Business Book Summaries

These are tough times we are facing, for employers and employees alike. Job security is neither something companies can guarantee, nor is it something employees can reasonably expect even if they are performing up to scratch.

In order for staff to be good enough to not be let go if the company is on the rocks – and in order for the company to be able to determine without a shadow of a doubt if an employee is truly right for a position or should be let go when the chips are down – the following issues need to be determined, constantly focused on, and addressed if need be.

- Whether work being done is important and personally satisfying to the employee. Are they happy doing what they do? Does it have personal significance to them outside of the salary they get? Are their talents and strengths being made use of? Are they in a post or position that allows them to use their skills and talents to their fullest? - Whether they are satisfied with the quality of the work environment, or whether it could stand to be improved, and how. - What employees' challenges or obstacles they feel are preventing them from doing their best for the company. - Whether they feel valuable to the company, and why. - What they need to be doing a better job for the company, and why they feel they need it. - Whether they feel that they themselves are fully appreciated and compensated for what they do. - What prevents them from leaving their jobs and applying at other companies, and the conditions that would convince them to resign.

It must be realized, however, that if management and staff focus on discussing these issues and meeting halfway even before times get dicey, they might not have to suffer too much when times get tougher. Even companies that are not suffering could thus benefit immensely from dealing with these pointed issues while they do not appear to be so important.

Technorati tags: book summaries, business books, business productivity, self improvement

Is your refusal to take risks getting in the way of your business success? Prudence is definitely a virtue when it comes to running a business, because a little care and foresight when it comes to business goes a very long way.

That said, though, putting up a business takes a leap of faith – as does running it. If you stick to the tried and true, you’ll only get as far as established businesses have gotten – if you don’t push the envelope a bit and innovate and take a chance on something new and untried and unproven, you won’t get any better than they have. Companies at the forefront of their industries like Apple and Google constantly try to push their limits and keep trying new things their competitors don't seem to be able to think up. Sure, they aren't always successful (the Newton and Orkut come to mind), but they aren't exactly suffering these days, are they?

If you’re not being as successful as you think you should be, you may need to dial down the caution and force yourself to take a calculated risk, even if you are afraid of making a mistake.

Business success isn’t about sticking to the easy tasks and goals. The easy ones’ve mostly already been discovered and done by other people. So if you stick to them you may very well be going down a path someone else has already trodden – which means that at best you may only get as far as they’ve gotten (and perhaps not even that far given that they’ve already managed to reap the rewards of having done whatever it is that they’ve done first).

So how do we start to get over being risk-averse?

1. Practice with little decisions. Learn what people have done in cases such as yours – learn what’s worked and what’s not – and note the successful decisions and choices. But don’t adopt them wholesale. Push the envelope a little. Tweak the solution a bit to suit you, give it your own spin. Build your own confidence in your ability to think outside the box by doing this continuously. 2. You will be progressing by trial and error, so you’re bound to make a few mistakes here and there. Keep this in mind right from the start so you won’t get disheartened when you mess up and be dissuaded from trying to push yourself any further. Keep your mind open and learn from your mistakes – one solution that doesn’t work is one less mistake to make in the future. 3. Constantly seek feedback from other people regarding what you’re facing and the decisions you come up with – you don’t have a lock on all the good ideas, so be open to the possibility that someone else can think up a better solution than you. Take criticism in stride, always view things as a learning experience so that you don’t get bogged down by any lack of success. 4. Always think positive – look forward. Keep your main goal in mind and don’t get stuck on the smaller things that trip you up. 5. Take this procedure a step further by moving from small decisions to larger decisions as your confidence increases.

Technorati tags: book summaries, business books, business productivity, self improvement

If you’re “anybody who’s anybody” nowadays in the world of business – or if you want to become one of them – you can ill afford to make mistakes where interviews are concerned.

Interviews, whether internet, radio, TV or print, are a vital part of any company’s public relations campaign. They are an important way to allow interviewers and/or the general public to get to know the face and the humanity behind the company and interact with the person they see.

Since not everyone can or will be around for every single interview you or your company will be giving out, it’s imperative that you prepare as well as you possibly can for each and every single interview you give out. If you come across as sloppy and unready, you risk making yourself and your company look bad – and negative word-of-mouth in today’s interconnected world can make you and your company a laughingstock or sink you altogether.

Before you sit for an interview:

•    Determine:

o    Which particular media the interviewer will be making use of, or combinations thereof. TV, the net, radio, print – which of the above? Or will all be made use of? o    The slant of the interview. What in particular would the interviewer like to find out or talk about? Your time is limited, so it’s in everyone’s best interest to make sure you all stick to the point. o    The duration of the interview – how many minutes? o    What you should bring. Will you be permitted to flash charts on TV for instance?

•    Despite the desired focus of the interviewer, make sure that you know what message you yourself want to convey to your listeners or viewers, and prepare accordingly. You should be able to get this across without conflicting with the interviewer’s own agenda (not too much, that is).

•    Some interviewers will send you a draft of the questions they intend to ask. You might as well ask for this draft to get an idea of the tack your interviewer will take.

•    Make sure you sample the publication, show or site before the interview. The less surprises the better.

And on the day itself:

•    Dress to kill. (Find out what might be best to wear beforehand, though – you want to create a splash, yes, but a good one. You don’t want to stick out for all the wrong reasons.)

•    Make sure you aren’t stressed out or preoccupied. You don’t want to say something that might embarrass or discredit you or your company.

•    Sit up straight, look your interviewer and members of the audience (from time to time and if there are any) in the eye as you talk.

•    Be casual, but not too casual. Be pleasant! Smile!

Technorati tags: book summaries, business books, business productivity, self improvement

Item zero on the put-up-your-business-agenda is – must be – determining who your business will sell to, who your customers are. Because if they aren’t there or if you can’t find them, you’ll be out of business soon enough.

Your market is composed of the people you want to reach. Here are some questions you can use to help determine your market:

* Who is your customer? * What do you intend to sell them? * Where do you intend to go about your business? * How big would you say the market for your goods and/or services is? * What kind of investment will your venture require? * How many staff will you be needing to hire – right away, after six months, after a year? * Who’s your competition and how big are they? * What do they sell, and for how much? *  Do you compete with them directly or just tangentially?

The more specific your answers to these questions are, of course, the better. Because that way you can be really sure that you know who you’re going to sell to. Once you have answers to these questions, you can proceed to determining exactly how you plan to get through to these customers. Will you conduct email blasts, snail mail, paid advertisements on TV, print or radio? Hand out fliers at a busy intersection or go door to door?

Answering these questions may take a lot of work, but it’s work that will stand you in good stead. Because if you don’t take the time to know your customer and adjust your plans accordingly, you’ll be in trouble and maybe even out of business even before you know it.

Technorati tags: book summaries, business books, business productivity, self improvement

The march of global brands, whether by organic growth or by acquisition, has continued unabated. However, we have begun to see vigorous signs of some questioning of its desirability. Whether it be protesters in Seattle attacking global capitalism, French farmers objecting to McDonald’s or Scandinavians cutting logos from their chic sports shirts, there are unmistakable indications that the corporate brand owner must not ignore the social implications of his actions. It is clear that a significant and growing proportion of the population will be making their decisions about corporate brands on the basis of new criteria, on ethical standards as well as respect and admiration for the product or brand, and the corporate brand warrior must address these issues.

Of course there is a much bigger debate on the extent to which multi-national branding and manufacture exploits the developing world and destroys cultural distinctiveness. As Fiona Gilmore points out in “Warriors on the High Wire”, global companies will continue to want to invest in the developing world, primarily as an opportunity to offer their products to the populations of these markets and secondarily in certain sectors (for example, clothing) as an opportunity to secure low-cost manufacturing. These ventures will offer opportunities of employment to local people, with advancement and career progression for some, and contribute to the development of local infrastructure in retailing, transport and communication.

However, the key lesson from that debate is that global brand management involves having clear policies which can mitigate the negative impact. Most large multinational companies do have excellent policies and practices, in particular in being good citizens wherever they operate, in spending on housing, healthcare and education for their employees, but they have not been good at communicating these to an audience beyond their employees and sometime their investors.

In the future, corporate brand management will have to develop specific communication programs to ensure that their corporate brand stands high in the consumers’ minds for their ethical behavior and their cultural sensitivity.

In case we get carried away, branding is about enduring values, not about spin to manipulate tomorrow’s headlines. Brands must retain their integrity – brand warriors never lie, are never economical with the truth and always prefer long-term gain to short-term pain. Pharmaceuticals companies who choose to give medicines to people in undeveloped countries who otherwise cannot afford them may deserve recognition, even if they used this as a PR opportunity. But brands who attach themselves (parasitically) to social issues should be challenged.

Technorati tags: book summaries, business books, business productivity, self improvement

Email is a key component of business nowadays. It’s easy to use and it enables anyone to contact any number of persons simultaneously and transmit enormous amounts of data in different formats, and instantaneously to boot. As a matter of fact it can be too easy to make mistakes when you email people – and these sorts of mistakes can hound you and even ruin your career if you’re not careful.

That might be an overdramatization, but the truth of the matter remains – we should all strive to be careful with the emails we send, especially with the ones we send to people we know professionally and not personally. (This is nothing new, of course, but given the proliferation of poor email habits nowadays, it's high time for another reminder.)

Always be polite. Make sure you spell the recipient’s email address and name correctly, for obvious reasons – if email addresses are misspelled the mails will simply bounce back, and it can very well be offensive if your recipient’s names are not spelled correctly. Always make sure!

Make sure you type messages like you’re typing up your thesis or resume or a report for upper management. Type in full; don’t abbreviate too much; avoid the use of slang or ‘chat speak’, you are not in a chatroom. And watch your language as well; don’t use any words or terms that would be out of place in an office. Remember that once sent, an email is gone from you forever – under most circumstances, there’s no deleting it once it “arrives” in a recipient’s inbox, and it can easily be forwarded and printed out for other people to gawk at. Make your email as professional as possible.

Lastly, make sure that your message itself – the gist of your email – is both necessary and significant. Don’t email business contacts unless you absolutely have to. This might seem too obvious a point to be mentioned, but the truth of the matter is that there are far too many emails floating around these days – just check out people’s spam folders – and it would be in everyone’s best interest not to add to that virtual dump. In addition it is far too easy for just one email to be lost in that ‘wilderness’, so think twice before you hit that SEND button. Could there be another way for you to get through to that person?

To end this, remember that when you email someone, you allow that person a glimpse of your personality, and you may not have another opportunity to change or augment that person’s first impression of yours. It can be in your best interest to ensure that any and all of your recipients have the best impression of you – and by extension your company or organization – that is possible under the circumstances.

Technorati tags: book summaries, business books, business productivity, self improvement

Things won’t be all roses for you and your business all the time. There will inevitably come a time when business will be slow or money will be tight – it might happen more than once, especially in tough times like what we’re facing currently. Slowdowns might be seasonal, such as those faced by resorts during off-season periods, or they might be uncontrollable if caused by acts of nature or acts of God.

Here are a few tips to help you get through trying times like these.

1) Focus on the customers you’ve already got. It’s high time you paid more attention to the customers you already have. They’re already with you, you don’t have to make a special effort to contact them. Cook up special incentives to get them to keep on going with you; try offering discounts, special offers; see what they need and want and adjust your product or service mix accordingly. It may help to personalize your relationships with them if you haven’t done so (do this without going overboard, though – it could very well turn them off).

2) Concoct new marketing initiatives to attract new customers. Be creative. Consider gimmicks like contests or free samples. Don’t neglect the internet! Get yourself out there if you aren’t already there.

3) If a slowdown means you have more free time on your hands, don’t waste it by being idle or moping or anything of that sort. Take the time to learn more about the industry you’re competing in. Ramp up those skills. Develop your skillsets after determining whatever it is that you and/or your sales or marketing or product development team need to learn to make yourselves more competitive.

4) Sit down and take a good long look back at how you’ve progressed so far vis-à-vis your business plans. Now that you’re less busy and not too caught up in day-to-day activities, you can look at your business in its entirety, check your medium- to long-term plans and see if they need any tweaking.

5) Check the equipment you use. It may have been needing servicing and you may not have noticed.

6) Do the same for your work processes and procedures. Sit down with your staff and evaluate what you’ve been doing – is it really optimal? Can it be improved upon?

Actions like these can help ensure that you make the best use of your time and resources during slowdowns – you might just emerge from tough times like these in fantastic shape, all ready to chew up the competition!

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Whether a company’s big or small, it can always benefit from good testimonials from its satisfied customers and using them to bring in more business. People may think that this is something that can benefit small companies more than big ones, but the truth is that in today’s world customers are becoming increasingly leery and skeptical of ‘megabuck’ companies that lure them in with overproduced, glitzy ad campaigns. Good testimonials give companies heaping helpings of credibility without having to spend great amounts of money for campaigns that might just backfire.

Of course step zero is to make sure that your service and product is exemplary and worthy of praise in order to make sure you get good testimonials. Go all-out to make sure that you know what your customer wants and that you are doing your best to satisfy them – and make sure they know it. That will make the positive comments and praise start rolling in. But don’t hesitate to actively solicit testimonials. Prick up your courage and ask people for their comments, too.

Next, make sure you are saving these testimonials and comments when they come in. Any and every comment counts, even the casual ones customers mention offhand during phone chats. Of course the more glowing ones are more valuable, but what if you don’t get any of those? And make sure you keep the customer’s contact information handy, too, for the next step.

You’ll next need to pick and choose between testimonials. Select the ones that praise key aspects of your business and do so profusely – but mind that you don’t get those that seem like paid advertisements. And after you’ve selected the ones that you think would be most effective, make sure you get the customers’ permission to use them on your signages, webpages, blogs, flyers, brochures – wherever you want to use them.

Lastly, make sure you situate this in a bigger and more significant drive to improve the quality of the service you provide your customers if you aren’t already. Not all comments will come to you, and it’d be really helpful if your customers were happy enough that they praised you when you weren’t around. Your customers are the lifeblood of your business, so treat them with kid gloves and they’ll help you out immeasurably!

Technorati tags: book summaries, business books, business productivity, self improvement

You might have the best little home business in the world, but if no one knows about it you might as well have the worst one.

If you want your business to succeed, you have to start telling other people about it. You can go about this two ways – you can spread the word about your business through advertising or you can choose to do so through public relations. Ads are paid for and can of course be seen on TV or billboards or bulletin boards, read in newspapers or heard on the radio or other venues.

PR is a bit trickier to recognize. It takes many forms, especially nowadays. People can try your product and, if they like it, they can write about it or blog about it or even mention it to a friend, without you having to pay them for doing so. (They are more apt to do so if disgruntled or dissatisfied, so be warned.) Or you can invite people over for a sampling and they can discuss your product on their radio or TV show or newspaper column.

PR can often be more effective than paid ads since it’s not as obvious as they are. Many people are averse to paid advertisements; most of this sort of person thinks instinctively that word-of-mouth mentions are better than glitzy ads involving media personalities who may not actually believe in the product they are endorsing. So if you get the Internet on your side, this can really help your business.

Be smart when asking people over. You don’t want just any writer from any magazine or blog to come take a look at what you have to offer. Target the specific magazine, newspaper or website, and once you’ve done so, target the specific people who may be most interested in your products. Once you’ve done so, send them personal emails or letters – try not to sound too much like you’re angling for coverage (although of course you are). Be persistent, although not to the point of being rude. Be prepared as well – most of these people like it if you have nicely written information already down on paper and ready to be e-mailed or faxed to them at a moment’s notice.

Once you have their attention, take care to strike a fine balance between neglecting them and smothering them. Those extremes turn people off and will tarnish your reputation. Take care of them as you would a good customer – perhaps better than a good customer, because these people can make you or break you. The key is to remember that this is a give-and-take thing – if you’re good to them, but not too good, they’ll be good to you too.

So if you’ve got a business that needs a little attention, give this method a try. You might be pleasantly surprised at the results.

Technorati tags: book summaries, business books, business productivity, self improvement

Many of us can still hear the admonition of our parents, “You’ve got to learn the value of a dollar.” From our first piggy bank to our current savings and investment plans, we have been faced with the value of our hard-earned dollars.

What happened when you started your business? Every dollar you invested was stretched to make it produce as many more as possible. You learned the value of a good product, reliable employees, and faithful customers.

Your customers have come to expect quality from you, and you found that they were willing to pay for it. You keep customers by meeting or exceeding their expectations. The same thing holds true for your employees. They expect fair wages and comfortable working conditions. In return they provide you with the human capital to run your business smoothly and when they exceed your expectations, you reward them generously. As these finely tuned gears run smoothly together and generate externalities, your business continuously churns out greater expectations, quality, and value. And it grows and grows as a result

Value is what you have been striving for all along, right from the outset.

And when your business’s value has reached a certain point – when your business has finally reached peak production – you are ready to sell it and move on. It is time for all those years of dedication and hard work to pay off. Your business is so lucrative you are sure of its potential value.

Or are you? Do you really know what your business is really worth?

Your knowledge of your business’s value can greatly affect the sale of your business. Having unrealistic expectations can lead to disaster and financial ruin.

In his book “Selling Your Business the Easy Hard Way”, author Mark Jordan teaches us that having a reasonable expectation increases your chances of obtaining your asking price and if you have a high yet realistic value with documentation to back it up, it is many times better. You will find that having a realistic value is half the negotiating battle.

No matter what type of business or managing style you possess, remember the importance of a realistic business value. Increase your vision rating before buyers converge upon your company and not afterwards. Meet their gaze head-on with 20/20 vision. That is the only way to succeed, especially in today’s troubled times.

Technorati tags: book summaries, business books, business productivity, self improvement