ReadOS / Business
Sales, Marketing and Customer Decisions — Part 1
Finding customers, positioning offers, pricing, selling and improving customer experience.
Start reading →Contents
- 01Assertive communication for clear workplace agreementsMake requests, set boundaries and discuss difficult feedback clearly and respectfully, with a practical method for reaching workable agreements in a small business.
- 02Building a personal professional brand: visibility, expertise, writing, networks and consistencyHow professionals, students and owners can build a personal brand that opens doors: visibility, expertise through writing and projects, professional networks, events and consistency.
- 03Building professional credibility through everyday actionsBuild a professional reputation through accurate claims, dependable commitments and honest handling of mistakes, with practical habits for founders and small teams.
- 04Customer feedback and Net Promoter Score: how to ask, measure and act on what customers tell youA practical guide to customer feedback for small businesses: why it matters, digital and offline channels, designing short surveys, calculating NPS correctly, analysing results and closing the loop.
- 05Designing a better customer experience: touchpoints, a ten-point framework, service recovery and the right measuresHow to design customer experience deliberately: map touchpoints, keep promises, reduce effort, respond fast, recover well from mistakes and measure satisfaction, effort, NPS and resolution time.
- 06Designing an advertising campaign that works, and stays honest: audience, headline, outcome, proof and actionA seven-part framework for small-business advertising: define the ideal client, write a magnetic headline, sell outcomes, state a unique proposition, offer a guarantee, show proof and ask for action.
- 07Diagnosing your marketing with the five As: aware, appeal, ask, act and advocateUse the five-A customer path to find where your marketing leaks: measure conversion from awareness to appeal, enquiry, purchase and advocacy, then fix the weakest stage first.
- 08First impressions and the 12×12×12 rulePeople form impressions within moments. What the popular 12×12×12 rule captures, what research on first impressions supports, and how to start well without pretending.
- 09Five practical ways to improve your conversion rateConverting more of the opportunities you already have is often the fastest way to grow. Five practical levers, how to measure them and how to choose where to start.
- 10Gamification and loyalty programs: points, levels, challenges and leaderboards for customers and teamsHow gamification works in business: points, scorecards, challenges, leaderboards and rewards, designing loyalty programs that pay, using game mechanics with employees, and the pitfalls.
- 11Helping people accept change: a four-quadrant framework for employees, customers, suppliers and partnersWhy people resist change and how to help them accept it, using four quadrants: the benefits and costs of changing and of staying the same. With planning steps and ethical limits.
- 12Keeping customer contact data useful: decay, duplicates, consent and upkeep in CRM systemsCustomer contact records go stale, multiply and lose their consent history. How to structure CRM data, prevent duplicates, record consent properly and keep contact data current.
- 13Learning from small numbers: estimating rates with Bayesian thinkingHow to estimate conversion rates, defect rates and success rates when you only have a little data, using priors, pseudo-counts and honest uncertainty instead of misleading percentages.
- 14Learning your business from the ground up: doing every job, mapping stakeholders and designing an offer for allWhy founders should learn every role, how to map and interview stakeholders for 90 days, design an offer that solves all their problems, and adapt as customer behaviour shifts.
- 15Listening: the most under-trained skill in businessMost of us believe we listen well, few of us were ever taught how, and our minds wander faster than people speak. What that means, and four practical ways to listen better in customer conversations.
- 16Marketing to younger customers: authenticity, short-form content, conversation and valuesHow to market to Generation Z and younger buyers and employees: digital-first habits, aversion to hard selling, short attention windows, values, relevance, conversation, flexibility and honesty.
- 17Most of your plan is someone else's promise: collecting commitments that holdA plan looks like your commitment, but most of it rests on suppliers, customers and colleagues you do not direct. How to collect real commitments, not signatures, and use a no well.
- 18Open and closed questions: when to use each, and why it mattersQuestions are the most powerful tool in any customer conversation. When to use open and closed questions, how to sequence them, and habits that quietly undermine conversations.
- 19Pre-call planning: be prepared, then be presentMost sales conversations are won or lost before they start. A practical guide to planning a customer meeting, and to conducting it with attention, purpose and respect.
- 20Presenting and speaking with confidence: purpose, preparation, structure, voice and handling nervesPresentations and public speaking for business people: purpose, audience, the 5 Ps, the ARCS structure, voice and body language, questions, nerves and practice exercises.
- 21Presenting on camera and online: video, webinars, media interviews and lessons from theatreComing across well on camera, in webinars and media interviews: camera fear, setup, body language, conversational delivery, key messages and theatre exercises for presence.
- 22Privacy by design in business databases: collecting, storing and using personal information responsiblyPrivacy is easier to build into a system than to add later. How to design databases that collect less, record purpose and consent, control access, support requests and delete on time.
- 23Professional etiquette and presence: customers, phone, email, meetings, business meals, dress and groomingEveryday professional etiquette that builds trust: customers, phone and email, meetings, business meals, interviews, dressing for the occasion and personal image.
- 24Prospecting methods compared: referrals, networking, content and outreachA practical comparison of the main ways to find new customers: what each method is good for, what it costs, and how to choose a small mix that suits your business.
All chapters preserve the original KEVOS Insights content. These topic-based reading collections are organised alphabetically; chapters may be read in any order.
← All books