Mastering the Complex Sale: How to Compete and Win When the Stakes are High!
In today's turbulent and volatile marketplace, even the most experienced professionals are struggling with the rapid commoditization of their complex, high-value solutions. The complexity of the problems to be solved and the competitive threats we face are increasing at an alarming rate. At the same time, your customers are wrestling with mission-critical decisions and evaluating solutions that all sound the same and come packaged with a high degree of risk and a low probability of success.
Learning to Compete in European Universities: From Social Institution to Knowledge Business
This book addresses the critical issue of how and why European universities are changing and learning to compete. Anglo-Saxon universities particularly in the US, the UK and Australia have long been subject to, and responded to, market-based competition in higher education. The authors argue that Continental and Nordic universities and higher education institutes are now facing similar pressures that are leading to a structural transformation of the university sector.
In a society overrun by commercial clutter, religion has become yet another product sold in the consumer marketplace, and faiths of all kinds must compete with a myriad of more entertaining and more convenient leisure activities. Brands of Faith argues that in order to compete effectively, faiths have had to become brands - easily recognizable symbols and spokespeople with whom religious prospects can make immediate connections.
Mara Einstein shows how religious branding has expanded over the past twenty years to create a blended world of commerce and faith, where the sacred becomes secular and the secular sacred. In a series of fascinating case studies of faith brands, she explores the significance of branded church courses, such as Alpha and The Purpose Driven Life, mega-churches, and the popularity of the televangelist Joel Olsteen and television presenter Oprah Winfrey, as well as the rise of Kaballah. She asks what the consequences of this religious marketing will be, and outlines the possible results of religious commercialism - good and bad. Repackaging religion - updating music, creating teen-targeted bibles - is justifiable and necessary. However, when the content becomes obscured, religion may lose its unique selling proposition - the very ability to raise us above the market.