800-CEO-READ Blog

WSJ reviews Blue Streak

The Wall Street Journal's Susan Carey today reviews the JetBlue biography Blue Streak written by Barbara Peterson.

"Ms. Peterson's book is a quick, breezy read studded with mini-profiles, snippets of aviation history and amusing anecdotes. Mr. Neeleman's propensity for serving refreshments to passengers from the aisles of his planes earned him his own flight-attendant apron embroidered with his handle, "Snack Boy." The desperate race to settle on a name for the company in the days before its official public-relations launch degenerated into loud arguments and bad suggestions from high-priced consultants. The only seemingly decent name -- True Blue -- wasn't available. But it did prompt an epiphany from the marketing vice president, who suggested making up a word that incorporated the color. JetBlue flew from her lips, and that was that."

Faith Popcorn's Suggested Reading List

In last week's Wall Street Journal special section on trends, WSJ went to forecasting guru Faith Popcorn to ask her what people should be reading to keep ahead of the trends [sub. needed]. I saw a partial list over on Tom Peters blog, but you will find the whole list here:

• The Future of Success by Robert Reich
• The Pursuit of Wow! by Tom Peters
• Trading Up: The New American Luxury by Michael Silverstein and Neil Fiske
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren
• The Future of the Past by Alexander Stille
• Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

New Releases - Week of 11/29/04

The only book I have run across dropping this week is The New CIO Leader by Marianne Broadbent and Ellen Kitzis. Since this is the only book this week, we'll give you a nice little summary of the title:

Two converging factors-the ubiquitous presence of technology in organizations and the recent technology downturn-have brought Chief Information Officers (CIOs) to a critical breaking point. They can seize the moment to leverage their expertise into a larger and more strategic role than ever before, or they can allow themselves to be relegated to the sideline function of "chief technology mechanic."

Drawing from exclusive research conducted by Gartner, Inc., with thousands of companies and CIOs, Marianne Broadbent and Ellen Kitzis reveal exactly what CIOs must do now to solidify their credibility with the executive team and bridge the chasm that currently separates business and IT strategy. The New CIO Leader outlines the agenda CIOs need to integrate business and IT assets in a way that moves corporate strategy forward- whether a firm is floundering, successfully competing, or leading its industry.

Mandatory reading for CIOs in every firm, The New CIO Leader spells out how information systems can deliver results that matter-and how CIOs can become the enterprise leaders they should be.

Bestsellers Going to the Birds

Tom Peters takes his shot at all the business books with animals in the titles.

Recommended Reading from today's WSJ

In Monday’s 11-29-04 WSJ Hector V. Barreto, Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, recommends the following books to help start, fund and expand your small business.

Strategic Selling

Conceptual Selling
Both by Robert E. Miller and Stephen E. Heiman with Tad Tuleja.

What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School
By Mark McCormack

Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive
By Harvey Mackay

The Spirit to Serve
By J. W. Marriott Jr. and Kathi Ann Brown

I think these titles are a good selection but my only issue with the selection is that the list is rather dated. I should come up with a better list and I will some time soon. BTW, my best of 2004 will be listed this week.

Mathematical Model to Explain Book Popularity?

J.D. Lasica pointed a Mercury News article out in the comments. The article is titled "Researchers Probe Books' Popularity". Researchers at UCLA and UC-Berkeley are investigating "complex systems", ones that would used to describe things like earthquake aftershocks and molecular interactions. They took that methodology and applied it to books sales:

[ Didier] Sornette's crew analyzed 138 books from Amazon's Top 50 rankings -- works that sold more than 30 copies daily, by [Morris] Rosenthal's calculations.

They found that top sellers tend to reach their sales peak in one of two ways. As predicted, many get there because of so-called exogenous shocks: a major media announcement, a celebrity endorsement, a dignitary's death. In these cases, the instant rise in sales is followed by a fairly quick decline.

Other books inch their way to the top over many months, helped by cascades of tiny ``endogenous shocks'' such as a friend's recommendation. A prime example is ``Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood,'' which made the bestseller list two years after publication without a major ad campaign. How? It caught on in book-discussion clubs and spurred women to form their own ``Ya-Ya Sisterhood'' groups.

Such books descend the rankings more slowly than those propelled by exogenous shocks. Much more than a one-time radio announcement or newspaper review, ``when people talk to each other, it sticks to the network much more,'' Gilbert said.

Executive Book Summaries - Best of 2004

Soundview Executive Book Summaries has been building their list of the best business books of 2004. Our friend Andrea Learned had blurb in her email signature about it. Her book Don't Think Pink is one that was chosen for the list (it was a JCS in July).

Here are the other 29 recommended reads:

1. Life Matters: Creating Positive Momentum Through a Dynamic Balance of Work, Family, Time, and Money by A. Roger Merrill and Rebecca Merrill
2. Generating Buy-In: Mastering the Language of Leadership by Mark Walton
3. Growing Your Company's Leaders: How Great Organizations Use Succession Management to Sustain Competitive Advantage by Robert M. Fulmer and Jay A. Conger
4. Career Warfare: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Personal Brand and Fighting to Keep It by David F. D'Alessandro
5. Conquering Consumerspace: Marketing Strategies for a Branded World by Michael Solomon
6. The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value With Customers by C.K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy
7. Play to Your Strengths: Managing Your Company's Internal Labor Markets for Lasting Competitive Advantage by Haig Nalbantian, Richard Guzzo, Dave Kieffer, and Jay Doherty
8. What Really Works: The 4+2 Formula for Sustained Business Success by Nitin Nohria, William Joyce, and Bruce Roberson
9. Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton
10. First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels by Michael Watkins
11. True to Our Roots: Fermenting a Business Revolutionby Paul Dolan and Thom Elkjer
12. Beyond the Core: Expand Your Market Without Abandoning Your Roots by Chris Zook
13. Scoring Points: How Tesco Is Winning Customer Loyalty by Clive Humby, Terry Hunt, and Tim Phillips
14. Into the Unknown: Leadership Lessons from Lewis & Clark's Daring Westward Adventure by Jack Uldrich
15. CustomerCentric Selling by Michael Bosworth and John Holland
16. A Bias for Action: How Effective Managers Harness Their Willpower, Achieve Results, and Stop Wasting Time by Heike Bruch and Sumantra Ghoshal
17. Heads Up: How to Anticipate Business Surprises and Seize Opportunities First by Kenneth McGee
18. Compassionate Capitalism: How Corporations Can Make Doing Good an Integral Part of Doing Well by Marc Benioff and Karen Southwick
19. Optimizing the Power of Action Learning: Solving Problems and Building Leaders in Real Time by Michael J. Marquardt
20. The Underdog Advantage: Using the Power of Insurgent Strategy to Put Your Business on Top by David Morey and Scott Miller
21. Off the Cuff: What to Say at a Moment's Notice by Anne Cooper Ready
22. Who Really Matters: The Core Theory of Power, Privilege and Success by Art Kleiner
23. Does IT Matter?: Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage by Nicholas G. Carr
24. The Power of Impossible Thinking: Transform the Business of Your Life and the Life of Your Business by Yoram Wind, Colin Crook, and Robert E. Gunther
25. Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Resolving Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
26. Ideas Are Free: How the Idea Revolution Is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations by Alan Robinson and Dean M. Schroeder
27. Strategic Partnerships: An Entrepreneurs Guide to Joint Ventures and Alliances by Robert Wallace
28. Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development by Henry Mintzberg
29. The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles From The World's Greatest Manufacturer by Jeffrey Liker

Week of Nov. 29th

Hope everyone had a great weekend (whether it was two or four days long). We are going to bring you some features this week to get the brain going again.

First, we have a book over on the Excerpts Blog. We are featuring They Made America by Harold Evans. There was a great piece at the end of the book called "Ten Lessons: What Can Be Learned from History's Innovators". We'll be putting up a couple of the lessons each day.

I am working on an author visit. I will either be this week or next. I'll let you know as the week progresses.

I also noticed a lot of bloggers talking about the business books their reading. I'll point you to those in a couple of posts this week.

Enjoy your week!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Enjoy the next couple of days with family and friends. For most, there are a few times each year you get the chance.

We'll be back on Monday.

Happy Turkey Day!

Book News

There were a couple interesting things I ran across about the book world over this week:

"Book publising has become a lotto game.

Chances of a huge success are minuscule in the ballooning pool of titles- Cambridge Information Group Inc.'s R.R. Bowker estimates that 175,000 new titles were published in 2003, a 19% gain from the prior year. Meanwhile, people are reading less, recent studies suggest." -WSJ 11/22/04 R4

and...

Paradies Shops, one of the nations largest airport booksellers, will buy back books from customers for half price. Here is a description from today's WSJ (11/24/04, D1, sub. needed):

A customer walks into a Paradies store, such as the CNBC newsstand at the international airport in Milwaukee, and buys "My Life'' by former President Bill Clinton for the full retail price of $35. The cashier staples the receipt to the dust jacket or attaches it with a piece of Scotch tape. The customer also gets a bookmark that lists the airports nationwide where Paradies does business. Providing the traveler holds on to that receipt, he can return "My Life" within six months (whatever its condition) and get $17.50 back. The retailer then resells the book -- unless it has sustained too much damage -- as a used book for $17.50.

More love

I forgot to mention that Covey is one of the chosen for Business 2.0's How To Suceed in 2005.

B2.0: Since you wrote The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People back in 1989, the book and its various spinoffs have sold more than 15 million copies. Pardon us for thinking this, but are you milking this thing by coming up with a heretofore undiscovered rule?

Covey: The seven habits were effective, but effectiveness isn't key anymore. You have to be effective just to enter the arena. The key is to move to greatness.

Since the start of the information age, which began when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the whole nature of the world has changed in significant ways. The industrial age was about control, and the information age, or knowledge-worker age, is about release. And release means helping people find their voice, so they can do what they love doing and what they do well.

Have you ever had that kind of a job or role? What kind of supervision did it require? Right. You supervised yourself. You didn't need anyone to motivate you. When people find their voice, you don't need to worry about supervision, bureaucracy, rules and regulations, and what I call "the great jackass theory of human motivation" -- carrot-and-sticking people. Well, imagine what the cost savings would be to an organization that got rid of all that bureaucratic supervision stuff.

You could have had the eighth habit before this book, but the relevance of it was not all that obvious. Today, if people do not move gradually into this release model that I'm talking about, then they are going to be history. They won't be as productive, they won't be as innovative, and they won't be as quick.

Stephen Convey is back

[in my really bad Kasey Kasem voice]

And now back to the countdown.

Our number one spot this week is filled by someone who has been there before.

His hits include the mega-blockbuster The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, and First Things First.

This week Stephen Covey enters the Wall Street Journal Bestseller List at #1 with The 8th Habit.

[end]

The best-seller list I refer to is actually from last Friday's WSJ. You can read in the current issue (November 29, 2004) of Fortune a Q&A with Covey titled The Secrets of His Success. In addition, they have published an excerpt from the book.

Note on the Spies Inc. excerpt.

I wanted to give the Spies Inc. excerpt a little context.

Following the hardfought and hard won Yom Kippur War of 1973, the Israel and
its military was looking for new approaches. The Talpiot program was
established as the Israel Defense Forces elite brainpower summit, tasked with changing
the language of technological warfare. The excerpt explains some of the history of the program, the process of selection, and training recruits go through.

I thought there may be some HR and OD analogies in examining the Talpiot.

Correction: Seth Godin podcast

The audio of Seth Godin on the Podcasts Blog is from Permission Marketing, not the Purple Cow/Free Prize audio book.

You heard it here first!

Seth Godin is coming out with a new book in May called "All Marketers Are Liars: But Great Marketers Tell Stories We Want to Believe".

This from the Portfolio summer catalog:

Every marketer tells a story. And, if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche Cayenne is cooler than a $36,000 VW Touareg, which is virtually the same car. We believe that $225 Pumas will make our feet feel better than $20 no-names...and believing it makes it true.

Seth Godin argues that it doesn't matter if something is actually better or faster or more efficient. What matters is whether the consumer believes your story. Godin teaches readers how to create a powerful story (even if it's a fib).

Marketers succeed when they tell us a story that fits our worldview, a story that we intuitively embrace and the share with our friends. Think of the Dyson vacuum cleaner and the iPod.

Marketers fail when they are selfish and scurrilous, when they abuse the tools of their trade and make the world worse. Think of telemarketers and Marlboro.

This is a powerful book for anyone who wants to sell things people truly want, as opposed to commodities that people merely need.

New Feature: New Releases

We are going to start a regular feature of highlighting the newly released business books each week.

As we start, the list might be a little thin. The first reason is the time of year. We are getting toward the end of the fall season and the number of releases is decreasing. The next big push will be after the first of the year. The second reason is we are in the process of pulling all that information together now.

The last thing I will say is that this will never be a complete list. I think that will be near impossible with the number of business books released each year. So, think of this as another mechanism of discernment. We will most certainly highlight books you should check out, and at the same time, do our best to provide a "complete" list.

There are no new books coming out this week, but let me go back and point one out to you from two weeks ago:

11/14/04 - How Industries Evolve: Principles For Achieving and Sustaining Superior Performance by Anita McGahan (HBSP, Strategy)

Lessons Learned from Israeli Intelligence

Innovation is the lynchpin of business success. In the case of Israel, a nation that has been on a war-footing since it was established in 1948, it has also served as the foundation for its own defense and security. Here the military-intelligence complex plays a singularly exceptional role. With infinite challenges and threats and limited resources and manpower, Israel’s particular set of geopolitical and historical circumstances has shaped a very distinctive kind of innovative thinking and its military has in many respects become its most vivid expression. The Israel Defense Forces and a number of its elite technological intelligence units have become an enormous incubator for entrepreneurialsm, creativity and innovation. Daring missions of military and intelligence have become Israel’s calling card. Spilling over into the civilian world is the nation’s world-class high tech industry much of which was forged in Israeli’s unique military machinery. As the saying goes, business is like war and in Israel, that appears especially so. Spies Inc., Business Innovation from Israel’s Master’s of Espionage examines how Israel’s never-ending fight for survival has established a nation of innovators. A business book wrapped in a thriller, Spies Inc. has very distinct lessons for the business world.

You can find an excerpt of the book here.

New podcast by Seth Godin

This week, we are featuring Seth Godin on the 800-CEO-READ podcast.

Last year, he released an audio version of both Purple Cow and Free Prize Inside. The podcast is a clip from there.

Enjoy!

Short Week, Lots of Stuff

I am everyone is thinking about their Turkey Day plans, but I thought I would give you a little preview of the short week here at 800-CEO-READ.

We have an excerpt that will be running over on the Excerpt Blog. It is from Spies Inc. by Stacy Perman. I talked about the book a couple of weeks ago. I'll let Stacy tell you more about it.

We are going to have a new podcast up today. I'll post another entry when that is up. I can tell you it is someone you all know and love.

We also have stuff on Stephen Covey, books with soundtracks, and new releases.

It only gets better.

Johnnie Moore has had alot to say about Kevin Roberts' Lovemarks.

This tops it all. Johnnie is having a beer with the Lovemarks production team.

Be Human

I was taking a 6:00 AM flight back to Denver yesterday morning from New York on United. If you’ve been traveling I’m sure you’ve noticed the tension in the air when talking to anyone from United with the uncertainty surrounding the future of the company. Hence, I was wonderfully surprised this morning when I approached the ticket counter in a sleepy stupor to try to get on the flight on a standby basis. The ticket agent looked at me and said “how about an upgrade.’ She looked at my account for certificates and found none. I was resigned to the fact that I would take my place in coach. The ticket agent looked at me with a smile and said, “I’m not supposed to do this, but I’m feeling bold today. Enjoy your flight!” When I looked at my ticket I noticed that she had in fact upgraded me to first class. It was her human intervention, against the rules of the bureaucracy that made my day! I felt special.

The interaction made me think about the importance of being human in the interactions with your customers and clients. How do you make them feel special? What kind of humanity can we as companies bring to our interactions?

Starbucks Environmental or Self-Serving?

Yesterday’s NY Times reported: “Hoping to win over customers who care about the environment, Starbucks, the Seattle coffee company, plans to announce today that it will start stocking its stores with cups made with 10 percent recycled material.” Is this creating from the bottom up? Is Starbucks genuinely concerned about the environment? Is McDonalds because it uses recycled material in its napkins, tray liners and meal boxes? Or is this just good company PR?

The Decline of Brands

Check out James Surowiecki’s article in the November issue of Wired called, The Decline of Brands. “Since 1991, the number of brands on US grocery store shelves has tripled. Last year the US Patent and Trademark Office issued an incredible 140,000 trademarks – 100,000 more than in 1983. The average American sees 60 percent more ad messages per day than when the first President Bush left office.” I especially liked Surowiecki’s conclusion, “The aristocracy of brand is dead. Long live the meritocracy of product.” In Beyond the Brand, I call the phenomenon he discusses the development of a Brand Immune System in today’s consumers.

“Branding has been appropriated as a distorted form of communication in which the company always assumes the position of power and is not necessarily required to either listen or respond to feedback. People are expected to sit quietly and listen; many react to this by tuning out much of what is said. Thus, they are developing a Brand Immune System: the reality is that people will only pay attention to your brand or your product when they actually need or want your product or service – not before, and usually not after.”

Moby

Check out the article about Moby and his tea company, Teany, in December’s Inc. I love the way that Moby and his partner, Kelly Tisdale, have inadvertently set up a test lab at their retail location in Lower Manhattan to interact with customers, allowing them the ability to help Moby and his team co-create new infused teas. “The restaurant exists as a restaurant but also as a brand-development laboratory.” This is a great example of co-creating from the bottom up. What could you do in your company to co-create from the bottom-up with your customers?

Time to Revitalize!

Stuart Elliot wrote a great article about the need to revitalize brands. Seth Godin got it right when he says “The way to grow is not to spend more money on advertising, but by inventing things that are remarkable enough to meet unmet consumer desires that people buy because they want to, not because they're being sold to." Godin uses Whole Foods as an example of doing something remarkable. I have to agree. It’s great to be remarkable, but what does that actually mean? I live in Boulder, Colorado, ground zero for the natural foods market and home of Whole Foods’ biggest competitor, Wild Oats. Both of these companies are remarkable because they are relevant and very good at listening to their customers. They have become information companies, defining what is healthy and good for you. It is this deep connection with their customers that makes both companies successful, giving them the ability to make an above average profit.

Endorsed by the Brotherhood of Black Bears!

I was doing some research on Rainier Beer and saw an article in the Seattle Post about a black bear who broke into a cooler but was very picky about the beer he would drink. "He didn't like that (Busch) and consumed, as near as we can tell, about 36 cans of Rainier." What an endorsement! I’m sure Neal Stewart, the Rainier Brand Manager has figured out something fun to do with this news after doing such a great job of revitalizing Pabst over the last few years. I’m looking for a wildlife endorser for Radar. Any suggestions?

Buddy's Back!

But is Buddy free? MTV2’s new show Control Freak calls itself commercial free yet Lee Jeans is paying to place its character Buddy Lee in the show as a guidance counselor. If a show takes money from an advertiser can it call itself commercial free? You Decide!

I'm Sick.

t always seems that this time of year I start to get sick. Sure I get the seasonal cold that goes around but the sickness I’m talking about is Affluenza. You know, that feeling that you have the burning desire to purchase a new car, couch or flat-screen TV. It’s hard to avoid catching the symptoms of Affluenza this time of year. Even though I have a great 2001 Audi S4, I get this feeling that I need…not want…a new S4, or maybe the cool new Dodge Magnum. The only antidote for the onset of this disease is to read. Some suggestion medicine includes The Overspent American, No Logo, Culture Jam, and Affluenza

.

Thanks to Jack and Todd

My sincere thanks to Todd and Jack at 800-CEO-Read for having me to host the blog today! Since writing Beyond the Brand: Why Engaging the Right Customers is Essential to Winning in Business, I have been touched and amazed by the outpouring of support from the business and marketing communities about the book. My goal was simple in writing Beyond the Brand. I wanted to help companies get in touch with THEIR customers. In my work as CEO and founder of Radar Communications, I have realized too often that companies sit in their ivory towers and dictate their brand and product message from the top down. They too often miss the boat in delivering what their customers really want and need. Radar helps companies communicate with the key voices in the marketplace and therefore truly innovate. Beyond the Brand communicates how you can do that too. I’d love to hear any and all feedback about the ideas in the book and issues it raises for your companies and clients. Thanks!

Not a Way to Sell Books

This snippet titled "But Not Great for Book Sales" [sub. needed] from Janet Novack in the Nov. 29th issue of Forbes:

Mervyn L. Hecht, author of How to Make Money With Stock Options: A Basic Guide for the Conservative Investor, is in U.S. Tax Court fighting a decision to disallow a loss of $273,515 he claimed in 2000 from an options trading partnership. Calling the structure a sham tax shelter, the [IRS] also assessed Hecht, who lives outside Los Angeles, $81,620 in additional taxes and penalities. The Havard Law-educated Hecht, whose resume reports that he served as a consultant for law firms on options cases adn also sat on arbitration panels, asserts that the investment strategy he pursued was absolutely legitimate.

Now Listed on iPodder.org

If you are interested in what is going with podcasting, iPodder.org is the place to check out.

Among other things, they are building a directory for podcasts. The 800-CEO-READ Podcast is now listed under the category of Business.

Your Best of 2004

We talked about Amazon's Best of 2004 List last week, and Evelyn chimed in with her favorites in the comments.

I thought I would open it up to everyone.

What were your favorite business books for 2004?

Miami Herald Reviews Confronting Reality

Richard Pachter from the Miami Herald reviews Confronting Reality. He likes the book, having both read and listened to it.

Moore Lovemarks

Johnnie Moore has some more to say about Kevin Roberts and Lovemarks.

It seems Johnnie found a Roberts interview while visiting New Zealand and he takes you through the interview point by point.

You Too Can Learn the Insurance Industry

This is not an infomercial.

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal [sub. needed] a few weeks ago about the staff that works for NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. The article talked about how they run a pretty tight ship and are very frugal. There were a couple of paragraphs that really caught our attention though:

One thing their new workplace doesn't have: a fancy, well-stocked library. Months before the office unveiled its explosive charges against the insurance industry on Oct. 14, its top lawyers decided they needed to bone up on the complex business. So the office's insurance expert, Assistant Attorney General Melvin Goldberg, went to a branch of the Brooklyn Public Library and checked out its sole copy of Andrew Tobias's classic book on the insurance industry: "Invisible Bankers: Everything the Insurance Industry Never Wanted You to Know."

Senior lawyers in the office passed the volume around and soon started buying additional used copies online. Eventually, they boiled down the book's lessons, along with a compendium of stock research and newspaper articles, into a short handout for interns and other newcomers to the insurance probe.

Goldberg was pretty smart to go to the library for "Invisible Bankers". It was originally published in 1982 and is currently out of print. If you want the industry knowledge that Spitzer's team has, we at 800-CEO-READ would be happy to help you find a used copy.

Week of November 15th

Welcome to a new week. We have all sorts of things planned this week.

We are still running a selection of New Yorker Cartoons on the Excerpts Blog. There are a couple new ones up this morning. They will run through the end of the week. Remember, the new material on the Excerpts Blog is added to the bottom. If you are subscribing via RSS, you will have no problems.

We have a new podcast posted this morning. Ben and Jackie of Creating Customer Evangelists read from their book. The audio runs about 25 minutes.

We also have John Winsor joining us on Thursday. He will be guest hosting here. He is a first time author with a book called Beyond the Brand. I'll let him tell you about it later in the week.

You never know what else might come up. I know there will be another book offer that involves the Purple Cow milk cartons.

Have a great week!

First Milk Carton Tie-In

[voice from Monster Truck Rally commercials]

Special Offer! Today Only!

Buy any of the following business titles and we'll send you a very limited edition Purple Cow Milk Carton FREE ($30 Value):

• Flight of the Buffalo: Soaring to Excellence, Letting Employees Lead by James Belasco
• Fish!: A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results by by Stephen C. Lundin Ph.D., Harry Paul, and John Christensen
• Who Says Elephants Can't Dance by Lou Gerstner
• Put the Moose on the Table: Lessons in Leadership from a CEO's Journey Through Business and Life by Randall Tobias
• If You Want to Soar With the Eagles, Don't Fly With the Turkeys by Keith Bell

[we thought choosing books with animals in the title would be a cute tie-in.]

When checking out, enter the Coupon Code "MOO" in the comments section.

Offer is good until 5pm today!

[end commercial]

Nothing to do next week?

Nothing to do next week? Consider attending the World Business Forum in Chicago. I mentioned it back in May. The event is two days of A-list speakers from Tom Peters to Larry Bossidy to Rudy Giuliani.

Jack Covert Selects--Think Like Your Customer

Think Like Your Customer: A Winning Strategy to Maximize Sales by Understanding How and Why your Customers Buy by Bill Stinnett, McGraw-Hill, $16.95 Paperback. 256 Pages, November 2004, ISBN 0071441883

When people sit down to write a business book, they do it because they think they have a better way to build a mousetrap. Bill Stinnett has done just that. He has written a sales book that turns the selling process on its head. It's not about features and benefits of our products and services anymore. It's about how our customers are perceiving our products. As he says:

“This approach takes the focus off the product or services solutions that we sell. Instead, it puts the focus on the business results that our clients are trying to achieve and the business value they can produce by using our products or services to pursue their business goals and objectives.
This method, and the discovery process that it requires, is what I like to call the “diagnostic approach.” It stands in stark contrast to the outmoded and archaic manner of selling that we come to refer to as “broadcasting.” We’ve all seen the broadcast approach in action. Most of us (including me) are even guilty of falling into it from time to time."

Stinnet believes in the diagnostic approach, and it is at the foundation of everything in this book. It's all about understanding not only the products and services, but also why people buy them, how customers perceive value as well as risk and how people buy. Now this strategy make perfect sense in this new modern world of collaboration. Chapter Five: The Value of Customer Relationships is especially valuable because it gives detailed information on building trust with customers, which is important in today's economic climate.

As an example of Stinnett’s focus, all you have to do is look at the Table of Contents. It consist of two parts—Why customers buy and How customers buy. Each chapter is filled with graphics and bolded important points which allow you to skim the pages quickly for a refresher course. And this book has a lot of great points to remember, because this book brings to the table a detailed process for sales success.

Amazon Names Their Top Biz Books for 2004

Our reader Dmitri left a comment this morning telling us that Amazon's editors chose The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid as their top pick for 2004.

Here is the entire list:

1. The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid by C.K. Parhalad
2. The Misbehavior of Markets by Benoit Mandelbrot and Richard L. Hudson
3. Confronting Reality by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
4. Lovemarks by Kevin Roberts
5. First In, Last Out: Leadership Lessons from the New York Fire Department by John Salka andBarret Neville
6. The 8th Habit by Stephen Covey
7. Seeing What's Next by Clayton Christensen
8. Strategy Maps by Robert Kaplan and David Norton
9. Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies by Stephen R. Barley and Gideon Kunda
10. The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson

We will publish our Best of 2004 list next month.

Looking for Inspiration

There are two new titles in the "Learned Lessons from Famous People" genre of business books.

The first is Lee & Grant: Profile in Leadership from the Battlefields of Virginia by Major Charles Bowery. Bowery draws heavily on the lives of these two Civil War generals. He weaves the lessons into the narrative and ends each chapter with a set of takeaways. I enjoyed Appendix C where the author gives instructions on how to organize a "staff ride" on the Virginian battlefields and walk the same route the soliders did during the important battles.

The second title is from the hardest working man in business books - Alan Alexrod. I have talk about him before and he is very familiar with this genre. He wrote titles like Patton on Leadership and Elizabeth I, CEO. His latest is Office Superman: Make Yourself Indispensable in the Workplace. There are 21 strategies from How to Please Perry White to Kareer Kryptonite. I am a comic book fan from childhood, so I was partial to the book from the start. The research Axelrod has done is outstanding. He has mined the history of Superman and pulled out some analogies. Early in the book, he talks about the Stretch Factor:

Just as the story of the source of Superman's powers evolved over time, so did the nature of those powers. When the Man of Steel debuted in Action Comics #1 (June 1938), he couldn't fly, but could "leap 1/8th of a mile" and was capable of hurdling a "twenty story building". He was strong, but not unimaginably so, merely capable of raising "tremendous weights". Was he "faster than a speeding bullet"? No, but he was "faster than an express train". Most of us grew up thinking Superman wass invulnerable to everything except kryptonite, but in Action Comics #1 we are told that "nothing less than a bursting shell could penetrate his skin." Amazing durability, to be sure, but not invulnerable. Over the years, the creators of the Superman stories increasingly added to the super hero's powers. By the 1970's, Superman had penetrated to the core of the Sun without acquiring so much as a tan, he proved himself capable of flying thousands of times of the speed of light, and he even used his prodigious lung capacity to blow out a star as if it were a candle.

Most of us have become all too familiar with inflation, not just in the realm of economics, but in just about everything, including, especially, entertainment. Each new action-adventure flick ups the ante with bigger explosions, faster and more reckless car chases, and oceans of blood and gore where mere lakes had earlier sufficed. It is no different with the comics, but it is also true that Superman's powers grew in proportion to the challenges with which he was confronted. [p17]

Let me also say they did a great job on the book design of Office Superman. There are illustrations throughout the book. They have insets of the major characters from the Superman universe and how they have changed with the times.

If you want examples to learn from, here are two great suggestions.

Prahalad in Fortune

We've mentioned C.K. Prahalad's The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid a couple of times. In the Nov. 15th issue of Fortune, he writes the Brainstorm column titled "Why selling to the poor makes for good business." His bullet points are:

• The poor cannot be Wal-Martized
• Poor does not mean irresponsible.
• The poor hunger for technology
• Selling to the poor can inspire price-performance breakthroughs
• The low end is a new source of innovation.

Can You Hear Me Now?

WSJ (can you tell it is our favorite daily?) run a profile of Scott Brick, actor turned audiobook narrator. The article reminded me how big a business audio books are: $800 million in the U.S.

I just wanted to remind folks that we can provide audio titles. Here is sample of recent biz books that may be good for that next road trip:

• Purple Cow and Free Prize Inside is an abridged 5 disc set containing material from both books and read by Mr. Godin himself.
• Jim Collins reads his own audiobooks too. There is a newly expanded audio edition of Built to Last to go with the January hardcover re-issue. Good to Great is also available.
• The Donald won't be outdone be the rest. How to Get Rich and Think Like a Billionaire are available unabridged for your enjoyment.

Wild Cards

I was paging through a new book called World Out Of Balance: Navigating Global Risks to Seize Competitive Advantage by Paul Laudicina. He starts the book with a quote from Jack Welch - "Look at the world as it is, not as you might wish it to be." The book is about engaging again in strategic planning. The main chapters talk things like demographics, natural resources, and regulation.

The part of book that caught my interest was a section where he talk about "wild cards". Laudicina uses a definition created by John L. Petersen - "[Wild cards are] low-probability, extremely high-impact events that are potentially disruptive (negatively or positively), rapidly moving, global in scope, and intrinsically beyond the control of any institution, group, or individual."

Here are some examples:

• Global Epidemic - A 1991 cholera outbreak in Peru cost the country $770 million. A 1994 plague outbreak in Surat cost India $2 billion. During the SARS outbreak, HSBC began using back-up trading floors that were originally intended for use during fires or earthquakes.
• Country Disintegration - Consider Saudi Arabia. The control 25% of the world proven oil reserves. The country's unemployment is over 20% and there is no clear line of succession for a king who is over 80 years old.
• Terrorist Resurgence - Need I say more?
• Hacker Hell - After the Sasser worm stuck in 2004, branches of Westpac Bank in Australia had to rely on pen and paper to keep trading
• Quantum Leap - What is possible as computers and biotech continue to bring innovation.

Publishing Industry Stories

There have been some interesting stories published in the last week about different aspects of the publishing industry.

In its Nov. 15 issue, Forbes ran an article on the prolific romance novelist Nora Roberts. She has written 157 books to date and still writes three paperbacks and three hardcovers every year. "To avoid confusion, this has necessitated putting stickers on new releases that designate them as such."

There is a growing phenomenon in the area of instant books. These are titles that are published in a short period of time. The 9/11 Commission Report is a well-known example of this type of book. This from Instant Books Race to Cash In on Election Buzz [WSJ, 11/5/04, sub. needed]:

[Gene] Stone, who has written or ghostwritten 20 books, got the idea while watching the third presidential debate. On Monday, Oct. 18, he sent an e-mail memo to Mr. Karp, suggesting a humorous instant book. Mr. Karp made an offer the next morning, noting that he would need the manuscript by noon on Oct. 25.

Mr. Stone delivered his book [The Bush Survival Guide] two hours early. Mr. Karp read the manuscript that night and requested added material by the next day. Meanwhile, he sent the book to the typesetter. On Wednesday, Mr. Stone added a number of chapters with such headings as "Seven Reasons to Love Global Warming."

On Thursday, Mr. Stone came in to read his book, which had now been copy-edited and typeset. The following morning, the cover was sent to the printer. Everyone then waited to see who would win the election. If President Bush lost, Mr. Stone's book would have been killed. But even though it was in Mr. Stone's own financial interest for President Bush to win, the author said he was still devastated when rival John Kerry was defeated.

Gina Centrello, Random House Publishing Group's president and publisher, gave the green light on Wednesday morning. Manufacturing was expected to be completed by 6 p.m. for all 100,000, with the $9.95 books expected to be on sale as early as tomorrow. "I used to work in publishing, and I've never seen anything move this fast," said Mr. Stone.

Tonight - They Made America

They Made America is a book and a four part PBS series by Harold Evans. The book/program is a series of profiles of American inventors and innovators. Tom Ehrenfeld pointed the book out to us a month as one we should watch.

Speaking of watching, the PBS program premieres tonight at 9PM EDT.

You can read an excerpt from the book here.

We'll give you some more on it later in the week.

Set your VCR's or Tivo's

Tonight on PBS is part one of a series called They Made America. I am sorry I am notifying you with such short notice. We will have a lot of posts about the book that the series is based on in the near future.

Best Buy

In today’s WSJ there is an article about Best Buy’s new strategy of qualifying customers [sub. needed]. It is quite a change from most big box retailers. An excellent book about Best Buy came out last year called Big Change at Best Buy. I really enjoyed it.

Change of venue

The New Yorker cartoons have been cool, but they really bog the loading of the main page here.

We decided to move the cartoons over to the Excerpts blog. You will see them over there over the next couple of weeks.

New Feature

We are adding a new blog to the 800-CEO-READ family of weblogs. We've jumped on the bandwagon and decided to start a podcast. What's a podcast? Let me try to describe the process:

1. We post an audio file on the Podcasts Blog.
2. You install podcasting software like iPodder or iPodderX.
3. You subscribe to the RSS feed.
4. The podcasting software reads new entries and downloads the audio files.
5. The podcasting software moves the files over to your computer's media player.
6. You download the files to your portable audio player and listen to them as you like.

Let me also say that you can go to the Podcasts blog and listen to the audio by clicking on the file link. You do not have to go through the whole process I have described above.

We will be posting audio of authors reading excerpts from their books. Our first author is John Zagula and he is reading the first chapter from his book The Marketing Playbook. You can check out his reading here.

This is going to start slowly. We will be posting an excerpt every 7 to 14 days.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

Plan C

Seth linked to our o