Competing for Customers: Why Delivering Business Outcomes is Critical in the Customer First Revolution

Focused investments in customer success offer large demonstrable returns. Everyone talks about customer focus these days, but achieving it requires you to go far beyond "customer advocacy": you must bring your customer's perspective into every aspect of your business strategy, with a relentless focus on helping customers achieve measurable business outcomes. This doesn't just happen. It requires a comprehensive, tested blueprint. Competing for Customers gives you that blueprint. World-renowned customer success expert Amir Hartman and Oracle Chief Customer Officer Jeb Dasteel show how to integrate all facets of customer-centricity, making them all work together from lead to revenue to retention.

Using new examples from great companies like Oracle, Cisco, FedEx, P&G, and Deutsche Bank, they identify a foundation of unifying principles and tactics that work. Next, they guide you through every step of planning and execution, supporting you with clear tools and templates based in real organizational practice. The best way to reap long-term profits is to embed your customers' success throughout your own corporate DNA. That's what the world's best companies do. Competing for Customers doesn't just teach the lessons they've learned: it helps you apply those lessons right where you are, right now.

Jeb Dasteel holds the position of Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer at Oracle. He is responsible for driving the relentless focus on customer success into all aspects of the Oracle business. Dasteel works across Oracle to deliver customer programs that continuously improve collaboration and attainment of customer business outcomes, value delivered, and loyalty. He has been with Oracle for 17 years in a number of corporate and field-based roles. Before joining Oracle in 1998, he worked as a management consultant at Gemini Consulting, helping Fortune 500 organizations define and implement business and IT strategies.

Amir Hartman, Founder and Managing Director of Mainstay, is a leading authority on corporate and technology transformations, and works with customers to help develop and execute customer success strategies. He is an international best-selling author and has served on the Business School faculty at Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard Business School Interactive. A frequent speaker, he is the author of several influential books, most recently Ruthless Execution (2014). Prior to forming Mainstay, Amir served as Managing Director for Cisco System’s Corporate Internet Strategy and the Internet Business Solutions Group. In this role, he was responsible for shaping Cisco’s Internet business strategy and advising key customers on the same.

Craig LeGrande recently coauthored Ruthless Execution (2014) and serves as a senior advisor to leading high-tech companies. As Founder and Managing Director of Mainstay, LeGrande leads a world-class team helping clients deliver customer success strategies, including innovative marketing and sales enablement capabilities. Before forming Mainstay, LeGrande worked in Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group and Accenture’s Strategic Services and Technology Services Groups. He received an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a BS in Electrical Engineering with Honors from the University of Florida―Go Gators!