Negotiating with Backbone. Eight Sales Strategies to Defend Your price and Value. Reed K. Holden. 2012. ISBN 9780133064766. The author is an experienced salesperson who is also a serious academic researcher on pricing. His premise for this clearly written book is that procurement departments are becoming increasingly important and skilled in getting as much value for as little as possible from suppliers.  This book is is attempt to level the field.  He does the sales profession two great services.   First he identifies the types of buyers  ( Price, Relationship, Value and Poker Players)  and gives you a how-to guide to negotiate with each of them.  Second he stresses where you have strengths ( Advantages Player – you bring value) or not (The Rabbit – pricing roadkill), which gives a good salesperson the knowledge of when to walk away from the deal.  He closes by noting that the situation will just become more aggressive and sales teams need to become better skilled in this.  We agree and are finding that scenario based selling tools ( using Holden with Docters Contextual Pricing ideas)  are helping our clients quickly regain stronger margins and better sales.   This book is a must buy and read for sales managers and top performing sales people.

Related articles

• Book Review: Negotiating with Backbone (verasage.com)
• Negotiating: Is It Necessary in a Sales Process? (thesaleshunter.com)
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• Negotiation with Procurement: Holden Advisors Announces Sales Negotiation Program for “The New Normal” (prweb.com)

Cover via Amazon

Dark Pools.High speed traders, AI bandits, and the threat to the global financial system. Scott Patterson.2012. ISBN 9780307887177.  Patterson wrote The Quants which I enjoyed so I was looking forward to Dark Pools.  It does not disappoint. He has the gift of rendering what could be numbingly arcane facts and numbers into a very compelling book that reads like a novel. I read it in one sitting – it is that good.  His focus on the people involved is appreciated by the reader.  That all said, this is not a comforting book. The system is rigged against us, the little investor, over the short and long haul. You do find out how these wizards make the money on the backs of others.  You end up with second thoughts as to why anyone still puts money into stocks.   A must read for anyone who interested in how their money works…for others through the use of very advanced computers and machine learning

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• The Dark (Pool) Truth About What Really Goes On In The Stock Market (zerohedge.com)
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• The 500 Dark Pools (stevenpressfield.com)
• Reasons to fear Wall Street’s high-tech traders (features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com)
• Taking The Market Out Of The Market (seekingalpha.com)

The Challenger Sale. Taking control of the customer conversation. Matthew Dickson & Brent Adamson.   2011. ISBN 9781591844358.  Neil Rackham (SPIN Selling) called this the most important advance in selling for many years. The result of serious research into what is working in sales ( even in a down market) , they authors found that Challengers (Who bring  insight and value to clients) vastly outperform Relationship Sellers.  You will recognize  their other categories (Lone Wolf – we know this one well, The Reactive Problem Solver   and The Hard Worker,  This tells us that much of the sales training used today will not cut it going forward.   On top of this they found that for sales managers, focused coaching and innovation in selling (unsticking the deals ) are the two top manager attributes for building high performing teams ( way way above “managing”)

This is a must buy book for the top and mid producers in your organization and all Sales Leaders.   So far it is my sales book of the year.   There are no fluff chapters or wasted lines.  Read and reread it.   Another blow for value selling and effective sales.

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• Missing the Bus on Social Media for Selling (jackmalcolm.com)
• The Best Sales Reps Avoid “Talkers” (rocketbuilders.blogspot.com)
• Why Prospects Lie to Sales People and How to Change Their Minds (business2community.com)

Five Frogs on  log. A CEOs field guide to accelerating the transition in mergers, acquisitions and gut wrenching change. Mark L. Feldman & Michael F. Spratt.1998 ISBN 988730981. PWCoopers commissioned a study of large M&As in the mid 90s. From that they developed an analysis of what worked well and what did not.  This book is an offshoot from that study.  Having worked on companies that they talk about in those times, this book is right on the money.  It is a pithy, concise and well documented easy to read  story of deeds and misdeed (mostly those).   Any CEO looking to buy or sell his company should make this a must read before they get drawn into the fray.  Its is till in print and available on Amazon The examples and stories are worth the book itself.   I see many of our clients still missing the mark with the basics needed form this book.  Number one, know the value drivers of your business.  When you come to merge :

• Base the transition strategy on the economic value drivers
• Aggressively manage communications in order to secure stakeholder support and acceptance
• Launch small, fast-paced, short term transition teams that will accelerate implementation of the value drivers.
• Align organizational roles and responsibilities to ensure clarity of direction.
• Build a behavior-based culture around defining events dictated by the value drivers.
• Select and deploy role models who support the desired culture.
• Link incentives directly to the creation of shareholder value.

The description of value creation incentive plans is a model for many businesses including start-ups .   This is a must have in your leadership library. Thanks to David Moulton for lending this to me.

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• American Fortune Mergers and Acquisitions Releases Today Tips on Timing A Business Sale (prweb.com)
• Alliances and Partners (rumohrandclarke.wordpress.com)
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• Facebook IPO hangover not over yet (but mergers and acquisitions pick up the slack) (venturebeat.com)
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The $100 Startup.  Chris Guillemeau.  2012 . ISBN 9780307951526.  The author uses a series of interesting case studies to prove out his theory that anyone can start a business and be his own boss by creating a micro-business- employing one.  He did it himself. Full of “motivating ” phrases the book does a reasonable job of proving his point that there are countless ways of becoming an entrepreneur.  This is not a book for those who want to build the next Facebook or build a big manufacturing concern, but it is very realistic in its goals and delivers on them. I appreciated that there are many nuggets of guerrilla promotion and good sense buried in this  text.

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The Unfair Trade. How our broken financial system destroys the middle class. Michael J . Casey. 2012. ISBN 9780307885302.  As managing editor of the Wall St Journal, Casey  has a cat bird seat on the world economy. This is an eminently readable book, which presents a reasonably balanced view of what happened, who pulls the strings and what mistakes were made y govt and business world wide.  But, and this is why I like it when journalists write these books, Casey points out what we can do looking forward.  As investors this is a good book to use to measure govt responses and help plan your own moves.

One  good point made is that China’s internal credit and currency policies have exported deflation to the rest of the world, by killing off sections of our economies.  If they stumble ( and many expect they will) .Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia and Canada will have massive resource sales slowdowns followed by big economic hits, which could trigger social disruption.

Another is that the massive debt burdens in Us and Europe will restrain growth in those economies for decades, forcing investment into the stoked up younger economies in the pursuit of profits.

His suggestions?

• Stop backing the to-big-to fail banks by having a capital surcharge which will force them to break up . as well we shoudl look to Iceland which forced the bankers and bank shareholders to take the hit. Governments should protect taxpayers not bankers.
• Oust the US dollar as the world reserve currency. This will force US to live more within its means and help politicians to make the tough decisions.
• Force hedge fund managers to be  personally liable for their client’s losses.

Related articles

• Michael Casey’s FX Horizons: Imagining an end to the dollar’s reign (marketwatch.com)
• The Global Financial System and the Middle Class (wnyc.org)
• Michael Casey’s FX Horizons: ‘Developed’ Greece a model of dysfunction (marketwatch.com)
• You Can’t Just Blame Europe For Our Economic Slow Down (businessinsider.com)
• Canada’s debt-fuelled economy running on fumes, Carney warns (business.financialpost.com)
• How The Mining Boom Is Making Australians Dumber (businessinsider.com)
• Michael Casey: One Man’s Escape From Debt-Collection Hell (Excerpt) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Who Destroyed the Middle Class – Part 3 (economicnoise.com)
• Who Destroyed America’s Middle Class? Dude, Who Stole My Net Worth? Part II (globalresearch.ca)
• China’s Missing Middle Class – Analysis (eurasiareview.com)