Your Company Sucks: It's Time to Declare War on Yourself

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Your Company Sucks: It's Time to Declare War on Yourself Pub. Date: 8/2/2011 Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.

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Overview

It's every business person's nightmare: his or her company is failing, dysfunctional, stuck in neutral, and/or is disappointing overall. Put bluntly-but candidly-the company sucks.

That's the bad news. The good news is that it doesn't have to be that way.

Every business can rebound from its lows, regain its momentum, thrill its customers, and be the source of pride and profits its owners and shareholders seek.

This insightful book makes three points clear:

1. The key to long-term business success is for the leader to declare war on him/herself so that the company never rests on its laurels.

2. Customer satisfaction is a curse in disguise. The overwhelming need is not to satisfy your customers/clients but to thrill them.

3. Only four factors lead to business failure and stagnation. Identifying and addressing these plagues is the focus of the war.

Your Company Sucks pulls back the curtain on the four reasons businesses decline and shows how you can transition from failing to flourishing. It's not too late to turn your company around.

Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

CEO of MSCO, Inc., a marketing services company, Stevens offers a rehash of ho-hum marketing and business suggestions in this short treatise on understanding the failures of your company and reinvigorating your business. He cites four main reasons businesses fail (ineffective leadership; "lust-to-lax syndrome," or hot and cold customer treatment; incompetence; and conventional thinking) and illustrates them with examples before making his recommendations. For someone who states that business leaders should avoid conventional thinking patterns, his suggestions are conventional in the extreme: "declare war on complacency" (war metaphors pop up throughout) by not promoting through tenure alone; make an "action plan" for change; "thrill" your current customers with little unexpected extras. The book is not particularly well organized, although it is a fast and simple read. VERDICT Stevens's previous Your Marketing Sucks was a Business Week best seller, and he writes the business blog Unconventional Thinking (www.msco.com/blog), so some readers may seek out this title; however, other authors, e.g., Seth Godin, have more notoriety and cover much the same territory. For readers looking for basic ideas without a big-time investment, this might be an acceptable title.—Sarah Statz Cords, The Reader's Advisor Online

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781935618546
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
Publication date: 8/2/2011
Pages: 208
Sales rank: 423,072
Product dimensions: 5.20 (w) x 7.90 (h) x 0.70 (d)

Meet the Author

Mark Stevens is a bestselling author, CEO of MSCO, a results-driven management and marketing firm, and a popular media commentator on a host of business matters including marketing, branding, management and sales. Stevens is known for delivering business insights with blunt truth and unconventional wisdom.

Mark Stevens shook the marketing establishment with his BusinessWeek bestseller, Your Marketing Sucks (Random House/Crown Business, 2003), and redefined the rules of sales with God Is A Salesman. He is the author of 24 business-related books, including the bestsellers: The Big Eight; King Icahn; Sudden Death: The Rise and Fall of EF Hutton (a Wall Street Journal bestseller and Library Journal "Business Book of the Year").

Stevens' incisive understanding of critical business issues is geared toward achieving extraordinary growth and success for his clients. His firm, MSCO, represents a stellar roster of clients. Through integrated marketing campaigns, MSCO focuses on achieving financial results for its clients instead of awards that serve egos. Stevens possesses an innovative and iconoclastic view of the business world.

He is an in-demand speaker at organizations from Siemens, Virgin Air, Nike and Oracle to the American Chamber of Commerce Executives. A frequent guest commentator, Stevens lends his insights and opinions on a wide variety of topics, from Carl Icahn’s latest moves (Fox Business Channel) to Tom Cruise's image (Fox News Channel), to "Why Successful Business People Don't Sleep" (The New York Times) and how to "Be a Better Boss in 2007" (Forbes.com).

His wildly successful blog, "Unconventional Thinking," is in the top 1 percent of all published blogs (out of 95 million blogs) and was recently named in the top 10 of all marketing blogs. Stevens is regular guest blogger for Brandweek.com and the Digital PR blogger for PR News Online. More about Mark Stevens can be found at MSCO.com.

Warning i

1 Your Business Woes Are Keeping You Up at Night 1

2 Effective Leaders Create Good Company Cultures 15

3 Declare War on Complacency and Incompetence 33

4 Where Are You in the Business Lifecycle? 47

5 sYou Don't Have to Stay Where You Are 67

6 An Action Plan for Change 73

7 Woo Your Customers: The Power of the Thrill 85

8 Thrill to the Nth Degree: Learn from the Masters 101

9 Does Your Business Thrill? Rank Your Business on the Thrill-O-Meter 113

10 The Element of Surprise: Only the Unexpected Is Thrilling 123

11 The Power of Thrilled: Six Ways to Infuse Your Business with Jet Fuel 133

12 Monetize the Thrill-A Management Road Map 145

13 Is Your Company More Than the Sum of Its Parts? 173

14 If You Were Handed the Company, Chances Are You Don't Know How to Run It 183

About the Author 191

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