Recommended Readings On Customer Relations

Bill Bachrach
Values-Based Selling: The Art of Building High-Trust Client Relationships
Bachrach & Associates, 1996
Values-Based Selling is one of the really great books on becoming a trusted advisor to affluent people. Bill has written an excellent book on this critical topic. Whether you are just starting out or already are a seasoned veteran in any part of the financial services field, Bill Bachrach's book is delightfully easy to read and understand. That he has "been there and done it" instantly becomes apparent as you read, and his techniques on building client relationships are solid, practical and doable. He provides real conversational dialogues for virtually every type of situation. He has scripted actual phone conversations, prospecting techniques, seminar strategies and much more. Refreshingly, his concepts are congruent and in complete integrity. He's revealed basic steps and he's made it oh, so easy to implement. Read what he writes about working with their process, not just selling them your products. Order this one now. This book is a must for anyone wanting to become truly successful this field.

Geoffrey Moore
Crossing the Chasm
Harper Business, 1992
"If you find yourself wondering why it is that the majority of potential buyers for your newest breakthrough technology are not as enthusiastic as your early adopters, read this book or risk joining the others at the bottom of the high-tech abyss," Jim Kouzes, co-author of The Leadership Challenge, author of Credibility, President of the Tom Peters Group/Learning Systems. "One of the most thought-provoking books on technology marketing... Moore throws outmoded marketing ideas out the window to clear space for the special realities of the high-tech market."-GIS World

Seth Godin
Permission Marketing
Simon & Shuster, May, 1999
Remember "Mother, May I?" from childhood? It's back and it's deadly serious this time. Permission Marketing evangelist and Internet Marketing Pioneer, Seth Godin, says he wants to change the way almost everything is marketed today. The key question is, will you give him permission to show you the immediate future of true customer relationship management? The man Business Week calls the 'ultimate entrepreneur for the information age,' teaches in-touch and the Nurture message in the age of the digital nervous system better than anyone yet. This gets my number two spot after only one reading. Added to Enterprise One To One and Nurture, it gives you a complete, closed loop, solution to gaining and sustaining customer permission to influence. Interruption marketers, beware.
Don Peppers and Martha Rogers
Enterprise One to One
Doubleday-Currency Book, 1997
This books is a "must read." Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, authors of the international best seller The One to One Future, go beyond that now classic work on how to sell more products to fewer customers. For the last several years, they have been teaching companies how to stay at the head of the pack by harnessing technology to achieve killer competitive advantages in customer loyalty.

Bill Gates
Business @ The Speed of Thought
Warner Books, March, 1999
Chances are your company has a sizable investment in technology - and is realizing only 20 percent of its potential benefit. As Gates explains, you're probably viewing hardware and software as a way to solve specific problems. But like a living organism, an organization functions best if it can rely on a nervous system that will instantaneously deliver information to the parts that need it. In clear, non-technical language, Business @ The Speed of Thought shows you how a digital nervous system can unite all the systems and processes under one common infrastructure, releasing rivers of information and allowing your company to make a quantum leaps in efficiency, growth and profits. "I have the simple but strong belief," Gates writes. "How you gather, manage, and use information will determine whether you win or lose." Business @ The Speed of Thought gives you the information you need to win.

Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema
The Discipline of Market Leaders
Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1995
How is it that some companies are reinventing competition in their markets while others are seemingly oblivious to the changing world around them? These are the questions that authors Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema explore in their groundbreaking book, The Discipline of Market Leaders, from the same consulting firm that brought you business reengineering. The answers provide a revolutionary way of thinking about customers, competition, markets, and the fundamental structure of your organization

Michael Boylan
The Power to Get In
St. Martins Press, September 1998
One of life's most common and frustrating problems is gaining access to the right people at the right time in the right environment. Using his proven system--The Circle of Leverage--Michael Boylan tells readers how to cut through the bureaucracy, identify important people, and get in the door. So now Boylan has decided to share his secrets. He calls the techniques he has developed to gain access to decision makers the "circle of leverage," and he shows how to use it to get past voice mail and unsympathetic receptionists. A step-by-step guide using the Circle of Leverage System explains how anyone with something to present, in the office or everyday life, can identify who needs to get the message or information and how to get past personnel, executive secretaries, or other bureaucratic devices in the way.

Michael E. Gerber
The E Myth Revisited
Harper Business Publishing,
In this new and totally revised edition of the 150,000-copy underground bestseller, The E-Myth, Michael Gerber dispels the myths surrounding starting your own business and shows how commonplace assumptions can get in the way of running a business. Next, he walks you through the steps in the life of a business-from entrepreneurial infancy, through adolescent growing pains, to the mature entrepreneurial perspective, the guiding light of all businesses that succeed-and shows how to apply the lessons of franchising to any business, whether or not it is a franchise. Finally, Gerber draws the vital, often overlooked distinction between working on your business and working in your business. After you have read The E Myth Revisited, you will truly be able to grow your business in a predictable and productive way.
Evan I. Schwartz
Webonomics
Broadway Books,
While almost everyone agrees that the Web provides excellent marketing opportunities, many businesses don't know how to use it effectively and have been losing millions of dollars because of it. In Webonomics, Evan I. Schwartz shows how the new Web economy mirrors the traditional economy in some ways but also exhibits entirely unique properties of its own.

Tom Sant
Persuasive Business Proposals
Amacom Books, 1992
For a growing company, developing quality proposals in a short amount of time is imperative. Persuasive Business Proposals cuts to the quick, providing actionable advice on how to respond efficiently and effectively to an RFP. It presents an excellent structure for writing any proposal from start to finish. The examples are clear, the tips are practical, and the book is actually fun to read. The emphasis on the process of persuading is particularly valuable for technical people who need to get their ideas into print. I have already written my share of proposals, but I know my next one will be better because of this book.

Katherine Vessenes
Protecting Your Practice
Bloomberg Press,
Katherine Vessenes has written a lively, informative guide. Whether you've been a financial planner for years or are new to the profession, you'll find Protecting Your Practice an essential addition to your professional library. An authoritative, compact overview of compliance issues and building a practice.

Jack Burke
Creating Customer Connections
Merritt Publishing, 1998
Excellent customer service generates repeat business and strong profit margins. Shoddy customer service creates a quagmire of returned product and complaints. Success in this field requires dedication, intensity...and even a bit of magic. The magic makes for great stories. But the dedication and intensity pay the bills. This book breaks down the various facets of customer service and explains how the smart business person can master them all. As author Jack Burke writes, "Success in business requires an integrated marketing and communication approach that will result in the cultivation of a nexus between a company and its customers.

Miller-Heiman
Successful Large Account Management
Warner Books, 1991
For the accounts you can't afford to lose: the strategies that will keep your customers coming back. Whether your company has $50,000 or $5 million in sales, chances are that at least half of your revenue come from a few crucial accounts. What does it take to keep them going strong? The authors of Strategic Selling and Conceptual Selling have put together a hard-hitting, no-nonsense book of techniques to improve your most important business relationships.
Al Reis & Jack Trout
Bottom-Up Marketing
McGraw Hill, 1989
Takes you through the process of building a marketing strategy by starting at the bottom and looking for a tactic to exploit. In this pioneering book, Al Reis and Jack Trout explain how marketing should be practiced. Find a tactic that will work. Then build the tactic into a strategy. It is the workbook on developing a USP.

Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D
Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion
Quill, 1993
More than 15 printings later and with more than one quarter million copies sold worldwide, Influence has clearly established itself as the most important book on persuasion ever published. In his new revised, updated, and expanded edition, Dr. Robert Cialdini explores the weapons of influence at work in today's marketplace. If you have ever attempted to sell a product, to persuade a client, to influence another's decision; if you have ever entered a department store or thought about buying life insurance or wondered whether to vote for a presidential candidate - in short, all of us, persuaders and persuaded a dozen times a day - you will be enlightened and delighted by what can be learned from this indispensable book.

Robert J. Richardson
The Charisma Factor
Prentise Hall 1996
The handbook shows you how to develop two vital communication skills, entertainment, a technique that allows charismatic leaders to bond with others quickly and gracefully, and emotional management, a set of techniques used to spark any emotional state of mind in those around you.

Peter M. Senge
The Fifth Discipline
Currency, Doubleday 1994
Founder and Director of the Center for Organizational Learning at MIT's Sloan School of Management, which boasts such members as Intel, Ford, Herman Miller, and Harley Davidson, author Peter M. Senge has found a means of creating a "learning organization." In The Fifth Discipline, he draws the blueprints for an organization where people expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together. The Fifth Discipline fuses these features into a coherent body of theory and practice, making the whole of an organization more effective than the sum of its parts.