by Carmine Gallo, John Wiley and Sons, 2007.
Carmine Gallo divides this book into two parts; first he defines and illustrates with stories the 7 Simple Secrets and then he tells you how to live them. Many of the companies that have successfully implemented these secrets will be very familiar to you. Some people/companies use multiple secrets all of the time and some pick and choose the ones that work best for them and are known for adhering to these principles. People you will recognize include Winston Churchill and Steve Jobs and companies showcased include: Intel, Gymboree, Cold Stone Creamery and Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.
The 7 secrets are:
1. Ignite Your Enthusiasm
2. Navigate the Way
3. Sell the Benefit
4. Paint a Picture
5. Invite Participation
6. Reinforce an Optimistic Outlook
7. Encourage Their Potential.
Many stories are given that show exactly how these aforementioned individuals and companies inspire us to learn and use these secrets. Your passion and commitment can help others around you provide the same level of service and commitment that you do to all of your customers.
If you want to light a fire under your company and get everyone’s buy in to grow the company and succeed you only need to emulate the guidelines shown here to succeed. The energy and passion shown by these individuals and companies will give you the inspiration you need to develop your own game plan and to put it to use.
by Ram Charan, Penguin Group, 2007.
Sales is getter harder and harder to do as more options for obtaining needed supplies and services expands. In the past, many times there were only one or two potential vendors for your needs and now there can be an overwhelming number of vendors.
Ram Charan builds his sales on creating value for your customers and their customers. You need to not only sell items they need at prices they want, but you need to give them value added services. Knowing what your customers really need and developing ways using your products and services to deliver this and ideas on cost savings, new product bundling and other ideas to develop more business for your customer is how the successful sales companies are now doing business.
The sale starts with a sales person who has built a team around him to sell to the customer. It must be done company wide and must have buy in from everyone in the company. This method can not be started overnight and become a hugh income builder. Doing Value Account Plans take time and understanding. The salesperson must get to people within his customers’ company who make the decisions or have any impact on how they are made. This means that a plan must be built for every potential customer and it must be constantly updated as the economy and the customers’ needs change.
The internal team is lead by the salesperson, but will include finance, legal, manufacturing and marketing personnel as well as those departments identified as necessary to the success for the sales to this particular customer.
Ram Charan shares how some companies have made VAP plans work and how they can work for you, but he also shares that it means a complete change in how companies sell and can take years to become a habit and a way of doing business. Intensive training is needed on many fronts and you must at some point get your customers to see the potential value to them, because the more you know about them the better you will be able to develop the right products and services to allow both of you to grow. With all of the competition for business out there Ram Charan believes that this is the way of doing sales in the future for those companies that survive and thrive.
I have talked to a number of people lately who are looking at either starting a business or expanding the one they currently own. One of the first things you should do when contemplating either of these possibilities is write a business plan. A business plan will help you determine exactly what you need to do to succeed in your endeavors. It will help you focus on understanding the competition, the industry outlook, the target market you are after and much more.
There are many resources available locally to help you develop your plan. SCORE (Service Corp of Retired Executives) offers a free class called Should You Start Your Own Business. This workshop addresses many issues you will want to consider before launching a business. We talk about the rewards of starting a small business, attributes of a successful entrepreneur, business planning including how to determine your cash requirements, the legal form of your business entity, and more. The next workshop will be held Monday, June 16, 2008 6:30 to 8:30 PM at the Penrose Library in the Carnegie Reading Room.
The Pikes Peak Library District teaches a free class called Minding Your Business, which teaches you all of the resources you need to write a business plan. The next class will be held Tuesday, June 24, 2008, 8:30 to 10 AM at the Penrose Library. This class includes sample business plans you can use as a guideline in developing your own. For more information please call 531-6333 x2308.
The Small Business Development Center offers many low cost classes on learning specific aspects of developing your business including accounting, websites, marketing and more. By taking these classes you can enhance the skills you already have to use in your business.
All of these classes and many others that can assist you in starting or expanding a business can be found at Colorado Springs Small Business Resource Guide. All of these classes will help you take your business to the next level.
by Kenneth Blanchard, Don Hutson and Ethan Willis, Currency Doubleday, 2008.
A person who is just graduating with an MBA, but hopes to open his own business in the future, tells this inspiring tale as a business fable. It follows his life as he accomplishes his goals and teaches us how to avoid the things that cause most entrepreneurs to fail. His first job out of college brings him his first mentor and someone who helps him find the right mentors to go forward with his dreams. Whether you want to be an entrepreneur or someone who controls their career you can gain a lot of insights on overcoming obstacles in your business life.
Topics covered include: learning the craft, creating legendary service, helping people to soar like eagles, ego issues, financial growing pains, turning things around and putting it all together. We follow Jud through his dream of having his own business and what he must do to develop it and weather the rough patches. He relies, at times, on the mentors that he has invited to coach him in life. They share their insights and these insights and others are recorded by Jud in a journal that his high school coach encouraged him to keep. Some of the insights shared under creating legendary service include: look for moments of truth with your customers to create the kind of experience you want them to have and don’t create a company of ducks; let your people soar like eagles.
An appendix with the twenty attributes of successful entrepreneurs is also included and some of these attributes are: purposeful, visionary, integrity-based, communicative and determined.
TheOne Minute Manager series of books has been around for a long time and this adds to this reference base. This quick read will inspire you to develop the characteristics that can make you succeed wherever you want to and doing what really matters to you.
by Mary Lynn Pulley and Jane Hilberry, Get Smart! Publishing, LLC, 2007.
Most of us don’t really think about how we use e-mail even though it has become the main way a lot of us communicate with those in our business and personal lives. In Get Smart the authors show how some e-mails have sabotaged careers and de-railed others. What we say in e-mail does not get lost in the ozone, it becomes a permanent document that can be used to show indiscretions or mistakes we have made and make it very hard for us to overcome.
There are many examples of e-mail being used to expose behaviors of people recently that many wish had never been written down. Authors Pulley and Hilberry share the seven guidelines we should use when composing and sending e-mail to those in our lives.
The seven guidelines are:
1. Would you want it to appear in The New York Times?
2. Would you say it face to face?
3. Is it necessary? Or about that root canal?
4. Does it pass the morale test?
5. What’s so funny?
6. Is it culturally savvy?
7. What would your lawyer say?
If what you are going to say or respond doesn’t follow these guidelines don’t say it. You may regret your actions later.
The authors use many examples of people and companies that regretted their e-mails but couldn’t take them back and paid heavy consequences for their actions including losing a CEO position, a lost job and other career busting outcomes. This is a very quick read, but it could save you from making a costly or fatal mistake in your communications. When in doubt about an e-mail sit on it for 24 hours and re-read it. If you still think it is appropriate send it, otherwise edit it or hit the delete key and save yourself future aggravation.
by Chin-ning Chu, Currency Doubleday, 2007.
This title is misleading because the book can be utilized by both genders, not just women. It focuses on women only because it suggests that you focus on your strengths and not your weaknesses and the examples given are for women. It would definitely give a heads up to thinking about possibilities from a feminine viewpoint because one of the strengths they possess are in relationships and in building relationships and this comes up under multiple headings. The original Art of War was written 2,500 years ago, but much of the strategies work just as well in today’s business environments as they did in wars 2,500 years ago.
There are five elements that must be addressed if you are going to fight a war:
ethics or moral standing
timing
resources or terrain
leadership
managing.
Doing business today is much like having a war against your competitors. Understanding and applying these elements can tell you if you are going to be a winner or a loser in the business war. Applying these elements can help you plan and develop a strategy to overcome your competition and stay ahead in the business world.
The main strategy is to know thyself first because if you don’t understand yourself and how you relate to others you can’t address your needs or the needs of others and you can’t respond to opportunities around you.
Thirteen chapters cover planning, doing battle, strategy, disposition, momentum, both sides of reality, conflict, imagination, management, environment, competitiveness, fireproofing yourself and espionage. If you need to develop a plan to advance your business you can get many ideas from the knowledge shared here.
by Muhammad Yunus with Karl Weber, PublicAffairs, 2007.
Author Muhammad Yunus says that he could not live with poverty all around him and not do something about it. Yunus saw women from the local villages being taken advantage of by lenders who loaded money at high fees and required them to sell their products only to them at fees they decided were fair. He and his students did a study of this practice in villages near him and he determined that a small sum to most banks would actually allow these women and their families to become independent and eventually work their way out of poverty.
The banks he approached to help with his idea said that the poor have no credit history and would not pay back loans made to them. Using his own money he started making what has become known as micro-credit loans. Yunus has proved the banks wrong. He and investors started Grameen Bank whose sole original purpose was to make micro-loans to the poor. This bank is now self-sustaining from the monies of the people that receive the loans. The idea of social businesses came from this. The social business is in play not to make money for the shareholders and owners, but to address the needs of the poor and disadvantaged. They address poverty, hunger and other inequities. The social business is not about making money it is about stopping poverty, hunger and addressing medical needs of the poor of the world.
Yunus is a noble peace prize winner who has really exemplified what he teaches. He used his own money to get started and now works with over 25 social businesses to provide opportunities and resources to the poor to help them overcome poverty and to take their families away from this legacy. This uplifting book details exactly how social businesses can help address some of today’s most compelling social issues
by Brian Tracy, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2007.
Many of us are extremely good at delaying or procrastinating in getting those tasks done that we find the most trying to do. Eat that Frog will help you find ways to tackle the frogs in your life. Tasks or projects that are seen as potential obstacles in our days are the frogs in our life. If you have more than one frog you need to tackle, the best advice is to tackle the hardest or ugliest one first and then the others won’t seem as overwhelming.
Breaking down the frogs into small bites or pieces can be the best way to approach the task. Breaking them down allows you to finish each section in short amounts of time although many find that once they successfully complete one small section they have the momentum to continue on with the task and they end up completing a much larger portion than they had planned on or they complete the task in its entirety.
Brian Tracy uses quotes and summary sections in each chapter to make sure the reader gets his point. One of the 21 ways is to “apply the law of three” and he starts with the quote by Theodore Roosevelt “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” The point of this chapter is to discover the three tasks that you perform that contribute the most to your business and then figure out a way to spend most of your time doing only these three things. You will probably need to delegate some of your other tasks to others, but this will allow you to be the most productive you can be. If you can build relationships with others, you can build teams who will each handle sections of different tasks that they excel in and you will only have to do the tasks you enjoy and excel in.
Some of the other ways addressed include: plan every day in advance, focus on the key result areas, upgrade your key skills, identify your key constraints and slice and dice the task. By applying these 21 ways to stop procrastinating you will get more of the important things done in a timelier manner.
by Barry Liebert and Jon Spector, Wharton School Publishing, 2008.
This book looks at the power of social networking and using it to power your business. The authors look at a method coined as “crowdsourcing.” Crowdsourcing is defined by Jeff Howe of Wired magazine as “The tapping of the latent talent of the online crowd.” It is a process that is being utilized by more and more businesses. This book looks at the companies that have successfully employed this process to develop a network of people who helped them re-define products and services and expand their businesses. It also includes examples that were tried, but did not end up being viable as businesses or products.
Some of the examples include Proctor and Gamble, Amazon and Intuit. Using groups consisting of customers, employees and others with an interest in your products many companies used the power of crowdsourcing to come up with innovative and new products or services. Some examples of ideas that were tried and failed and the reasons behind the failures are also included. If you have ever thought of using the power of crowds to help you develop new ideas or take your business to the next step this book is for you.
The authors thought that they could get the masses to write the book as well and although thousands contributed someone still had to edit the final product. Sections on how you can apply what is being discussed as well as input of quotes and statements from contributors are included where appropriate. If you are looking to “drive innovation, reach new markets, revitalize current markets, resurrect customer loyalty or improve profitability” you need to read this book.
by Peggy Klaus, Collins, 2008.
For many of us the education we received for our careers involved learning technical skills on the job or through colleges and other schools. The soft skills include: communication skills and people (or personal) skills. The definition of hard skills is technical ability and factual knowledge needed to do the job. Soft skills are defined as personal, social, communication and self-management behaviors. These soft skills are often learned on the job or by imitating the people around us. Soft skills complement the hard or technical skills and allow us to advance in our careers.
Peggy Klaus uses a style reminiscent of a personal career coach and appears to be directly talking to the reader. She shares many scenarios of past clients and circumstances to help the reader to learn by others’ examples. She shows how learning and using soft skills from adaptability to trustworthiness can help us succeed in our jobs and in our career choices.
Soft skills cover a wide spectrum of abilities and traits including: being self-aware, trustworthiness, conscientiousness, adaptability, critical thinking, attitude, initiative, empathy, confidence, integrity self-control, organizational awareness, likability, influence, risk taking, problem solving, leadership, time management and others. Using these traits and abilities we learn to accomplish what we need to to get the job done and have the effect we are looking for on our company. Without these skills, knowing only the technical skills and factual knowledge, we will not be well liked, respected or easy to work with. Each chapter focuses on a different type of soft skill from getting the job done to bragging. Developing these skills will help take us to the next level in our jobs and in our careers.
