Book Description

Startup: An Insider’s Guide to Launching and Running a Business is for people who are excellent at something—product or web development, writing code, marketing or selling anything—but who are now toiling for others. Yet they have long had a dream: to take that special skill set and use it, on their own terms, in a startup business.

This pattern is romanticized by the media in the form of the “tech entrepreneur”—the guy brainstorming with buddies in a garage who ends up selling his startup for millions. But what is the reality behind stories like that one? For that matter, what mental processes, frames of reference, hard knocks, and lessons learned make up the “back story” behind any startup success? This book not only reveals the actual experience of entrepreneurship, but it provides readers with a set of universal entrepreneurial skills and tools they can use to build a business.

Author Kevin Ready has made this journey, and more than once. He earned his MBA—Master of Bruise Acquisition—through numerous encounters with “situations,” problems, black holes, bad employees, sea monsters, not enough money, and other karate chops to the organizational body. Startup illustrates in detail the lessons he learned the hard way—so you don’t have to.

Backed up by stories of both his successes and failures, Ready helps readers learn shortcuts to help them do what eight out of 10 entrepreneurs can’t: Build and sustain a successful start-up.
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Book Description

Microsoft® Dynamics CRM 2011 Unleashed presents start-to-finish guidance for planning, customizing, deploying, integrating, managing, and securing the newest version of Dynamics CRM. Authored by three leading Microsoft Dynamics implementers, it illuminates new opportunities to deploy CRM as a hosted service (SaaS), integrate with Azure cloud services, and extend CRM through Microsoft’s new online service marketplace. The authors systematically explain how Dynamics CRM 2011 works, illuminating why it works that way, and how to drive maximum business value from it. Drawing on insider knowledge of Microsoft’s new product, they present clear examples, proven best practices, and pitfalls to avoid in using every significant Dynamics CRM capability. Their far-reaching coverage ranges from Dynamics CRM’s sales, marketing, and customer service features to its automated workflows; Outlook and Office integration to reporting and security. This edition’s extensive new coverage includes new chapters on Mobility, the Outlook Client, and Office 2010 integration, as well as greatly expanded coverage of CRM Online. It also contains new or expanded discussions of data visualization, SharePoint Foundation integration, user interface changes, inbuild charts, dashboards, IM and SMS communication support, auditing, no-code workflows, connections, queues, the new WCF-based programming model, UI scripting, and security.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. New Features of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
Chapter 2. Why Business Needs a CRM System Download Now »

Book Description

A practical guide for realizing the true potential of social media—not for marketing, but for leadership.

Knowing the tools of social media is a must for successful marketing these days, but the real promise of social media is the way it can teach us a whole new way of doing business. Humanize takes the principles underlying social media’s growth and applies them to the way we lead and manage our organizations. Leading organizational consultants Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant help you change your organization, from the culture down to individual behavior, in ways that make it more human—and more effective. Drawing on their extensive experience, Notter and Grant help you make management innovation real and doable. Regardless of your title or position, this book can help you:

• Build a more trustworthy, open, generative, and courageous organization by embracing social and human principles.
• Change organizations from the inside out.
• Address critical elements of organizational behavior, process, and culture.
• Move beyond the social media buzzwords like transparent, decentralized, and open—and actually make them happen.
• Promote forms of “generative” success that go beyond profit and loss.
• Learn how to get started–you, personally, today, right now! Download Now »

Book Description

The Easy, Step-by-Step Guide to Marketing Your iPhone/iPad Apps–Now Fully Updated!

Grab your share of the multibillion-dollar iPhone/iPad app market! Top mobile app marketer Jeffrey Hughes will show you how to create an app that will sell, find customers who’ll buy it, and motivate them to lay down their hard-earned cash, right now! Don’t just throw your app out there; learn how to get noticed and make sales no matter how crowded the App Store gets! Completely revised for today’s iPhone/iPad marketplace, this book walks you through building a winning marketing plan, positioning your app, crafting your message, using the latest social marketing techniques, connecting with your best customers, and more! Absolutely no marketing experience is needed. With plenty of examples, screen shots, and step-by-step directions, this book makes iPhone/iPad app marketing easy!

You’ll Learn How To:

• Create an app with unique value to customers who’ll pay for it
• Cut through the clutter in an App Store with more than 475,000 apps
• Target and segment your audience–and reach it with pinpoint accuracy
• Identify your true competitors, learn from them, and successfully sell against them
• Use social media to build strong relationships with thousands of potential buyers
• Learn how to maximize social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and gain the exposure your app needs Download Now »

Book Description

“For crying out loud, IBM ‘gets’ social media. Don’t you think it’s about time that you do? This is the book to get you started.”
–Guy Kawasaki, author of Enchantment

“Get Bold is…a book to be embraced, studied, and implemented.”
–Jeffrey Gitomer, author of The Little Red Book of Selling and Social BOOM!

With Forewords by Charlene Li, author of Open Leadership, and Mike Rhodin, Sr. Vice President, IBM SWG Solutions

How to Drive Maximum Business Value from Social Media!
From Sandy Carter, one of the leaders of IBM’s groundbreaking Social Business initiative

A complete framework, practical examples, and expert guidance for executing on YOUR Social Business AGENDA:
Align organizational goals and culture
Gain social trust
Engage through experiences
Network your business processes
Design for reputation and risk management
Analyze your data
…and win! Download Now »

Book Description

Today, nearly every charitable nonprofit, advocacy group, professional group, and politician relies on the philanthropy of others. Whether it’s a private college, a hospital or museum, a lobbying group, or a local, low-budget food shelf, operational and marketing costs and capital investments are often largely underwritten through the generous support of donors. Nonprofits need some people to write $25 checks on a regular basis, and they need others to make six-figure pledges. The bad news: Since the economic collapse of 2008, getting people to part with precious dollars has become ever more difficult. The good news is that people are still inclined to be generous to organizations, causes, and candidates they believe in. Effective Frontline Fundraising provides the information you’ll need to set up and manage an effective development team capable of consistently raising gifts, both large and small.

Effective Frontline Fundraising will not only teach those skills for getting the gift you want in the short run, but it will also show how to build a meaningful, long-lasting relationship between your organization and your donor base. This book:

• Shows how to keep that organizational lifeblood—cash—running through your vital operations
• Explains how to create a firm foundation from which to solicit funds
• Provides examples of successful and unsuccessful fundraising messages and plans
• Teaches you how to ask confidently for gifts from $25 to $1,000,000 … or more!

What you’ll learn Download Now »