This book focuses upon the role of the sales force in today's changing world and how to design a sales force for strategic advantage. It includes sections on how to assess the current sales force design and how to implement change and covers customer segmentation, market strategy, structuring and sizing, alignment, metrics and managing change.

Every so often an author explains our culture in such a new and original way that from that day on we see the world around us in a new light. From Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan through Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital. the books that have shown us the clearest vision of the future have been those that recognize the central role of mass media. In The Entertainment Economy, Michael J. Wolf, the industry's most in-demand strategist, demonstrates that media and entertainment have moved beyond culture to become the driving wheel of the global economy. From New York to New Delhi, from London to Lagos, from Singapore to Seattle, every business is locked in the same battle for consumer attention that movie producers and television programmers deal with on a daily basis. Consumer businesses just like entertainment businesses have to turn to content for the competitive edge. As adviser to companies like MTV, Paramount, Hearst, NBC, Universal, News Corporation, Bertelsmann and the NBA, Wolf is known by industry insiders as the moguls' secret weapon. In clear, brash prose, full of real-life examples, Wolf shows how tomorrow's successful business person will have to act like a mogul in a global economy defined by hits and blockbusters. From MTV to Ford Motor Company, from Tommy Hilfiger to Martha Stewart, from Citibank to Amazon.com, from Stephen Spielberg to Richard Branson, Wolf shares the insights gained through his unique perspective as the founder of the world's largest media consulting practice, leaving no doubt that the watchwords for all consumer businesses in the 21st century are truly, "There's no business without show business." Written with equal degrees of business and pop culture savvy, The Entertainment Economy is a book for everyone.

This new book examines the structural forces behind mega trends in China, refuting conventional wisdom and demystifying media and market hypes about business opportunity and policy. It uses rigorous economic research and evidence to provide a new view of mega trends in China, and expose new trends and problems that will affect China and the World.

Our intuition on how the world works could well be wrong. We are surprised when new competitors burst on the scene, or businesses protected by large and deep moats find their defenses easily breached, or vast new markets are conjured from nothing. Trend lines resemble saw-tooth mountain ridges. The world not only feels different. The data tell us it is different. Based on years of research by the directors of the McKinsey Global Institute, No Ordinary Disruption: The Four Forces Breaking all the Trends is a timely and important analysis of how we need to reset our intuition as a result of four forces colliding and transforming the global economy: the rise of emerging markets, the accelerating impact of technology on the natural forces of market competition, an aging world population, and accelerating flows of trade, capital and people. Our intuitions formed during a uniquely benign period for the world economy -- often termed the Great Moderation. Asset prices were rising, cost of capital was falling, labour and resources were abundant, and generation after generation was growing up more prosperous than their parents. But the Great Moderation has gone. The cost of capital may rise. The price of everything from grain to steel may become more volatile. The world's labor force could shrink. Individuals, particularly those with low job skills, are at risk of growing up poorer than their parents. What sets No Ordinary Disruption apart is depth of analysis combined with lively writing informed by surprising, memorable insights that enable us to quickly grasp the disruptive forces at work. For evidence of the shift to emerging markets, consider the startling fact that, by 2025, a single regional city in China -- Tianjin -- will have a GDP equal to that of the Sweden, of that, in the decades ahead, half of the world's economic growth will come from 440 cities including Kumasi in Ghana or Santa Carina in Brazil that most executives today would be hard-pressed to locate on a map. What we are now seeing is no ordinary disruption but the new facts of business life -- facts that require executives and leaders at all levels to reset their operating assumptions and management intuition.

This book offers 32 texts and case studies from across a wide range of business sectors around a managerial framework for Sustainable Business. The case studies are developed for and tested in executive education programmes at leading business schools. The book is based on the premise that the key for managing the sustainable business is finding the right balance over time between managing competitiveness and profitability AND managing the context of the business with its political, social and ecological risks and opportunities. In that way, a sustainable business is highly responsive to the demands and challenges from both markets and societies and managers embrace the complexity, ambivalence and uncertainty that goes along with this approach. The book presents a framework that facilitates the adoption of best business practice. This framework leads executives through a systematic approach of strategic analysis and business planning in risk management, issues management, stakeholder management, sustainable business development and strategic differentiation, business model innovation and developing dynamic capabilities. The approach helps broaden the understanding of what sustainable performance means, by protecting business value against sustainability risks and creating business value from sustainability opportunities.

YOUR GUIDE TO A FULFILLING BUSINESS AND PERSONAL FUTURE Based on research by one of the world's largest growth-consulting companies, New Mega Trends identifies the ten most important global trends that will define our future, including business models, smart technology, connectivity and convergence and radical social trends. New Mega Trends will give you the tools to not only identify and evaluate these game-changing trends, but also help you to translate them into market opportunities for your everyday business and personal life. How will we travel to work in the cities of the future? Will Zero be the new big thing? How will we stay connected in the Mega Trends World? Will our Wellness and Well-Being top business agenda? If you are a leader with a corporate vision, or a strategic planner within your organization, or just plain curious about your future, New Mega Trends will provide you with stimulating stories, startling facts and thought-provoking case studies that will not only inform your future but entertain you today.

A groundbreaking business book for the twenty-first century, The New Law of Demand and Supply overturns the traditional supply-side approach to how business is done, showing why a demand-based approach is essential to success in today’s economy. For more than two hundred years, companies have based their approach to business on supply-side economics, concentrating on creating products and services and then attempting, through marketing, publicity, distribution and promotion to stimulate a demand for them. While most companies have factored in customer feedback, focus groups, and broad-based market research, their basic approach has remained the same. And it is a mistake. In The New Law of Demand and Supply, Cambridge Group CEO Rick Kash argues that in order to succeed in today’s market, companies must reverse their approach by first determining what current and emerging demand exists and then by creating products and services to meet that demand. For a host of reasons–from the reduced life cycles of products and services, to deregulation, to increased competition as a result of globalization, to the ability of customers to compare prices and values at a keystroke–the market, Kash argues, has fundamentally and permanently changed from one that is driven by supply to one that is driven by demand. Traditional businesses that remain locked in a supply-side mentality are doomed to failure. Today’s most successful companies, from McDonald’s to IBM, from EMC to Pepsi-Cola, use the principles of demand strategy to first understand all the factors that go into creating demand in their targeted markets, as well as what their emerging needs will be in the future. In the heart of the book, Kash outlines a specific six-step demand strategy on how to implement a demand-first approach–from homing in on who your most profitable customers are to determining what needs they have (whether articulated or not) that are not currently being addressed. Using that information, companies can create unique products that are differentiated from their competitors’ to meet those demands. Rather than being forced to compete on price, they can trump the competition by competing on value, offering the options, features, products, and services that better meet an existing demand. As a result, companies often can actually charge more for what they produce and improve their margins. Diving under the hoods of a score of successful Fortune 500 companies that have made demand strategy central to the way they do business, including Gatorade, Capital One, Sara Lee, and Sears, Kash details how these companies have used this strategy to re-create their businesses. Ten years ago, Reengineering the Corporation brought about a sea change in the way companies were run. Now, The New Law of Demand and Supply redefines the ground rules of today’s economy and gives managers the tools they need to outperform the competition and achieve dramatic growth and profits. From the Hardcover edition.