Book Review: The Ultimate Sales Machine
On my way to a much needed vacation I thought I would do a little reading on the plane. As a Sales Executive at Harvard Business Services I have had the book The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes sitting on my desk for months but I have not found the time to read it. I chose this book because it focuses on turbocharging your business. Chet Holmes is an acclaimed corporate trainer, strategic mastermind and business growth expert who has worked with over 60 of the Fortune 500 companies.
I don’t know about you, but a typical day at the office for me revolves around a lot of different things that seem to need my attention all at once. From answering phone calls, to sending emails, to completing my daily tasks. I constantly find myself going back and forth to each of these and often find it challenging to complete a task before I am interrupted by something else. With multitasking being such a prominent part of my daily experience I found the section on time management to be very helpful and interesting.
Chet’s six tips on time management are:
- Touch It Once: Do not revisit tasks, if you touch it take action and complete that task.
- Make Lists: Lists help you stay focused and prioritize.
- Plan How Much Time You Will Allocate to Each Task: This helps you manage your daily tasks and dedicate enough time to accomplish them.
- Plan The Day: Give yourself a time frame to work on and complete each of the things on your list.
- Prioritize: Start with your most important and difficult task. By completing it first you will feel a tremendous sense of control and accomplishment having checked the biggest thing off your list.
- Ask Yourself, “Will it Hurt me to throw this away?”: Clutter hurts your productivity. Studies show that 80% of all filed or stored information is never referred to again. So throw it away!!
I hope you apply these six steps to assist you in completing your tasks efficiently. I know they are going to help me manage my time and be more productive on a daily basis.
Book Review: Hey Whipple, Squeeze this
Filed Under: Books of Interest
Tags: Advertisement, Book review, Books
The August 2nd episode of BBC’s popular automotive show “Top Gear” included a segment in which two of the show’s hosts were assigned the job of creating an advertisement for a new car. Hilarious mayhem ensued. The car they had to create the ad for was the new VW Scirocco TDI, a diesel version of the sporty hatchback that won “Top Gear’s” car of the year award. (Sorry America, VW has no plans to sell the Scirocco in the US). The hosts, James and Jeremy, concluded that the car was indeed sporty, handled great, and got around really well. Plus, it got 55 mpg! Fantastic! Unfortunately, the engine was a real dog. The power band was too small and the gearbox didn’t match well with it. Their conclusion after driving it was that it was “a great car ruined by a canal boat motor. Never buy it.” Now they had to create a TV spot for it.
So how do you create an advertisement, and what is the advertising business like? Luke Sullivan’s Hey Whipple, Squeeze This gives a humorous inside look at the industry and how to create a great ad. The title comes from Sullivan’s years of despising Charmin’s lovable Mr. Whipple. He was featured in 504 different Charmin ads from 1964 to 1990 and, after knocking Scott Tissue paper out of the no. 1 spot, kept Charmin the market leader. Yet, he was irritating, wasn’t he? Compare him to all the great VW adds we’ve seen over the last 4 decades. Those are witty, fun, unobtrusive, and best of all, memorable. Neither campaign changed drastically over time, and neither needed to because they were effective. The difference is in how they got consumers to remember the product. Sullivan gives many fine examples of print and television ads that ran over the last 40 years and explains what made them work. He also describes his years in the business and what it was like working with so many other creative people all bouncing ideas off each other. He tells about some truly awful (unnamed) clients and the things they want an ad to do and some of the great clients that would grab an idea with gusto and run with it. Some people get it, some don’t. One of the things I really liked about the book is how much of Sullivan’s advice about both the idea of advertising and the business of advertising relate to any other business and even the way we live. We all like to smile and feel good about ourselves: That’s what an ad should do, and it’s something we can do at a personal level. The consumer isn’t stupid: An ad shouldn’t be demeaning towards anyone and neither should we as individuals or business people. Know what you’re talking about: Obviously.
I really enjoyed this book and I got a lot out of it. I took several graphic design courses in college and this book helped me (belatedly) figure out what I did wrong and how I could have made my work better. It also would have helped James and Jeremy. After numerous attempts that had me rolling on the floor laughing, they almost created some decent work. It was an ad for a VW, but it sure wasn’t a VW ad.
Book Review: How to Castrate a Bull
Yes, the title sucked me in. You’ve got to admit it, though; How to Castrate a Bull is an eye-catching title for a business book. And yes, it does have a section about bull castration. The bland subtitle gives the intention of the book: Unexpected lessons on risk, growth, and success in business. Written by NetApp co-founder Dave Hitz, the book summarizes the nearly 20 year lifespan of the company and how they went from just 3 guys with an idea to over 4000 employees and more than $4 billion in annual revenues.
The title comes from Hitz’s time spent at Deep Springs College in California. Deep Springs is a combination ranch and liberal arts college. Students work 20 hours per week on the ranch while they do their studies. When Hitz worked as a ranch hand he learned humility by shoveling cow patties, the risk management involved when taking a knife to a 500 lb. bull, all while learning precious critical thinking and writing skills. Although Hitz majored in computer science at Princeton, he gives more credits to the writing and thinking skills learned as a liberal arts student than to his computer science education; in fact, he writes that learning how to write clearly was probably the best thing could have happened for his success. There’s a powerful lesson for the rest of us.
Some of the other lessons Hitz offers are to find a new or young market that you can quickly dominate. That’s obvious, but even Hitz admits that before NetApp even got a good grip on their market, a different market had found them and they ended up completely changing their strategy. That is another lesson offered: be flexible. One should also be flexible enough to know when to make big changes. Hitz tells of coming to the realization that one of the other founders had to be fired. Hitz writes that he hated having to make that choice, but it had to be done if the business was going to grow. Unfortunately, it took 14 months; so another lesson is that replacing your CEO should be done quickly!
When I first started reading this book, I didn’t think that I would make it past the first chapter. I didn’t want to read a “Hey! I’m awesome!” story. Once I got past the introduction, Hitz did provide an interesting story about building a huge company. He gave interesting anecdotes and funny stories about how to and not do many of the things that must be done to grow. Even if you aren’t planning on taking your business to $4 billion annually, Hitz’s story is still a good one about business life.
Book Review: Money: Whence it Came, Where it Went
Recently I noticed that something like a hierarchy of Western currencies has developed. These are the Swiss franc at about ¢80, the US Dollar, the Euro at $1.35, and the British Pound at $1.55 or so. Those are where they are at today. Not long ago the Dollar was about equal to the Euro, and a Pound cost $2.00. Before World War I, the European countries used a gold standard to keep currencies at a steady and predictable value relative to other currencies. After WWI, they had to go off gold because their gold holdings were spent, in the US, to pay for the war. The US then had so much gold, that it was forced to tie its currency to gold. None of the major economies are on gold anymore; currency values are now sorted through market value based upon the supply and demand of the currencies. Of course, this is pretty much common knowledge, but in considering the current hierarchy and how it got there, I read John Kenneth Galbraith’s Money: Whence it Came, Where it Went.
One would be hard pressed to find a better biographer for money. Galbraith, who passed away in 2006, was an economic advisor in some capacity or another to all presidential administrations since FDR, usually maintaining a simultaneous teaching position at Harvard. He also authored 33 books, primarily on economics and economic history.
Money is a short history that begins with 4000 years ago with the first use of exchanging precious metals for goods; a quick dash through official Roman and Byzantine coinage; the 200 year era when tobacco was the major currency in North America; and ending with state of the US Dollar in 1975, when the book was written. Along the way, Galbraith explains how the incredible wealth in gold and silver from the New World changed the nature of European economics; how the Bank of England and the Banque de France developed out of less than upstanding finance schemes; the birth of the ‘greenback’ and the decade long debate about whether or not it was constitutionally permitted to issue a common currency. Galbraith also explains issues and controversies of Keynesian economics, the creation of the US Federal Reserve and how the Great Depression got so bad.
Most economics books are slow and boring: not this one. It’s a quick, easy and interesting read. Galbraith has a sharp sense of humor and expresses his contempt or adulation for others and/or their ideas. His belief that economics are culturally influenced adds to the interesting tales of peculiar money-oriented activities in mankind’s history. This book gives historical perspective to anyone interested in money.
Book Review: The Anatomy of Persuasion
Filed Under: Books of Interest
Tags: Book, Book review, Communication, Sales
Within the last few weeks, several friends and close acquaintances have had the misfortune of losing their jobs. All these guys happen to be in sales: software and automobiles. They are all really great guys and are all very good at making you comfortable with them; regular ‘Joe Six-pack’ kinda guys. As salesmen though, they came into my thoughts when I saw Norbert Aubuchon’s The Anatomy of Persuasion on the library bookshelf. I know that sales is what these guys do, not who they are, but I wondered if their previous successes in all matters might somehow be related to their sales personalities. The Anatomy of Persuasion convinces me that they are, and here’s why: These guys are all great communicators!
The Anatomy of Persuasion is a book based on, and used in conjunction with, Aubuchon’s ‘Anatomy of Persuasion’ seminars. It’s not gimmicky, though, and it isn’t a pitch to get you into the seminars. It easily stands alone and is very useful on its own. Each chapter is concise and offers clear directions on how to be a persuasive person. From the very beginning, Aubuchon stresses that the problem with most great ideas is that they aren’t clearly expressed and therefore never get implemented. Of course, the opposite is also true: some clearly lousy ideas do get implemented because someone had the power of persuasion to get it done. This dichotomy demonstrates that it is not necessarily whether something is a good idea or not, but how well it was presented: The persuasion, not the idea, is what matters.
The Anatomy of Persuasion‘s steps and methods include learning how to critically analyze your proposal or product to better explain it to your audience, be it a customer, your supervisor, or management team. Aubuchon’s message is that proper communication is the basis for persuasion and strong knowledge and understanding of your product or proposal is at the root of that communication. It all seems simple when you think about it, but in daily operations we sometimes make things more complicated rather than more clearly defined and thus make our proposals less attractive. Simple, clear communication is the way forward.
My friends are practitioners of the clear and simple approach to communication, and they were successful in their fields, and I have no doubt that they will be employed again very soon. One has been selling Pontiacs since he bought a GTO Judge back in 1986, another started with Adobe in the late ’80s. Both have picked up MBAs along the way. They know their stuff and know how to talk about it. That’s how they get things done. The Anatomy of Persuasion is a great tool for anyone looking to improve their communication skills and motivate others to follow their desired course of action.
