Image via Wikipedia

I was reminded today about the creed of the ethical headhunter. Once your company is a client, there is no poaching of talent. Because of this, companies that are hard to work for and thus have a revolving door of talent, are seen as headhunter hunting grounds. If approached by such a company, the market wise headhunter will defer to be engaged. They know a good crop opportunity when they see it. So the lesson for you folks is to look at yourself in the mirror and see if your company is  worthy enough to employ a headhunter?  Of course if you are a reader of this blog, you are worthy anyway.   However you probably know of some that are unfit.  I certainly hope you have not invested in any of them1

2011 Trendspotting for the Next Decade. Richard Laermer. 2008. ISBN 9780071497275. This is a very funny, readable and useful book. Laermer never takes himself too seriously, yet what he is talking about is important. He wrote Trendspotting 2002 and more recently Punk Marketing. Each chapter is short and pithy with ideas rattled off in a very pragmatic writing style. Good cross country airplane read, if you like to think. I loved his line that the last decade has been just boring wrto breakthrough trends.

Accidental Branding. How ordinary people built extraordinary brands. David Vinjamuri. 2008. 9780470165065. This is a clearly written book about “accidental” entrepreneurs, who remained true to their brand promise. Vinjamuri has defined an accidental brand as one where:

1. An individual who is not trained in marketing must create the brand
2. The individual must experience the problem that the brand solves.
3. The individual must control the brand for at least three years.

So you will read about

• Craig Newmark of Craig’s list,
• John Peterman of J.Peterman,
• Gary Erickson of Clif Bar,
• Gert Boyle of Columbia Sportswear,
• two founders of The Art of Shaving,
• Julie Aigner-Clark , Baby Einstein videos and
• Roxanne Quimby of Bert’s Bees.

These are all unique individuals in different industries who remained

• really true to the customers “who bring ya to the dance”,
• they also were fanatical about details and product execution,
• they may have had one really lucky break in their business, and
• they have been able to capitalize on their success to go onto other things.

Well written and clearly in tune with the subject ( I love it when marketing folks write a book). This is a useful book in that it reinforces that for todays market, the customer has to know they receive real value from authentic vendors. (Sounds like the Go-Giver). The depictions are very authentic and real.

Its on Amazon

The Art of Possibility. Transforming professional and personal life. Rosamund and Ben Zander. 2000. ISBN 9780142001103. Garr Reynolds in Presentation Zen recommended this book. It is a very useful and well written little book. Their web site , The Art of Possibility gives good background. Ben Zander is the long time conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and Rosamund is well respected change management professional. The book gives us very key insights into how to better understand our daily life and make something out of it all. Eg . Ben gives his music students an A at the beginning of each semester, but the students have to write an essay at the same time as if it was the end of term where they have to explain what they did to earn an A mark. I found each page had another insight for me and it was delight to go through the book. (Thank goodness TV is such an intellectual wasteland, else I would never get through all the great books being sent my way.) If you are into personal growth and development I would say this is a library keeper.

Marketing Genius. Peter Fisk. 2006. ISBN184112681. How is that the English can write and publish such terrific business books? This is one of them. Not for the reading trifler, as the book is an opus , not a 100 Aways to Wow Your Audience so like the US market writers. This is a thoughtful, well written, easy to follow guide to all there is about marketing. It is the best all time marketing book I have read. I took voluminous notes and the pages are festooned with numerous sticky flags. If you are a CEO, CMO, VP sales with aspirations to more, you must buy, read and reread this book. The plethora of case studies is worth the price of the book alone. Eg. Did you know that Mercedes only has to approach 107, prospects to get 100, 000 customers, but GM has to hit 500, 000 prospects to get 100,000 customers?

I took 2 enjoyable weeks to get through this one.

Remarkable Leadership. Unleashing your leadership potential one skill at a time. 2007. ISBN 9780787996192. This is a handbook for improving your leadership skills. Each chapter starts with a self assessment on skill level and then it carefully lays out what you can do to improve. He gives tips, tactics and techniques to implement and measure how you are doing in each area. It is a valuable book, but I had a tough time completing it. What was missing for me was a method to engage me personally/emotionally in the book. I was taken by his comment on Q/As after a presentation. He suggests that the Q/A is never the thing you end on. You invite Q/As throughout and just before the end. But, after the Q/A you must wrap up and summarize the talk yourself in order to best present and control the key messages and call to action. If questions do continue, answer and then do a condensed close again. Borrow this one from the library.

Starting Something. An entrepreneur’s tale of control, confrontation and corporate culture. Wayne McVicker. 2005. ISBN 9781932881028. Thanks to Victor Jones for passing this book along. If you wanted to read a definitive true story about pre dotcom, bubble and post bubble trials and tribulations, this is the one, sinc eat the end they built a solid profitable company. I chuckled at all the characters that McVickers met with the language that was used when reason left the industry to be totally replaced/driven by greed. . For those of us lucky enough to enjoy that whole wild ride, this book brings it all back. The start-up struggles and financing on debt. Placing bets on directions with your own well being/family. The people are all there, reluctant angels, greedy guys, lazy guys, arrogant amd humble types, disaster hires, reluctant hires wanting a big piece of the action, VCs, investment bankers, handlers, hold-up artists, PR pros, Barney deal makers, aggressive Competitive cos and their VCs, Take no prisoners sales guys/CEOs. This is all played out from the point of view of a fairly humble technical guy who just wanted to do something good. And the money stories, they all were happening. This is well written, easy to follow and a good pleasurable read. If you are in start-up and looking for something big, read this one!

News from the trenches- The sales process now starts well before you think it does. Just had a coffee today with Colin McWhinney at SalesXperts., the best demand gen guys locally I have ever worked with. He follows my postings but does one better by being very active in using this stuff. Just love this guy!

News flash: He has noticed in the last year that the customer is first engaging the sales force about 20% of the way down the sales process. What does this entail? . Prospects go online to identify their problem and look for solutions. By the time the customer engages the salesman, they have created a short list of companies to talk to and they believe that this company is one of a few that have the potential solution to their problem. This immediately creates two problems.

1. Most sales people are unable to shift gears to accommodate the needs of these customers. They do not want a demo, a brochure or a proposal. They want you to quickly get up to speed on their business and issues and how your product brings value. How are you different? The results of a poor response is that the opportunity disappears as fast as it appears.

2. Marketing becomes of No.1 importance with the brand promise, materials in the public eye and the ability to drive “qualified leads ” to the sales funnel. The Marcomm dept has to really be on top of things. But you never will never know its not working.

Hidden problem. Are clients looking at your online “story” and dropping you from their shortlist, and thus never engaging you? Guess what? You will never know!

So business is changing yet most sales training is stuck in the 90’s . That is so like , yesterday.

This is why ( I must sound like a broken record) our process, Precision Sales and Marketing is so successful. Our research led us to these ideas over two years ago. A recent client had geometric increases in sales in under two weeks using our approach. So what is it costing you each day to ignore this? Guess what? You will never know!