About the Book: Engaging the Heart in Business

Posted on: September 10, 2020

Engaging the Heart in Business
A Revolutionary Market Approach Based On Love, 1st Edition

By Alice Alessandri, Alberto Aleo

Impact

The business world is undergoing change. Values such as trust, well-being, sustainability, and respect for human beings and their deeper ambitions are becoming increasingly important. Corporations and professionals can achieve and maintain success only if they can bring their relationship with their customers to a new, higher level. The condition that links the two is very similar to that created when we fall in love.The organizational models and marketing approaches based on the metaphor of war, and the inherent rhetoric of “command and control”, are no longer valid; to form such a bond we need love. Engaging the Heart in Business will support entrepreneurs, marketing managers and professionals in building a business strategy and designing marketing tools (from customer analysis, to the definition of your offer and the style of communication, up to the positioning of prices and the management of resources) in the light of a new model, the Loving Business Model.

Highlights

You are in love with your business when you receive energy from it, in the form of tangible and intangible assets, as well as getting an emotional return.
You are in love with your business and your work when it enables you to express your true values, and it is by doing so that your results improve. The more you feel you are reflected in what you do and the way you do it, as well as your motivations for doing it, the more those around you – your customers, collaborators, partner companies and the environment – will understand and appreciate your contribution.
You are in love with your business when you stop fearing your competitors and attempting to control what is happening around you, but follow your own path, your own mission, certain of the unique and unrepeatable contribution that you can give to the market.

Research

Since 2013, Alice Alessandri and Alberto Aleo have been studying the new market dynamics and the fundamental role of ethics in gaining commercial results in collaboration with international scholars. Engaging the Heart in Business, like its predecessor, is the result of independent research conducted between Italy and the United States combined with the authors’ many years of professional experience. It contains the most up-to-date and effective techniques available in the modern marketing landscape, supported by case studies, concrete examples and activities, which will guide you to put your newly acquired knowledge into practice.

Development

Both the model and the related operating techniques have developed from the authors' fieldwork and the independent research they conducted between 2016 and the beginning of 2018, involving 75 organizations and roughly 1,300 people coming from sectors such as information technology, plumbing and heating, insurance, banking, cooperation, logistics, pharmaceutics, design and furniture, trade associations, business services and consultancy. The research was carried out empirically, i.e. through the direct observation of good practices and by investigating the tools and business models used by the companies that obtained better results. The authors also studied cases of failure, from which we derived much useful knowledge.
At this earlier stage of study, the authors also implemented experimentation to test the effectiveness of the approach we were developing. Roughly 25% of the companies with whom we worked during the period indicated chose to completely redesign their marketing strategies and actions according to the Loving Business Model.The feedback obtained through our questionnaires showed 90% satisfaction of all the 75 companies with which we worked, with a significant improvement in results in terms of increased sales performance, reinforcement of reputation and positive word of mouth, as well as greater strategic vision and an improvement in relationships at all levels, accompanied by increased motivation.