Professional Services

International expert and consultant David Maister offers a brilliant and accessible guide to every management issue at play in professional firms. Professional firms differ from other business enterprises in two distinct ways: first, they provide highly customized services and thus cannot apply many of the management principles developed for product-based industries. Second, professional services are highly personalized, involving the skills of individuals.

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.

In Soft Skills for the Professional Services Industry: Principles, Tasks, and Tools for Success, renowned auditing professional, valuator, and author Andreas Creutzmann delivers an essential guide for professionals seeking to upgrade and refine their soft skills. From public speaking to problem solving, digital literacy, and intercultural fluency, the author discusses concrete strategies and practical techniques for professionally trained and credentialed experts to expand their skillset, augment their leadership abilities, and even find more fulfillment in their work.

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.

How to Win Client Business When You Don't Know Where to Start provides a masterclass in teaching the practical techniques and concrete strategies that professional services providers were never taught in school or on the job. Pragmatic lessons take the place of the vaguely defined principles found in competing books to turn listeners from sales novices into rainmakers.

Years ago, developing and sustaining a book of business was not as big a problem for accountants, attorneys, financial planners, and other professionals as it is today. Clients were more loyal to the firms they worked with, and unlikely to shop your services, compare rates, or jump ship. Times have changed! And if you don't change along with them...well, you're not going to enjoy yourself or have as much control over your career as you deserve. Believe it or not, you can enjoy the process of expanding your client base.

As Darwin famously observed, the beaks of each generation of Galapagos Island finches change to accommodate shifting food resources, allowing the birds to survive by adapting their capabilities to the new environment. Today's business people should take note: In the post-crisis economy, traditional career strategies spell professional extinction, but the fluid new "gig economy" offers tremendous potential for anyone willing to adapt.

The Growth Engine describes the main challenge professional services firms face as they grow and shows how to develop a scalable business development effort, covering everything from CRM systems and metrics around utilization, to service development and expansion, to account planning and cross-selling, to winning new clients, to team structure and roles, and to performance management.

In recent years, professional services providers have had to rethink their sales methods and adapt to profound changes in the way clients buy services. In response, Winning the Professional Services Sale argues for fundamental changes in the seller's mindset and sales strategies. Rather than pressing the sale, salespeople must help clients buy - the way that works best for each client. This new approach gives buyers what they now want in a services seller: a consultative problem solver, change agent, and solution integrator, all rolled into one.

Conventional wisdom says most startups need to be in Silicon Valley, started by young engineers around a sexy new idea and backed by VC funding. But as Mikkel Svane reveals in Startupland, the story of founding Zendesk was anything but conventional. Founded in a Copenhagen loft by three 30-something friends looking to break free from corporate doldrums, Zendesk Inc. became one of the hottest enterprise software companies, rapidly growing with customers in 150 countries. But its success was anything but predestined.

There's a Customer Born Every Minute reveals the lost wisdom of famous entrepreneur and showman, P. T. Barnum. Barnum was much more than a showman; he was a dedicated businessman and entrepreneur with a razor-sharp mind. In this delightful and absorbing new edition, Joe Vitale reveals the secrets of Barnum's success and shares the 10 key business practices that Barnum developed and lived by.

This audiobook equips tradespeople with job-critical Spanish vocabulary and phrases for client interactions and team communication. Designed for plumbers, electricians, carpenters, HVAC technicians, cleaners, landscapers, and general contractors working with Spanish-speaking clients and crews, it covers technical terminology for plumbing, electrical, structural, and HVAC systems alongside essential phrases for scheduling, estimates, safety protocols, and project explanations.

From surviving an horrific dog attack as a toddler, to the tragic death of his father in a car accident, to the challenges of leaving the country of his birth and then finally to the very emotional divorce from his wife... this story has truth at its heart and purpose at its soul. Funny, tragic, and at times unbelievable, the story weaves its way from various towns in the regional Eastern Cape Province of South Africa to the cities of the Gold Coast, Sydney and Brisbane.

Jess McDonald was a true crime junkie and Line of Duty sofa sleuth with a strong sense of justice. Under a year later, thanks to a controversial new initiative, she was a detective in the London Metropolitan Police Service. The Met Police's Direct Entry Detective scheme was aimed at turning people with no experience of the police into detectives. No Comment is Jess' candid, eye-opening and often shocking account, exploring the reality of being a detective in the Met and responsible for 'keeping London safe for everyone'.