Customer Development

How do you develop products that people will actually use and buy? This practical guide shows you how to validate product and company ideas through customer development research - before you waste months and millions on a product or service that no one needs or wants. With a combination of open-ended interviewing and fast and flexible research techniques, you’ll learn how your prospective customers behave, the problems they need to solve, and what frustrates and delights them

The Customer Success Manager has become a critical asset to organizations across the business landscape. As the subscription model has spread from the cloud and SaaS to more sectors of the economy, that pivotal role will only grow in importance. That's because if you want to compete and thrive in this new environment, you need to put the customer at the center of your strategy. You need to recognize you're no longer selling just a product. You're selling an outcome.

Are you a startup founder with a great product but no sales? Do prospective clients say your product is interesting, but no one’s buying? Collin Stewart, founder and CEO of Predictable Revenue, shares hard-earned lessons about navigating the chaos of a startup and the daunting task of finding your first customers. The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers is a straight-talking guide for founders focused on tackling the essential steps to growth in the right sequence.

The traditional methods of acquiring customers and generating sales are being replaced. Google’s endless algorithm updates, zero-click results, and AI-generated answers are choking off website traffic like never before. If your business relies even slightly on search engines—or if sudden drops in traffic have blindsided you—Goodbye Google, Hello Marketing is your wake-up call.

The subscription business model is hot - from software to music to movies to diet programs, investors and public markets want businesses that create recurring payments from unlimited customers. The old sales and marketing methods can handle attracting new customers for growth; however, only in the last five years has a discipline emerged that views growth in relation to retention, not just sales.

More than two generations ago, the venture capital community convinced the entrepreneurial world that writing business plans and raising venture capital constituted the twin centerpieces of entrepreneurial endeavor. They did so for good reasons: the sometimes astonishing returns they've delivered to their investors and the astonishingly large companies that their ecosystem has created. But the vast majority of fast-growing companies never take any venture capital. So where does the money come from to start and grow their companies?

Based on six years of research, Harvard Business School Professor Thales Teixeira shows how and why industries are disrupted and what established companies can do to respond - as well as what potential start-ups must master if they hope to gain a competitive edge.

If you want to stand out from the crowd, develop a clear and consistent brand voice, and ultimately build a fruitful business - listen to your brand. Stop Listening to the Customer offers insights into how consumers are driving homogeneity in brands and shares the proven strategies you can implement to amplify your own position in the world.

The Lean Product Playbook is a practical guide to building products that customers love. Whether you work at a start-up or a large, established company, we all know that building great products is hard. Most new products fail. This book helps improve your chances of building successful products through clear, step-by-step guidance and advice.

A start-up comes to market with a new product. Using cost-effective digital marketing, they get their solution in front of those customers. Growth happens exponentially. VCs and the media pile in. Then growth slows. Eventually, the whole thing peters out, usually three years from launch. How do you prevent this from happening to your start-up? Future Demand explores the realities of how start-ups grow beyond their eager early users, providing evidence and insight into how to build your brand among the much larger group of customers who’ll buy from you in the future.

Clayton M. Christensen is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Michael E. Raynor is a director at Deloitte Research. Together, they outline an innovative plan that urges businesses to create disruption rather than fleeing from it. Named one of 2003's Best Business Books by Business Week, this book is a Wall Street Journal and New York Times best seller.

Written in the trenches of helping hundreds of B2B SaaS businesses, The Pricing Roadmap will help you pour gasoline on the fire of your pricing. Ditch the guesswork with this step-by-step guide to designing SaaS pricing that grows your business—whether you’re a startup, prerevenue venture, or an established market leader.

How Clients Buy is the much-needed guide to selling your services. If you're one of the millions of people whose skills are the "product," you know that you cannot be successful unless you bring in clients. The problem is, you're trained to do your job-not sell it. No matter how great you may be at your actual role, you likely feel a bit lost, hesitant, or "behind" when it comes to courting clients, an unfamiliar territory where you're never quite sure of the line between under- and over-selling. This book comes to the rescue with real, practical advice for selling what you do.

What are companies like Uber, IKEA, Belgo, and Eurostar doing that makes them so profitable? They know how to scale relationships. But online gurus are lying to you about scaling to hundreds of clients without creating an exceptional customer experience. Ben and I created this book with that in mind. When you feel like there is much more to be done in how you serve your clients, we’ve got you. For a long time, marketers--specifically in the online space--have been making bolder and bolder promises.

If leaders aren't integrating their digital offerings into a philosophy of customer success, they will be defeated in the next decade because technical excellence and other traditional competitive advantages are becoming too easy to imitate. The Customer Success Economy offers examples and specifics of how companies can transform. It addresses the pains of transforming organizational charts, leadership roles, responsibilities, and strategies so the whole company works together in total service to the customer.

Subscriptions are shifting revenues, reshaping markets, and changing our expectations for how we buy things. Have you changed your marketing practices to thrive in this new reality? Subscription Marketing offers creative marketing strategies for sustaining the customer relationships that build long-term success.

The latest brain research is changing the way we think about sales. How can this help you increase your business? With people being inundated with thousands of daily sales messages, selling is now tougher than ever. That's why you need to learn what neuroscience has uncovered that will...

The former EVP of Walt Disney World shares indispensible rules for serving customers with consistency, efficiency, creativity, sincerity, and excellence. Lee Cockerell knows that success in business - any business - depends upon winning and keeping customers. In 39 digestible, bite-sized chapters, Lee shares everything he has learned in his 40-plus-year career in the hospitality industry about creating an environment that keeps customers coming back for more. Here, Lee not only shows why the customer always rules, but also the rules for serving customers so well they'll never want to do business with anyone but you.

To future-proof your business, you need to do more than merely offer high-quality and great service. You need to become Ridiculously Easy to Do Business With. This practical guide offers over two dozen categories of policies and behaviors that cause "friction" (frustration) for your customers and clients. If left unaddressed, you will undoubtedly see a steady exodus of customers as they seek more accommodating and aligned alternatives. Customers will leave you for competitors if you give them a reason to.

Read by the authors. An essential guide to master any workplace conflict with confidence and ease, have less drama, better results, and thrive at work. In many workplaces today, workplace conflict is an escalating issue. The shift to remote work and hybrid teams has left many people longing for...