Overpromise And Overdeliver Revised Edition

The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek bestseller-fully revised and updated The old cliché is that smart companies underpromise and overdeliver. But in today's crowded market, underpromising is a ticket to oblivion. Companies like American Girl, Best Buy, and Apple came out of nowhere to dominate their markets. How did they scoop their bigger and wealthier competition? It wasn't through a fat marketing budget. It was because they made, and kept, dangerously ambitious promises. In fact, they overpromised to lure customers in-and then overdelivered to keep them. Rick Barrera shows how to make sure that every point of contact between your company and its customers is well executed and fulfills an over-the-top brand promise, to drive word of mouth and rapid growth.

Lock in customer loyalty by making--and keeping--a breakthrough brand promise that competitor's can't touch. Includes a free CD-ROM with supplemental materials and a software-driven study guide.

The Old Cliché In Business Is That Smart Companies Underpromise And Overdeliver. But In A Crowded Marketplace, Underpromising Is A One-Way Ticket To Oblivion. How Did Extraordinary Companies Like Tivo, Best Buy, The Container Store, American Girl, And Washington Mutual Come Out Of Nowhere To Virtually Take Over Their Respective Markets From Bigger And Wealthier Competitors? Not By Spending A Fortune On Marketing. All They Did Was Keep Their Promises . . . And Not Just Any Promises, But Dangerously Ambitious Promises. These Companies Used A Radical New Formula: They Overpromised To Lure Customers In And Then Overdelivered To Keep Them. In Overpromise And Overdeliver, Marketing Guru Rick Barrera Uses Groundbreaking Research And Case Studies To Show How These Word-Of-Mouth-Driven Successes Have Mastered What He Calls Touchpoint Branding The Art Of Making Sure That Every Point Of Contact Between A Company And Its Customers Is Well Executed And Fulfills An Over-The-Top Brand Promise. Barrera Explains How Touchpoint Branding S Three Major Components Product Touchpoints, System Touchpoints, And Human Touchpoints Can Create Dramatic Market Differentiation. The Companies Featured In This Book Start With An Extraordinary Product (Like The Ipod), Supported By Smoothly Running Systems (Like The Sumerset Houseboats Web Site), And Add Satisfying Human Contact (Like The Luxury Service At A Ritz-Carlton Hotel). In A Crowded Business Environment Where Everyone Seems To Be Shouting The Same Message At Peak Volume, Overpromising And Overdelivering Is The Best Way To Stand Out. Barrera Offers Powerful And Easy-To-Apply Lessons Not Only For Senior Managers But Also For Individuals At Any Level For Anyone Who Wants To Create Unshakable Customer Loyalty.

Brian Kurtz is the bridge connecting the bedrock fundamentals of direct response marketing to the state-of-the-art strategies, tactics, and channels of today. Overdeliver distills his expertise from working in the trenches over almost four decades to help readers build a business that maximizes both revenue and relationships. Marketing isn't everything, according to Brian Kurtz. It's the only thing. If you have a vision or a mission in life, why not share it with millions instead of dozens? And while you are sharing it with as many people as possible and creating maximum impact, why not measure everything and make all of your marketing accountable? That's what this book is all about. In the world of direct marketing, Brian Kurtz has seen it all and done it all over almost four decades. And he lives by the philosophy, "Those who did it have a responsibility to teach it." Here's a small sample of what you'll learn: * The 4 Pillars of Being Extraordinary * The 5 Principles of why "Original Source" matters * The 7 Characteristics that are present in every world class copywriter * Multiple ways to track the metrics that matter in every campaign and every medium, online and offline * Why customer service and fulfillment are marketing functions * That the most important capital you own has nothing to do with money * And much more Whether you're new to marketing or a seasoned pro, this book gives you a crystal-clear road map to grow your business, make more money, maximize your impact in your market, and love what you're doing while you're doing it. Kurtz takes you inside the craft to help you use all the tools at your disposal--from the intricate relationship between lists, offers, and copy, to continuity and creating lifetime value, to the critical importance of multichannel marketing and more--so you can succeed wildly, exceed all your expectations, and overdeliver every time.

Learn how to stop pouring vast sums of money into technology projects that don't have a lasting impact by closing the communication gap between IT and leadership. Too many businesses miss opportunity after opportunity to design, plan, and achieve intentional business change. Why? Because they charter projects focused on delivering software products: IT projects. But as this groundbreaking book points out, there's no such thing as an IT project—or at least there shouldn't be. It's always about intentional business change, or what's the point? It's time to stop providing simplistic, one-dimensional, all-you-gotta-do panaceas. When the only constant in business is change, truly useful IT has to help you change instead of build solutions that are obsolete even before they are completed. IT consultant Bob Lewis, author of the bestselling Bare Bones Project Management, has joined forces with seasoned CIO Dave Kaiser to give you the tools you need. It's a multidimensional, relentlessly practical guide. Condensed to handbook length and seasoned with Lewis's trademark sardonic humor, it's an enjoyable and digestible read as well. Lewis and Kaiser take you step by step through the process of building a collaboration between IT and the rest of the business that really works. Insisting on intentional business change takes patience, communication, and courage, but it has a huge payoff. More to the point, insist on anything else and every penny you spend will be a wasted dime and a waste of time.

49 Marketing Secrets is a book that was conceived to fill the void on marketing books that is tailored to the small business owner. Many of the problems I have solved with my clients are marketing problems: they don't understand marketing, they don't know who to trust, they don't know what to do. The objective of the book is to provide an inexpensive and safe place for mall business owners to turn to receive trusted advice from people who have been there. The book was written by marketing experts and business owner and it describes what they implemented to grow their business. We can all become great marketers. In this book you will discover: 9 Winning Marketing Strategy 8 Branding and Corporate Image Strategies 6 Media Strategies 3 Networking strategies 9 Technology-Based Marketing Strategies 6 Event Strategies 8 Sales Strategies.

"Unleash the hidden power of trust and change lives and impact organization with proven, patented techniques. In a compelling and reader-friendly style, Stephen M.R. Covey and long-time business partner Greg Link share enlightening principles from people and organizations that are achieving unprecedented prosperity from high-trust relationships and--even more inspiring--also attaining elevated levels of energy and joy. With penetrating insights about the world's most successful leaders and organizations, the authors lay out a practical and actionable formula that makes trust a performance multiplier for leaders, teams, organizations, and even countries. They show why trust is fast becoming the most consequential life and leadership skill of our time--a career-critical competency required to navigate and compete in this perilous twenty-first-century interdependent, global economy. Covey and Link teach how to cut through traditional either/or thinking to extend Smart Trust, enabling you to exercise sound judgment in a low-trust world by minimizing risk and maximizing possibilities."--Publisher description.

Over the past decade, the concept and effective execution of off-line and online social (and business-related) informal peer-to-peer communication has become extremely important to marketers as business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) customers have increasingly shown distrust, disinterest, and disdain for most supplier messages conveyed through traditional media. The Customer Advocate and the Customer Saboteur offers a comprehensive overview and sets of actionable insights into this new world of customer-led communication and behavioral influence: How we got here How objective, original, credible, authentic and effective brand, product, or service word-of-mouth programs can be initiated and scaled How contemporary and actionable measures can be applied to assess strategic and tactical customer experience and relationship effectiveness Why advocacy is the ultimate customer loyalty behavior goal How to identify drivers of, and minimize, customer sabotage How employee behavior links to customer advocacy behavior How social word-of-mouth is addressed differently around the world How the core concept of advocacy can be expected to morph going forward through more proactive marketing and leveraging of customer behavior Praise for The Customer Advocate and the Customer Saboteur "Michael Lowenstein offers excellent insights and methods any business can apply to achieve high customer advocacy from its customer base." - Professor Philip Kotler, Northwestern University "Proactive endorsements of customers and employees are earned by making deliberate decisions about how you run your business. Michael Lowenstein's book gives readers dedicated to company growth through customer advocacy the specifics and tools to 'earn the right' to those endorsements." - Jeanne Bliss, noted customer experience expert and author (www.customerbliss.com); co-founder, Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) "The Customer Advocate and the Customer Saboteur is fantastic! Michael eloquently presents customer service theories and research techniques that reinforce what we all already know but now intimately understand so we can confidently expand our best practices. I have gone back to the material several times since initially reading this masterpiece to clarify and tweak current programs as well as justifying the implementation of new customer relationship building initiatives. Since our nation now relies on the service sector to support the economy, this book and Michael Lowenstein are a block in the foundation of our economic recovery. Read this book; your customers, your employees, and the nation will benefit.” - Chris Zane, Founder/Pres, Zane’s Cycle; author of Reinventing the Wheel; the Science of Creating Lifetime Customers “Social Customers can have an enormous impact on brand value. Michael Lowenstein's The Customer Advocate and the Customer Saboteur synthesizes solid research and compelling examples to show how to capitalize on advocacy behavior while minimizing the potential for damage from ‘badvocacy.’ Essential reading for customer-centric business leaders!” - Bob Thompson, Founder/CEO, CustomerThink Corp.

From the millionaire entrepreneur and New York Times bestselling author of The 10X Rule comes a bold and contrarian wake-up call for anyone truly ready for success. One of the 7 best motivational books of 2016, according to Inc. Magazine. Before Grant Cardone built five successful companies (and counting), became a multimillionaire, and wrote bestselling books... he was broke, jobless, and drug-addicted. Grant had grown up with big dreams, but friends and family told him to be more reasonable and less demanding. If he played by the rules, they said, he could enjoy everyone else’s version of middle class success. But when he tried it their way, he hit rock bottom. Then he tried the opposite approach. He said NO to the haters and naysayers and said YES to his burning, outrageous, animal obsession. He reclaimed his obsession with wanting to be a business rock star, a super salesman, a huge philanthropist. He wanted to live in a mansion and even own an airplane. Obsession made all of his wildest dreams come true. And it can help you achieve massive success too. As Grant says, we're in the middle of an epidemic of average. The conventional wisdom is to seek balance and take it easy. But that has really just given us an excuse to be unexceptional. If you want real success, you have to know how to harness your obsession to rocket to the top. This book will give you the inspiration and tools to break out of your cocoon of mediocrity and achieve your craziest dreams. Grant will teach you how to: · Set crazy goals—and reach them, every single day. · Feed the beast: when you value money and spend it on the right things, you get more of it. · Shut down the doubters—and use your haters as fuel. Whether you're a sales person, small business owner, or 9-to-5 working stiff, your path to happiness runs though your obsessions. It's a simple choice: be obsessed or be average.