Conquering the New Battleground for Customer Loyalty

The Effortless Experience

A new breakthrough idea about how to win customer loyalty from Matthew Dixon, the bestselling author of The Challenger Sale 
 
Everyone knows that the best way to create customer loyalty is with service so good, so over the top, that it surprises and delights. But what if everyone is wrong? 
 
In their acclaimed bestseller The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and his colleagues at CEB busted longstanding myths about sales. Now they've turned to a new vital business subject - customer loyalty - with a book that turns conventional wisdom on its head. 
 
Companies devote untold time and resources trying to dazzle customers. Yet CEB's careful research proves that is wildly overrated: loyalty has a lot more to do with how well companies deliver on their basic promises than on how dazzling the service experience might be. Forget bells and whistles and just solve your customer's problems. 
 
The Effortless Experience lays out the four pillars of a low-effort customer experience, with robust data, in­sights and profiles. Here are tools and templates you can start applying right away to improve service, reduce costs, and ultimately generate the elusive loyalty that the 'dazzle factor' fails to deliver. 
 
The rewards are there for the taking, and the pathway to achieving them is now clearly marked. 
 
 
'A business detective story, in which cherished truths are systematically investigated-and frequently debunked' -Dan Heath, coauthor of Decisive, Switch, and Made to Stick 
 
Matt Dixon is Executive Director of the Sales &amp; Service Practice at CEB. He is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and his previous book, The Challenger Sale, was a Wall Street Journal bestseller 
 
Nick Toman is Senior Director of Research for CEB's Sales &amp; Services Practice and is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review. 
 
Rick DeLisi is Senior Director of Advisory Services for CEB's Sales &amp; Service Practice and a noted public speaker and facilitator.

Matt Dixon is Executive Director of the Sales &amp; Service Practice at CEB. He is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and his previous book, The Challenger Sale, was a Wall Street Journal bestseller. 
Nick Toman is Senior Director of Research for CEB's Sales &amp; Services Practice and is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review. 
Rick DeLisi is Senior Director of Advisory Services for CEB's Sales &amp; Service Practice and a noted public speaker and facilitator.

Everyone knows that the best way to create customer loyalty is with service so good, so over the top, that it surprises and delights. But what if everyone is wrong? 
 
In their acclaimed bestseller The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and his colleagues at CEB busted longstanding myths about sales. Now they've turned to a new vital business subject - customer loyalty - with a book that turns conventional wisdom on its head. 
 
Companies devote untold time and resources trying to dazzle customers. Yet CEB's careful research proves that is wildly overrated: loyalty has a lot more to do with how well companies deliver on their basic promises than on how dazzling the service experience might be. Forget bells and whistles and just solve your customer's problems. 
 
The Effortless Experience lays out the four pillars of a low-effort customer experience, with robust data, in­sights and profiles. Here are tools and templates you can start applying right away to improve service, reduce costs, and ultimately generate the elusive loyalty that the 'dazzle factor' fails to deliver. 
 
The rewards are there for the taking, and the pathway to achieving them is now clearly marked.

How To Take Control of the Customer Conversation

The Challenger Sale

THE BESTSELLING SALES CLASSIC WITH 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD 
 
What's the secret to sales success? If you're like most business leaders, you'd say it's fundamentally about relationships - and you'd be wrong. The best salespeople don't just build relationships with customers. They challenge them. 
 
The need to understand what top-performing reps are doing that their average performing colleagues are not is what drove Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson, and their colleagues at Corporate Executive Board, to investigate the skills, behaviours, knowledge, and attitudes that matter most for high performance. And what they discovered may be the biggest shock to conventional sales wisdom in decades. 
 
Based on an exhaustive study of thousands of sales reps across multiple industries and geographies, The Challenger Sale argues that classic relationship building is a losing approach, especially when it comes to selling complex, large-scale business-to-business solutions. The authors' study found that every sales rep in the world falls into one of five distinct profiles, and while all of these types of reps can deliver average sales performance, only one - the Challenger - delivers consistently high performance. 
 
‘Read it, think about it, implement it. You, and your organization, will be glad you did’ 
Professor Neil Rackham, author of SPIN Selling 
 
‘The Challenger Sale breaks the winning elements of this powerful approach into a set of teachable skills that can take even a top sales team to a new level of results delivery’ 
Dan James, former chief sales officer, DuPont

Read it, think about it, implement it. You, and your organization, will be glad you did

Professor Neil Rackham, author of SPIN Selling

"The Challenger Sale breaks the winning elements of this powerful approach into a set of teachable skills that can take even a top sales team to a new level of results delivery

Dan James, former chief sales officer, DuPont

'This is a must-read book for every sales professional. The authors' groundbreak­ing research explains how the rules for selling have changed-and what to do about it. If you don't want to be left behind, don't miss this innovative book that provides the new formula for selling success

Ken Revenaugh, vice president, sales operations, Oakwood Temporary Housing

'Groundbreaking, timely, and disciplined research presented in a way that is both intuitive and completely actionable. It has already had an impact on our organization by creating a customer lens that enhanced our sales recruiting, hiring, training and deployment

Jeff Connor, senior vice president and chief growth officer, ARAMARK Global Food, Hospitality and Facility Services

'The Challenger Sale shows you how to maintain control of the complex sale. The output of this superbly researched body of work is that you will know how to better differentiate your organization, your offering and yourself in the mind of the customer'

Adrian Norton, vice president, sales, Reckitt Benckiser Pharmaceuticals

'There is a healthy dose of constructive tension throughout this brilliant book. Tension that will bring insight and clarity into how customers buy today and how your sales team must sell. If you are seeking to raise the bar in your sales orga­nization, The Challenger Sale is a must-read'

Tom Meek, vice president, sales, Henkel Adhesives Technologies

The most important advance in selling for many years.

Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson are managing directors with CEB in Washington, D.C.

What's the secret to sales success? If you're like most business leaders, you'd say it's fundamentally about relationships-and you'd be wrong. The best salespeople don't just build relationships with customers. They challenge them. 
 
Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson, and their colleagues at CEB have studied what determines the performance of thousands of sales reps worldwide. And what they discovered may be the biggest shock to conventional sales wisdom in decades. 
 
The Challenger Sale argues that classic relationship building is a losing approach. Every sales rep in the world falls into one of five distinct profiles, and while all of these types of reps can deliver average sales performance, only one - the Challenger - delivers consistently high performance. 
 
Instead of bludgeoning customers with facts and features, Challengers approach customers with insights about how they can save or make money. They tailor their message to the customer's specific needs. They are assertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale. 
 
The things that make Challengers unique are teachable to the average sales rep. Once you understand how to identify Challengers, you can model their approach and embed it throughout your sales force. The authors explain how almost any average rep, equipped with the right tools, can drive higher levels of customer loyalty and, ultimately, greater growth.

Matthew Dixon

Brent Adamson

Pat Spenner

Nick Toman

A handbook of practices that will help you get into your customers' heads, deliver good value and win the sale

Daniel H. Pink, author of To Sell is Human and Drive

I love it. This book will set the tone for years of work to come. The CEB team has just added the HOW to the WHAT that we have all been searching for since we launched into the Challenger journey

Mitch Little, vice president, worldwide sales and applications, Microchip Technology Inc.

An essential new way to think about the sale

Lays out a blueprint for how sales and marketing departments must rethink their approach to winning more business. What worked in the past is clearly having diminishing returns today and will likely lead to failure in the future

John Graff, vice president, corporate marketing, National Instruments

'Provides evidence-based insights and practical guidance for solving one of today's most pressing commercial challenges: complex decision making within customer organizations. It clearly shows what distinguishes the best sellers and marketing organizations from the rest

Matthew Dixon

Praise for The Challenger Customer

A handbook of practices that will help you get into your customers' heads, deliver good value and win the sale

I love it. This book will set the tone for years of work to come. The CEB team has just added the HOW to the WHAT that we have all been searching for since we launched into the Challenger journey

An essential new way to think about the sale

A handbook of practices that will help you get into your customers' heads, deliver good value and win the sale

I love it. This book will set the tone for years of work to come. The CEB team has just added the HOW to the WHAT that we have all been searching for since we launched into the Challenger journey

An essential new way to think about the sale

A handbook of practices that will help you get into your customers' heads, deliver good value and win the sale

I love it. This book will set the tone for years of work to come. The CEB team has just added the HOW to the WHAT that we have all been searching for since we launched into the Challenger journey

An essential new way to think about the sale

Books by Matthew Dixon

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