Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business: 10 Tools You Can Use Monday Morning by Ram Charan (Hardcover - Jan 20, 2004)

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Crown Business; 1 edition (January 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400051525
• ISBN-13: 978-1400051526

Product Description

The coauthor of the international bestseller Execution has created the how-to guide for solving today's toughest business challenge: creating profitable growth that is organic, differentiated, and sustainable.


For many, growth is about "home runs" - the big bold idea, the next new thing, the product that will revolutionize the marketplace. While obviously attractive and lucrative, home runs don't happen every day and frequently come in cycles.


Products like Kevlar, Teflon, and the Dell business model for selling personal computers may be once-in-a-decade phenomena. A surer and more consistent path to profitable revenue growth is through "singles and doubles"-small day-to-day wins and adaptation to changes in the marketplace that build the foundation for substantially increasing revenues. The impact of singles and doubles can be huge. They are not only the basis for sustained revenue growth but, in fact, the foundation for home runs. Singles and doubles provide the discipline of execution, an absolute necessity for successfully bringing a breakthrough technology to market or implementing a new business model.


Inherent in this way of thinking is the revolutionary idea that growth is everyone's business-not solely the concern of the sales force or top management. Just as everyone participates in cost reduction, so must everyone be engaged in the growth agenda of the business. Every contact of each employee with a customer is an opportunity for revenue growth. That includes everyone from the people working in a company's call center handling customer inquiries and complaints to the CEO.


In this trailblazing book, Ram Charan provides the building blocks and tools that can put a business on the path to sustained, profitable growth. For more than twenty-five years, Ram Charan has been working day in and day out with companies around the world. The ideas he has developed for solving the profitable revenue growth dilemma facing many businesses are based on personally seeing what works in real time. These are ideas that have been tested across industries and that deliver results, and they can be put to use starting Monday morning.

From the Inside Flap

The coauthor of the international bestseller Execution has created the how-to guide for solving today?s toughest business challenge: creating profitable growth that is organic, differentiated, and sustainable.


For many, growth is about ?home runs??the big bold idea, the next new thing, the product that will revolutionize the marketplace. While obviously attractive and lucrative, home runs don?t happen every day and frequently come in cycles.


Products like Kevlar, Teflon, and the Dell business model for selling personal computers may be once-in-a-decade phenomena. A surer and more consistent path to profitable revenue growth is through ?singles and doubles??small day-to-day wins and adaptation to changes in the marketplace that build the foundation for substantially increasing revenues. The impact of singles and doubles can be huge. They are not only the basis for sustained revenue growth but, in fact, the foundation for home runs. Singles and doubles provide the discipline of execution, an absolute necessity for successfully bringing a breakthrough technology to market or implementing a new business model.


Inherent in this way of thinking is the revolutionary idea that growth is everyone?s business?not solely the concern of the sales force or top management. Just as everyone participates in cost reduction, so must everyone be engaged in the growth agenda of the business. Every contact of each employee with a customer is an opportunity for revenue growth. That includes everyone from the people working in a company?s call center handling customer inquiries and complaints to the CEO.


In this trailblazing book, Ram Charan provides the building blocks and tools that can put a business on the path to sustained, profitable growth. For more than twenty-five years, Ram Charan has been working day in and day out with companies around the world. The ideas he has developed for solving the profitable revenue growth dilemma facing many businesses are based on personally seeing what works in real time. These are ideas that have been tested across industries and that deliver results, and they can be put to use starting Monday morning.

About the Author

RAM CHARAN is the coauthor of Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, the international bestseller that has changed the way managers run their companies. He is a highly sought-after advisor to CEOs and senior executives in companies ranging from start-ups to the Fortune 500. Dr. Charan earned his doctorate at Harvard Business School and has been on the faculty of that school as well as the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. His articles have been published in Fortune magazine and Harvard Business Review, and his other books include What the CEO Wants You to Know, Boards At Work, and The Leadership Pipeline.

Secrets of Closing Sales : Revised and Updated, Seventh Edition by Roy Alexander and Charles B. Roth

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• ISBN-10: 1591840627
• ASIN: B000C4SI94
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches

Product Description

The most famous book on the art of closing sales is fully updated to meet the challenges of today's competitive and changing sales environment with 53 case studies drawn from real life. This new 6th edition features the newest selling methods, the latest products, new salesperson/customer relations, and new case examples. Index. Over 30,000 sold Pub: 9/97. 

About the Author

Roy Alexander heads his own consulting firm in New York City and is particularly noted for his sales and communications consultations in energy- related fields.Charles B. Roth is deceased. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Foreword: how secrets build revenues and profits

Why has Secrets of Closing Sales become required equipment for successful selling? Because it focuses on the close. Without the close there is no advancement and no reward. How soul-destroying to invest hours in prospecting, appointment setting, and customer research only to watch it all evaporate. Thus, constant adding of sophisticated ways to close sales is standard with top salesmen and saleswomen the world over.This seventh edition of Secrets is organized so you can immediately access closing techniques when you need them. Closing Labs make you say: “I’ve got just that problem. I’ll put that secret in practice today!”
In this seventh edition you’ll approach selling as consultative and conversational, empathetic group persuasion, CEO to CEO, unorthodox closing, reverse closing, win-win sign-ups, sweet spot detection, and other ways to penetrate the buyer’s mind and then capitalize on that deeper knowledge of the buyer.
You’ll learn:

• How the decision to buy is first made in the mind of the salesperson.
• When to let others do the closing for you.
• How to craft the correct story for the right prospect.
• When to assume the no-minded customer doesn’t understand and how to rephrase on another track.
• When to use the shock treatment (don’t just stand there).
• How to close when you’ve forgotten your story and need to improvise (think Robin Williams).
• How to make people-savvy closes.
• How to handle “I’ll think it over” and “Gotta check with my man” and “I’ll mull it over.”
• How to use the Echo to block objections.
• How to flow with attitude shifts that lead to sign-ups.

Are you handling a difficult buyer? The Clam, the Chatterbox, the Money-Mad, the Contrarian, the On-the-Fencer, the Doubting Thomas? Make calls with close masters to learn:

• A famous saleswoman’s enduring secret.
• The Poker principle that profits. (H. L. Mencken said, “One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective, it is also vastly more intelligent.”)
• Sometimes audacity works; you can ask for a large order and get it. (In one case a closer failed to do this and almost lost a $4 million transaction!)
Armed with this new edition, you’ll be prepared with consistently tested strategies. In this era, photographing Mars is routine, bioengineering produces spare body parts, and information can be obtained several times faster than the speed of light. Salespeople must think anew and plan in a whole new world.
—Roy Alexander

Preface: push ’em uphill—today and tomorrow

Closing sales is without a doubt the great skill of all time. The process enables you to persuade and influence, and then walk away with the listener’s agreement. That’s why closing sales has been the measuring stick for personal and business success through the ages.
People do not buy products or services, however. They buy benefits from your products and services. This structure has pushed Secrets of Closing Sales into seven editions. Experts in this book are at your service.
Recall the sage who said, “It’s easier to go down a hill, but the rewards come from getting to the top.” In West Cornwall, Connecticut, I live on a historic hill called Push-’Em-Up. The name traces back to the War of 1812. Getting American cannons and ammo up Push-’Em-Up Hill was a job for American infantry. The hills gave Americans the advantage, but they had to push ’em up first. View life as hills to conquer.
No one thought about it at the time, but this hill was also the founder of America’s selling pioneer: the Yankee peddler. The transition from “push ’em up” to pushcart peddlers was a natural. Hardworking eighteenth- and nineteenth-century salesfolk sold everything from pots and pans to Lydia Pinkham’s Compound. Peddlers and their offspring forged a new selling class. These pioneering salesfolk helped civilize the nation by bringing the latest products to small villages and by supporting the growing economy. From pushcart peddlers to present day we’ve come a long way in selling. The pioneers established techniques no less valid in our new millennium, driven by cyberspace and the global marketplace. The age-old techniques remain: finding buyers to sit down with, interviewing them to learn their anxieties and wishes, presenting solutions, overcoming objections, and making sure the service and support are constant.
Today’s new century presents both threats and opportunities. The rate of change is accelerating at dizzying speed. Whether you’re introducing a new product or selling a million- dollar work of art or a home piano, this seventh edition of Secrets of Closing Sales is your step-by-step guide. Hundreds of case histories are included. Closing Labs give you actual conversational vignettes.
The book features quantum changes in society—the global economy, the ever-escalating influence of women, the breathtaking developments in communications from Internet to intranet, website to wireless. Today’s sales closing is more important than ever, but the salesperson must be psychologically prepared, more nimble and flexible.
The pushcart peddler is history. We owe him much. Whether offering the services of a small company or selling global consumer products, Secrets will help close that sale.

—James A. Newman, Vice Chairman, Emeritus Booz Allen, Hamilton 

Double-Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It - No Matter What by Michael Treacy

Double-Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It - No Matter What by Michael Treacy

Firnando Chau Review



Table of Contents:-
Chapter 1 Why Is It So Hard to Grow?
Chapter 2 Who's Achieving Double-Digit Growth?Chapter 3 First Data Masters the Disciplines of GrowthChapter 4 The First Discipline: Keep the Growth You Have Already EarnedChapter 5 The Second Discipline: Take Business from Your CompetitorsChapter 6 The Third Discipline: Show Up Where Growth Is Going to Happen Chapter 7 The Fourth Discipline: Invade Adjacent Markets Chapter 8 The Fifth Discipline: Invest in New Lines of Business Chapter 9 Manage Your Portfolio for Double-Digit Growth
Index

Synopsis (2004)

The bestselling author of The Discipline of Market Leaders reveals how companies can achieve sustained growth.

In their 1995 blockbuster The Discipline of Market Leaders, Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema explained how great companies dominated their markets by offering superior value propositions. Now Treacy is back with an equally groundbreaking book-revealing how great companies master growth each year and how all businesses can identify and exploit opportunities for increased revenues, gross margins, and profits.

Treacy's main point is simple-it really is possible to grow your business by 10 percent or more, year after year, in good times and bad, without cheating. Great companies already know how to do it, and the rest of us can learn their strategies and do the same thing. Using case studies from industry leaders such as Dell Computer, Home Depot, and GE, he shows the five steps that are imperative to ensure growth:
• keep the growth you have already earned
• look for growth where it's likely to be found
• take business from your competitors

Treacy believes that any business can grow at a consistent double-digit rate, and with Double-Digit Growth, managers and investors now have the tools to achieve that lofty goal and maintain corporate success.

From Soundview Executive Book Summaries

How Great Companies Grow No Matter What

Every business demands growth, and double-digit growth is a dream for every executive who presides over a company that is seeing lackluster results every quarter. According to management expert Michael Treacy, these dreams can become a reality if managers follow a few basic principles and build solid portfolios of growth initiatives. In Double-Digit Growth, Treacy writes that corporate America's systemic growth problem is a result of constant denial, and it does not have to be that way.

Treacy writes that the goal of his book is to provide a simple, practical map that will help companies navigate their way toward substantial, sustainable growth. They need a guide, he explains, because his research has shown him that most senior managers do not have the skills or resources they need to meet the ample challenges that block their way toward healthy growth.
But some do have what it takes. Numerous companies have been able to sustain growth in the slow economy that has loomed for the past several years, including Harley Davidson, Starbucks, and Wal-Mart. Even much smaller companies, such as Paychex, Oshkosh Truck, and the 120-year-old carpet manufacturer Mohawk Industries have been able to achieve double-digit gains in revenues, gross profits and net income for many years. By looking at these and many other companies that have been able to sustain growth strategies even while the market has stopped growing, Treacy has been able to identify a single characteristic that has set them apart: a solid portfolio of growth initiatives that is built on at least a few of the five distinct disciplines he describes throughout Double-Digit Growth.

Five Disciplines of Sustained Growth

The five disciplines that Treacy recommends are:

1. Retain your customer base. Keep the growth you have already earned by enticing customers into complex relationships that make it a hassle for them to switch to a competitor. Tailoring your products or services using the data you have gathered from your customers can also give you an advantage over those who aim to steal your customers away from you. Proactively managing customer defections can help you anticipate and pre-empt them. Bonding with customers wherever emotion is involved with an interaction is another great way to retain customers who might seek value elsewhere.

2. Gain market share at the expense of your rivals. Give customers a reason to abandon another product or service for yours. Do what it takes to lower the switching costs. Treacy writes that pulling customers away from a competitor can be very difficult, so you must devote many resources to raiding its customer base. Blunting a competitor's incumbent advantages is one way to go, so higher value and quality are crucial. Buying a competitor is another way to do this.

3. Exploit market position. Show up where growth is going to happen by spotting it early. This can be done by watching the industry for shifts in buying criteria, product or service innovations pulling new customers into a long-dormant segment, and population trends that produce more potential customers. You must be able to spot positioning opportunities to make the most of them. Continually using a systematic approach to managing the process can help.

4. Invade adjacent markets. Before moving into a nearby market, decide whether it offers significant opportunities for long-term growth and profitability, determine whether you have an advantage over a competitor, and ensure you can match its standards of quality and value.

5. Invest in new lines of business. Treacy writes that businesses taking this approach must never overpay for a new line of business, must find simple strategies instead of complex ones, and must partner with the new business by assessing its leadership team and its balance sheet.

Although a successful growth portfolio might not include all five of the disciplines Treacy describes, he writes that it must contain more than one - because only a balanced growth portfolio can keep an organization growing when the market shifts dramatically.

Why We Like This Book

Michael Treacy presents a multifront strategy for steady growth in simple and easy-to-follow terms, allowing business leaders to see how each principle can be applied to specific types of organizations or economic situations. His expertise shines as he clearly states his goal and backs it up with relevant case studies, experiences and numbers that illustrate the benefits of his plan. Double-Digit Growth presents bold explanations of what is troubling many companies, and without mincing words, points out the flaws of some with one hand while pointing the way toward sustained growth with the other. Copyright © 2003 Soundview Executive Book Summaries

About the Author (2004)

Michael Treacy is an internationally recognized speaker and consultant. A former professor at MIT, he has consulted for industry leaders such as AT&T, Citibank, and RJR Nabisco. He is the founder of Treacy & Co. and served as its managing director until its merger with Gen3 Partners, which he cofounded.