Greg and Julie Alexander thought divorce was the only way out of their lifeless, loveless marriage. Quite unexpectedly, a faithful priest guided them back to the truths of the church, and as they began to incorporate these truths into their lives, they were able to restore the love they once had for each other. Marriage 911 chronicles their journey back from the brink of divorce to marital happiness built on a strong Catholic faith. Told from both spouses' perspectives, their very personal...

A concise extension of the business classic Topgrading, targeted to sales managersBrad Smart's Topgrading has sold more than 150,000 copies since 1999, making it the definitive book for executives who want to hire, coach, and retain top talent. Now Smart has teamed up with Greg Alexander, who used Topgrading to radically improve his sales force at EMC.In Topgrading for Sales, they have boiled down the key Topgrading ideas to a pithy 112 p...

The essential tool kit to achieve breakthrough sales performance improvements.Numbers don’t lie: 40 percent of all salespeople miss their targets each year. How can sales managers ensure their teams are doing everything possible? The key lies in benchmarking, which is not new for finance or manufacturing but rarely gets applied to sales. Making the Number will teach executives to embrace data-driven decision making and rely less on gut instinct.Comparing a sales force to th...

Most companies have massive amounts of data at their disposal, yet fail to utilize it in any meaningful way. But a powerful new business tool - analytics - is enabling many firms to aggressively leverage their data in key business decisions and processes, with impressive results.In their previous book, Competing on Analytics, Thomas Davenport and Jeanne Harris showed how pioneering firms were building their entire strategies around their analytical capabilities. Rather tha...

The Long-Awaited Update for Building a Thriving ConsultancyCompletely updated for today’s busier-than-ever consultants, this classic guide covers the ins and outs for competing and winning in this ultracompetitive field. You’ll find step-by-step advice on how to raise capital, attract clients, create a marketing plan, and grow your business into a $1 million-per-year firm, plus brand-new material on:Blogging and social networkingGlobal consu...

In the first edition of this landmark book, business loyalty guru Fred Reichheld revealed the question most critical to your company’s future: Would you recommend us to a friend?” By asking customers this question, you identify detractors, who sully your firm’s reputation and readily switch to competitors, and promoters, who generate good profits and true, sustainable growth.You also generate a vital metric: your Net Promoter Score. Since the book was first publi...

GREAT IDEAS CHANGE THE WORLD, but how do you know if your idea is truly great? That is the problem Professor Sean Wise addresses in his third and best book to date. Sean Wise, former online host and business advisor to the hit reality show, Dragons' Den, has heard tens of thousands of entrepreneurs' idea pitches. Some were good, most were bad, and in this book he shows you how to tell the difference. Based on more than 20,000 hours of pitches, Wise takes us inside the minds of investors an...

The Balanced Scorecard translates a company's vision and strategy into a coherent set of performance measures. The four perspectives of the scorecard--financial measures, customer knowledge, internal business processes, and learning and growth--offer a balance between short-term and long-term objectives, between outcomes desired and performance drivers of those outcomes, and between hard objective measures and softer, more subjective measures. In the first part, Kaplan and Norton ...

Digitization of business interactions and processes is advancing full bore. But in many organizations, returns from IT investments are flatlining, even as technology spending has skyrocketed.These challenges call for new levels of IT savvy: the ability of all managers-IT or non-IT-to transform their company's technology assets into operational efficiencies that boost margins. Companies with IT-savvy managers are 20 percent more profitable than their competitors.In IT Savvy,...

In a world of stiffening competition, business strategy is more crucial than ever. Yet most organizations struggle in this area--not with formulating strategy but with executing it, or putting their strategy into action. Owing to execution failures, companies realize just a fraction of the financial performance promised in their strategic plans.It doesn't have to be that way, maintain Robert Kaplan and David Norton in The Execution Premium. Building on their breakthrough w...

How do you keep your customers coming back-and get them to bring others?If you need the best practices and ideas for making your customers loyal and profitable--but don't have time to find them--this book is for you. Here are nine inspiring and useful perspectives, all in one place.This collection of HBR articles will help you:- Turn angry customers into loyal advocates- Get more people to recommend you- Boost customer satisfaction by satisfying your...

Bestselling author of Million Dollar Consulting shares the secrets of writing winning proposalsIntended for consultants, speakers, and other professional services providers, Million Dollar Consulting® Proposals ends forever the time-consuming and often frustrating process of writing a consulting proposal. It begins with the basics—defining these proposals and why they are necessary—and coaches you through the entire proposal process. In this book,...