s revolutionar...

Getting a new job or a big promotion is like building a house: You need to get the foundation right for both. With a job, the quick-drying cement is how well you do in your first hundred days, since they establish the foundation for long-term momentum and great performance.Tom Neff and Jim Citrin are two of the world’s leading experts on leadership and career success. As key figures at Spencer Stuart (hailed by the Wall Street Journal as the number one brand name in executive searc...

ARE YOUR WORKING RELATIONSHIPS WORKING AGAINST YOU?To achieve your goals and get ahead, you need to rally people behind you and your ideas. But how do you do that when you lack formal authority? Or when you have a boss who gets in your way? Or when you’re juggling others’ needs at the expense of your own?By managing up, down, and across the organization. Your success depends on it, whether you’re a young professional or an experienced leader.

Brian Tracy shares the most important principles for sales success he has discovered in 30 years of training more than a half million sales professionals in 23 countries. Based on Tracy’s detailed discussions with top salespeople and his keen observation of their methods, as well as his own experiences as a record-breaking salesman, these guidelines address both the inner game of selling—the mental component—and the outer game of selling—the methods and techniques of actually making the sa...

The retail world is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Rapidly evolving technology, globalization, and a saturated marketplace offer consumers instant access to thousands of equally compelling products and services, creating unprecedented levels of expectation. The impact of these changes is so profound that 50 percent of today's retailers and consumer companies will not survive it. Traditional business models will become extinct, and the relationship between vendors and consumers wi...

Why are there so many gaps between what firms know they should do and what they actually do? Why do so many companies fail to implement the experience and insight they've worked so hard to acquire? The Knowing-Doing Gap is the first book to confront the challenge of turning knowledge about how to improve performance into actions that produce measurable results. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, well-known authors and teachers, identify the causes of the knowing-doing gap and explain how t...

Teambuilding is one of the fastest-growing areas on the business shelf, as companies look to increase efficiency and morale.Teambuilding That Gets Results, an easy-to-use guidebook for building effective teams, will increase the strength of any business. Harriet and Linda Diamond offer expert advice gleaned from years of consulting businesses on building strong teams. Topics include:Building strong, flexible, collaborative teamsTeam assessment...

What is different about the careers of people like Lou Gerstner, the acclaimed, recently retired chairman and CEO of IBM? Or Senator Elizabeth Dole, Yahoo! COO Dan Rosensweig, and Tom Freston, chairman and CEO of MTV Networks?Why did they ascend to the top and prosper—why did they have extraordinary careers—while others equally talented never reached their potential or aspirations?Jim Citrin and Rick Smith of Spencer Stuart, the world’s most influential executive search fir...

From the bestselling author of What the CEO Wants You to Know? How to rethink sales from the outside inWe have to face the truth: the process of selling is broken. Customers have more choices and are under intense pressure. Yet few companies are facing this reality. When they don't, a lingering malaise sets in.More than ever these days, the sales process tends to be a war about price-a frustrating, unpleasant war that takes all the fun out...

Don't be daunted by a challenging economy and fierce competition. Even in the toughest environment, innovative, highly profitable businesses abound and yours can be one of them.Bestselling business authority Mark Thompson and international success expert Brian Tracy join forces to show you how great leadership, great people, and great products are the key to building a phenomenally successful business.In Now, Build a Great Business!, you'll learn h...

Sales professionals now confront the most serious threat to their success. Regardless of their size, industry, country, customer type, nature of the relationship or amount of value they provide, sales professionals are finding that purchasing decisions are increasingly being limited by procurement. The modern procurement function is purchasing on steroids. Where traditional purchasing managers negotiated, procurement officials attempt to dictate.  Procurement deploys a variety of tactics desi...