By Robert H. Bloom, author of The New Experts: Win Today’s Newly Empowered Customers at Their 4 Decisive Moments.

Most business leaders believe that their current unsatisfactory financial performance is chiefly a result of the recent and current harsh economic realities and the birth of powerful new global competitors. These problems, while severe, are masking a far more enduring problem.

Many companies will not thrive—or survive—in the coming years because all businesses are suffering from a more serious and enduring problem that has hidden beneath our former prosperity and our current troubles.This problem—namely, the upheaval in the fundamental buyer-seller equation—was concealed by the recent boom years during which sellers could sell anything to buyers who were eager to buy everything they could, or as it turned out could not, afford. The excesses of yesterday—irrational investments, extravagant lifestyles, unwarranted business expansion, and abundant financial results—obscured the emergence of the buyer’s newfound power and authority. Businesses—every size and type—have been, are now, and will continue to be impacted by this monumental revolution in buyer behavior.

Today’s buyers—empowered by the Internet, assured by the enormous choice in every segment of commerce, and capitalizing on the acute vulnerability of sellers struggling in this new selling climate—have taken control of the entire purchase progression. In my 45-year career in domestic and international marketing, I learned that growth is the most universal problem in business. But growth is only possible if marketers and sellers can persuade newly informed and assertive customers to buy from them, and that is becoming increasingly difficult to do.

Today, in speeches and workshops around the world, I help business leaders create growth strategies that confront the profound change in customer behavior because I view this development as the most dangerous situation that businesses have ever experienced. In my new book, The New Experts, I focus entirely on this complex problem, and I deliver a practical, inexpensive solution for generating business growth in this hostile selling environment.

Want to win a free copy of The New Experts? E-mail BOLD and tell us what you’re doing to survive the turbulent global economy. One lucky reader will be randomly chosen from the submissions and notified on  October 11.