Books

Sales, Marketing, and Continuous Improvement, is a straightforward, example-filled guide that discusses the need to have sales and marketing as part of your improvement processes. With a step-by-step 6 phase guide, author, Stowell, offers practical guidance for avoiding common pitfalls. This book is good for anyone in a management position in any company, in any industry.

Jossey-Bass. 286pp. Hardcover. Cost: $42.00

"The Constant Consumer" looks at the consumer patterns of the baby-boomer demographic as a jumping point to its claim that traditional age-base demopgraphic profiling is off the mark. This book will help you increase sales by understanding what consistently drives consumer spending decisions and enhances market shares by speaking to shared values and not just past actions. This book is perfect for people in management positions anywhere.

Kaplan Business. 272 pages. Hardcover.

This book takes a hands-on approach to building a customer-centered organization.

Basic Books. 320pp. Paperback. Cost: $12.24

Terry Barber, the author of The Inspiration Factor, subtitled "How You Can Revitalize Your Company Culture in 12 Weeks," argues that regardless of your personality type, background, or age, you can choose to create an inspirational transaction and positively impact the people around you. "Inspiration is precursor to leadership, to motivation, and is even a new category for business," Barber says. His book offers seven principles that can help readers become team leaders in their organizations and inspire those around them.

Inspiration Blvd. LLC. 196. Hardcover. Cost: $29.95

The authors examine what they feel is the link between employee, customer, and investor loyalty and attempt to prove that traditional accounting practices do not show the "loyalty effect." They make a compelling case by applying other gauges to show the impact of loyalty on long-term organization performance.

McGraw-Hill. 336pp. Hardcover. Cost: Varies by seller

The author spells out his formula for developing a loyalty-driven culture that empowers employees to strive to create customer loyalty, and he devotes a chapter to fostering teamwork.

Wiley. 198pp. Hardcover. Cost: $19.95

Corporations, it seems, are always seeking the ""silver bullet"" that will create intimacy with customers. But most efforts fail from the moment they begin, say respected consultants, Tom Stevenson and Sam Barcus. The reason? Accountability for program leadership is placed on the sales force rather than on the executives and senior managers who have a more seasoned business perspective. For the first time ever, Stevenson and Barcus outline the relationship-building processes used successfully by professional consulting firms. Sales professionals in other industries will learn never-before-published explanations and documentation regarding consulting firm approaches and techniques.

Dear Born Trade Publishing. 272pp. Hardcover. Cost: $25.00

You won't find the secrets to motivating the middle 60 percent in this book, but you will find ample reasons why you should try. Drawing on their years of management consulting experience and academic research, the authors provide compelling evidence that profit and growth can be directly linked to both customer and employee satisfaction. They also provide a macro recipe for "capitalizing on the service profit chain," including management, marketing, operations, and measurement strategies.

Free Press. 320pp. Hardcover. Cost: $21.45

"Total Customer Service" discusses how companies rarely become serivce leaders through blind evolution. Using case studies of companies who have been successful service leaders, readers will learn how to stay on top of the quality of their customer service in this ever-changing business environment.

Harper Perennial. 256pp. Paperback. Cost: Varies by seller

Best Practices shares how more than forty best-practices companies focus on their customers, create growth, reduce cost, and increase profts. It focuses on customers and how to involve them in everything from the design of products and services to marketing, selling, and product delivery. This book is good for managers in any business, in any industry.

Touchstone. 240pp. Paperback. Cost: Varies with seller

• Increase long-term profitability
• Maximize customer loyalty and referrals
• Capture the commitment of dealers, agents and distributors
• Increase sales and improve customer service
• Maximize quality, productivity, quality and wellness
• Foster greater prosperity through a focus on people 

Bruce Bolger, Allan Schweyer & Richard Kern . 242 pp. Cost: $36

Based on the business practices and history of Enterprise Rent-a-Car, this book focuses on how the company has achieved financial results by creating happy customers, successful business partnerships, and an engaged and motivated workforce. It discusses the relationship between the company's employee satisfaction, retention, and profitability, and shows how Enterprise makes and reinforces those connections.

Currency . 256pp. Hardcover . Cost: $16.47

Terry Barber, the author of The Inspiration Factor, subtitled "How You Can Revitalize Your Company Culture in 12 Weeks," argues that regardless of your personality type, background, or age, you can choose to create an inspirational transaction and positively impact the people around you. "Inspiration is precursor to leadership, to motivation, and is even a new category for business," Barber says. His book offers seven principles that can help readers become team leaders in their organizations and inspire those around them.

Inspiration Blvd. LLC. 196. Hardcover. Cost: $29.95

Brian Pearson . 272 pages. Hardcover. Cost: $17.69

Customer Connections discusses information and knowledge management technologies to connect with customers in a new way. This new model fosters collaboration and playing the right role in supply and demand chain. This book is good for any salesperson.

Harvard Business School Press. 267pp. Hardcover. Cost: $29.95

The authors explain the strategies and tactics that make customer equity management work. They outline customer equity's three core strategies: customer acquisition, customer retention, and add-on selling. With very detailed how-to chapters this book is good for any business person looking to strengthen the bond between them and their customers.

Harvard Business School Press. 228pp. Hardcover. Cost: $39.92

A former senior level marketing executive at companies such as Macy’s, Eastman Kodak and Bank of America, author Aubryn Thomas has learned why certain brands generate energized reactions from customers and how these brands remain profitable by out-thinking the competition instead of overspending. In "Customer Inspired Marketing," Thomas has created an 8-step plan for companies to follow in order to create a successful marketing/branding campaign.

AuthorHouse. 148. Paperback.

Customer Loyalty explores the true meaning of customer loyalty and how to acheive it. Author, Griffin, outlines the seven stages of customer affinity and offers strategies for recognizing which fustomers have the potential to become a company's advocates. This book is helpful for business people in small or large product or service based companies.

Jossey-Bass. 272pp. Paperback. Cost: $15.61

Through the example to the Unixyx Corporation, Customers Mean Business, explores the attention and care customers need in order to keep buying from a company. With a helpful six stage process called "Customerize," this book is good for anyone looking to get on the cutting edge of customer service.

Perseus Books. 212 pages. Hardcover.

Emotional Branding discusses how to access, with intelligence and sensitivity, the true power behind human emotions. It shows how to bring a new level of credibility and personality to a brand by connecting with your consumer.

Allworth Press. 352pp. Hardcover. Cost: $16.47

• Increase long-term profitability
• Maximize customer loyalty and referrals
• Capture the commitment of dealers, agents and distributors
• Increase sales and improve customer service
• Maximize quality, productivity, quality and wellness
• Foster greater prosperity through a focus on people 

Bruce Bolger, Allan Schweyer & Richard Kern . 242 pp. Cost: $36

This book looks at how new marketing techniques enable companies to build closer relationships with customers.

Currency. 464 pp. Hardcover. Cost: $15.75

A collection of articles from some of the nation's leading academic researchers on all aspects of customer retention, including internal and external marketing, employee motivation, and long-term relationship-marketing strategies. Best for those who want to understand the internal as well as external marketing issues involved with one-to-one marketing, as well as those who want an international perspective.

Butterworth-Heinemann. 304pp. Hardcover.

This book, which broke ground six years ago by outlining relationship marketing, provides an excellent overview. The book is intended for all marketing managers coming to terms with doing business in turbulent markets and facing up to strategic quality and customer services issues. However, it lacks implementation details and doesn't take into account advances in Internet and database technology that have taken place since its publication.

Butterworth-Heinemann. 204pp. Paperback.

This book takes a hands-on approach to building a customer-centered organization.

Basic Books. 320pp. Paperback. Cost: $12.24