The Automatic Customer

Author: John Warrillow
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 159184746X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
The lifeblood of your business is repeat customers. But customers can be fickle, markets shift, and competitors are ruthless. So how do you ensure a steady flow of repeat business? The secret—no matter what industry you’re in—is finding and keeping automatic customers. These days virtually anything you need can be purchased through a subscription, with more convenience than ever before. Far beyond Spotify, Netflix, and New York Times subscriptions, you can sign up for weekly or monthly supplies of everything from groceries (AmazonFresh) to cosmetics (Birchbox) to razor blades (Dollar Shave Club). According to John Warrillow, this emerging subscription economy offers huge opportunities to companies that know how to turn customers into subscribers. Automatic customers are the key to increasing cash flow, igniting growth, and boosting the value of your company. Consider Whatsapp, the internet-based messaging service that was purchased by Facebook for $19 billion. While other services bombarded users with invasive ads in order to fund a free messaging platform, Whatsapp offered a refreshingly private tool on a subscription platform, charging just $1 per year. Their business model enabled the kind of service that customers wanted and ensured automatic customers for years to come. As Warrillow shows, subscriptions aren’t limited to technology or media businesses. Companies in nearly any industry, from start-ups to the Fortune 500, from home contractors to florists, can build subscriptions into their business. Warrillow provides the essential blueprint for winning automatic customers with one of the nine subscription business models, including: • The Membership Website Model: Companies like The Wood Whisperer Guild, ContractorSelling, and DanceStudioOwner offer access to highly specialized, high quality information, recognizing that people will pay for good content. This model can work for any business with a tightly defined niche market and insider information. • The Simplifier Model: Companies like Mosquito Squad (pest control) and Hassle Free Homes (home maintenance) take a recurring task off your to-do list. Any business serving busy consumers can adopt this model not only to create a recurring revenue stream, but also to take advantage of the opportunity to cross-sell or bundle their services. • The Surprise Box Model: Companies like BarkBox (dog treats) and Standard Cocoa (craft chocolate) send their subscribers curated packages of goodies each month. If you can handle the logistics of shipping, giving customers joy in something new can translate to sales on your larger e-commerce site. This book also shows you how to master the psychology of selling subscriptions and how to reduce churn and provides a road map for the essential statistics you need to measure the health of your subscription business. Whether you want to transform your entire business into a recurring revenue engine or just pick up an extra 5 percent of sales growth, The Automatic Customer will be your secret weapon.

The Automatic Customer

Author: John Warrillow
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698176332
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 226

The Automatic Customer

Author: John Warrillow
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 024197187X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 181

Book Description
In The Automatic Customer, John Warrillow provides the essential blueprint for turning your customers into subscribers The lifeblood of your business is repeat customers. But customers can be fickle, markets shift and competitors are ruthless. So how do you ensure a steady flow of business? The secret - no matter what industry you're in - is finding and keeping automatic customers. These days virtually anything you need can come through a subscription. Far beyond Spotify and Netflix, companies in nearly any industry, from home contractors to florists, can build subscriptions into their business. Subscription is the key to increasing cash flow, igniting growth and boosting the value of your company. Whether you want to transform your entire business into a recurring revenue engine or just pick up an extra 5 per cent of sales growth, The Automatic Customer will be your secret weapon. 'Read, apply and watch your bank deposits grow every month' Chris Guillebeau, bestselling author of The $100 Startup 'If you have a business, or are thinking about starting one, this book will be the best investment you've ever made' Bo Burlingham, editor-at-large of Inc. and author of Small Giants and Finish Big John Warrillow, the author of Built to Sell, is the founder of The Value Builder SystemTM where advisors help company owners increase the value of their business. Previously, he founded Warrillow & Co., a subscription-based research business dedicated to helping Fortune 500 companies market to small business owners. A sought-after speaker and popular Inc.com columnist, he lives in Toronto.

Customers for Life

Author: Carl Sewell
Publisher: Crown Currency
ISBN: 0307567311
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
In this completely revised and updated edition of the customer service classic, Carl Sewell enhances his time-tested advice with fresh ideas and new examples and explains how the groundbreaking “Ten Commandments of Customer Service” apply to today’s world. Drawing on his incredible success in transforming his Dallas Cadillac dealership into the second largest in America, Carl Sewell revealed the secret of getting customers to return again and again in the original Customers for Life. A lively, down-to-earth narrative, it set the standard for customer service excellence and became a perennial bestseller. Building on that solid foundation, this expanded edition features five completely new chapters, as well as significant additions to the original material, based on the lessons Sewell has learned over the last ten years. Sewell focuses on the expectations and demands of contemporary consumers and employees, showing that businesses can remain committed to quality service in the fast-paced new millennium by sticking to his time-proven approach: Figure out what customers want and make sure they get it. His “Ten Commandants” provide the essential guidelines, including: • Underpromise, overdeliver: Never disappoint your customers by charging them more than they planned. Always beat your estimate or throw in an extra service free of charge. • No complaints? Something’s wrong: If you never ask your customers what else they want, how are you going to give it to them? • Measure everything: Telling your employees to do their best won’t work if you don’t know how they can improve.

Built to Sell

Author: John Warrillow
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1591845823
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
Run your company. Don’t let it run you. Most business owners started their company because they wanted more freedom—to work on their own schedules, make the kind of money they deserve, and eventually retire on the fruits of their labor. Unfortunately, according to John Warrillow, most owners find that stepping out of the picture is extremely difficult because their business relies too heavily on their personal involvement. Without them, their company—no matter how big or profitable—is essentially worthless. But the good news is that entrepreneurs can take specific steps—no matter what stage a business is in—to create a valuable, sellable company. Warrillow shows exactly what it takes to create a solid business that can thrive long into the future.

Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit

Author: Leonardo Inghilleri
Publisher: AMACOM
ISBN: 0814415393
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 190

Book Description
What if you could protect your business against competitive inroads, once and for all? Customer service experts Leonardo Inghilleri and Micah Solomon's anticipatory customer service approach was first developed at The Ritz-Carlton as well as at Solomon's company Oasis, and has since proven itself in countless companies around the globe--from luxury giant BVLGARI to value-sensitive auto parts leader Carquest and everywhere in between. Their experience shows that the most powerful growth engine in a tight market--and best protection from competitive inroads--is to put everything you can into cultivating true customer loyalty. Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit takes the techniques that minted money for these brands and reveals how you can apply them to your own business to provide the kind of exceptional service that nearly guarantees loyalty. Soon, you'll be reaping the benefits of loyal customers who are: less sensitive to price competition, more forgiving of small glitches, and, ultimately, who are "walking billboards" happily promoting your brand. Filled with detailed, behind-the-scenes examples, Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit unlocks a new level of customer relationship that leaves your competitors in the dust, your customers coming back day after day, and your bottom line looking better than it ever has before.

The Art of Selling Your Business

Author: John Warrillow
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
ISBN: 1733478167
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Book Description
Freedom. It's the ability to do whatever you want, whenever you want. It's the ultimate reward of selling your business. But selling a company can be confusing, and one wrong step can easily cost you dearly. The Art of Selling Your Business: Winning Strategies & Secret Hacks for Exiting on Top is the last in a trilogy of books by author John Warrillow on building value. The first, Built to Sell, encouraged small business owners to begin thinking about their business as more than just a job. The Automatic Customer tagged recurring revenue as the core element in a valuable company and provided a blueprint for transforming almost any business into one with an ongoing annuity stream. Warrillow completes the set with The Art of Selling Your Business. This essential guide to monetizing a business is based on interviews the author conducted on his podcast, Built to Sell Radio, with hundreds of successfully cashed-out founders. What's the secret for harvesting the value you've created when it's time to sell? The Art of Selling Your Business answers important questions facing any founder, including— • What's your business worth? • When's the best time to sell? • How do you create a bidding war? • How can you position your company to maximize its attractiveness? • Who will pay the most for your business? • What’s the secret for punching above your weight in a negotiation to sell your company? The Art of Selling Your Business provides a sleeves-rolled-up action plan for selling your business at a premium by an author with consummate credibility.

My Years With General Motors

Author: Alfred P Sloan
Publisher: eNet Press
ISBN: 1618863991
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 552

Book Description
Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. led the General Motors Corporation to international business success by virtue of his brilliant managerial practices and his insights into the new consumer economy he and General Motors helped to produce. Sloan's business biography, My Years With General Motors, was an instant best seller when it was first published in 1964 and is still considered indispensable reading by modern business giants.

Subscribed

Author: Tien Tzuo
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241363683
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CMI MANAGEMENT BOOK OF THE YEAR INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP AWARD Today's consumers prefer the advantages of access over the hassles of ownership. It's not just internet services like Netflix and Spotify; even industrial firms like GE and Caterpillar are reinventing themselves as solutions providers. Whether you sell software, clothes, insurance, or industrial machines, you need to master the transition to the subscription model. Adapting to the subscription economy takes more than just deciding to sell subscriptions instead of products. You'll have to reinvent your company from the inside out -- from your accounting to your entire IT architecture. No matter how large or small your company, Subscribed gives you a practical, step-by-step framework to rebuild your business around a customer-centric, recurring revenue model.In ten years, we'll be subscribing to everything: information technology, transportation, retail, healthcare, even housing. Informed by insights straight from the servers of Zuora, the world's largest subscription finance platform, Subscribed is the book that explains how this shift really works -- and how business leaders can prepare and prosper.

Real-Time Marketing and PR

Author: David Meerman Scott
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470930179
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Book Description
Launch effective real-time communications to win in today's always-on world Gone are the days when you could plan out your marketing and public relations programs well in advance and release them on your timetable. "Real time" means news breaks over minutes, not days. It means companies develop (or refine) products or services instantly, based on feedback from customers or events in the marketplace. And it's when businesses see an opportunity and are the first to act on it. In this eye-opening follow-up to The New Rules of Marketing and PR, a BusinessWeek bestseller, David Meerman Scott reveals the proven, practical steps to take your business into the real-time era. Find out how to act and react flexibly as events occur, position your brand in the always-on world of the Web, and avoid embarrassing mistakes and missteps. Real-Time Marketing and PR will also enable you to: Develop a business culture that encourages speed over sloth Read buying signals as people interact with your online information Crowdsource product development, naming, and even marketing materials such as online videos Engage reporters to shape stories as they are being written Command premium prices by delivering products at speed Deploy technology to listen in on millions of online discussions and instantly engage with customers and buyers Scale and media buying power are no longer a decisive advantage. What counts today is speed and agility. While your competitors scramble to adjust, you can seize the initiative, open new channels, and grow your brand. Master Real-Time Marketing and PR today and become the first to act, the first to respond, and the first to win!