Reviews

A person or a business can do everything right and still struggle to move to the next level simply because it doesn’t stand out from the crowd. Sam Horn opens with a great example of this from American Idol. Judge Simon Cowell told an eliminated contestant, “You have a good voice and you’re a nice guy. You just didn’t do the one thing necessary to go through to the next round. You didn’t stand out from the crowd.”

How does an average, hard-working person stand out? POP! answers that question with plenty of approaches to help a person be purposeful, original and pithy (notice this makes up POP?). This means whatever you use needs to accomplish its purpose, be different and short yet meaningful.

The challenge of a how to book is to teach the reader a new skill and help the reader apply and remember that new skill. Not an easy task. Horn’s conversational writing style coupled with real-life examples and exercises for each covered technique drills the message in the reader’s head for better use and retention.

The book’s organization makes it possible to try different techniques and move on when one doesn’t work. I didn’t feel pressure to read the book in order. The book succeeds for those who want to skip around and those who must start on page 1 and finish on page 256.

Bold headers divide the book’s sections for easier scanning and reading. The busiest professional can read one section to learn something new and then read another section the next time five minutes open up.

I’ve read many articles and tips on how to come up with names, slogans and other wordy things. Horn introduces a few more creative ways to brainstorm names that I hadn’t considered before. One strategy to try is Onomatopoeia. Words like “quack,” “bang” and “click” are Onomatopoeic words. “Yahoo!” too, but that’s not how the founders came up with its name. They used another technique as explained in the book.

We can use these strategies almost anywhere in our personal and professional lives — from making presentations and naming products, companies and books to marketing and phrases. Seriously, just about anyone can get a bang from this poppin’ book.

Title: POP! Stand out in Any Crowd
Author: Sam Horn
Publisher: Perigee Trade
ISBN: 0399532765
Date: September 2006
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Cover Price: USD: $22.95 Amazon: $16.29

Pareto’s principle states that 80 percent of a company’s business comes from 20 percent of its customers. Therefore, businesses invest time and money into building and maintaining customer loyalty. Loyalty Myths says that organizations focused on traditional loyalty programs won’t succeed and explains why the 53 customer loyalty beliefs are myths.

Businesses that work to keep “loyal” customers may be actually losing money from such customers. Furthermore, traditional marketing emphasizes retaining customers instead of seeking new customers, a belief that could wipe out some businesses or prevent them from reaching their highest potential.

Few argue against the premise that today’s environment in which lets customers be choosier and indifferent when it comes to products and brands. Consider the fact that having the most loyal customers doesn’t guarantee a company the highest market share.

Do you believe that customers over the age of 50 stay true blue to products and brands? The authors have successfully proved otherwise. Think about the different loyalty programs to which you belong. Several airlines have loyalty programs in place, but do you cash in? Do the programs influence your decision on which airline to take?

The book contains a great example from The First National Bank of Chicago, a bank that needed to find ways to overcome the low equity that affected many banks in the ’90. The bank took an unpopular approach in charging $3 when customers went inside the bank for transactions instead of relying on the ATM or doing it over the phone. Sound disastrous, but it paid off.

Unsurprisingly, the media posted negative stories about the bank’s method, and competitors jumped in by paying customers to use the teller and other incentives. The result? The bank’s profits went up by 28 percent with over 80 percent of the transactions done electronically.

The book doesn’t stop at loyalty programs we encounter in our daily lives. It also looks at loyalty myths associated with company goals, management practices, market share and profitability, and employees. In addition to breaking the myths, the authors also provide a chapter on how to do loyalty the right way.

The authors do a nice job providing the rationale for every myth backing it up with data and case studies. The only annoyance with the book is the cartoons that appear throughout the book. They’re corny and ugly. Adding cartoons into a business book is fine, just not these.

This type of book can be dry and academic, but not this one. Loyalty Myths is an engaging and valuable read for anyone who wants to get positive results from customer loyalty programs or turn around their broken loyalty programs.

Title: Loyalty Myths: Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out of Business and Proven Tactics That Really Work
Author: Timothy L. Keiningham, Terry G. Vavra, Lerzan Aksoy, Henri Wallard
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 0471743151
Date: September 2005
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 272
Cover Price: USD: $24.95 Amazon: $17.22

Businesses especially small businesses expect employees to do more than their main job and this often includes sales and marketing. Book Yourself Solid contains activities that business people most likely already know. However, Michael Port brings these activities together and organizes them using lists and questions to help the reader find the answers.

The author writes that he gathered the ideas from multiple resources to build his Book Yourself Solid system. Port shares first-rate advice like dropping clients that sap your energy leaving you with more stress than enthusiasm. Let go of clients? How can you afford that? Think of how much work you’d finish if you enjoy working with every client. Maybe you’d be able to add a few more by letting go of deadweight clients.

The book provides guidance to find your target audience. Anyone who has read books and researched the target market thing may be skeptical about discovering new information in this book. Port breaks down the process of selecting your target market into doable steps, something few resources do.

At times, the book starts reading like those “hyped up” sales materials you see online or in infomercials. In spite of this and a bit of off the mark advice, the book is a worthy and useful read. If you check out Port’s web site, you’ll encounter this hype. Don’t let the web site influence your decision to read this book. The book and web site have little in common.

Small business owners and employees will find the book’s ideas simple to understand and easy to put into action. In fact, they’re most likely doing some of the activities, but the author takes the activities a step further with the goal of booking more clients.

The book benefits business people who want to make marketing and sales an everyday part of their job for a couple of hours a week. Some especially new businesses and service-based businesses will value the book as it saves time that’s involved with trying to determine how to do marketing and sales.

Title: Book Yourself Solid: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling
Author: Michael Port
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 0471783935
Date: April 2006
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 258
Cover Price: USD: $24.95 Amazon: $16.47

Think you know your friends and family well? GiftTRAP sets out to challenge that assumption with its game of giving and receiving. When you have a choice of giving a roadside emergency kit, learn to be a graffiti artist (obviously a course), space age purse or a space hopper (???) — gift-giving turns into an adventure.

At first glance, it looks like a game promoting materialism and the gimmes, but instead the game is about great conversations, laughs and getting to know each other better. After all, it’s not as if you would actually get a flagpole, whale watching trip, or a public speaking course for family and friends.

The creative packaging looks like a gift box. Open the lid to reveal the folded game board. Move that and find the eight brightly colored gift bags sitting in a tray filled with game pieces. Remove the tray to find the game cards with the gift ideas from absurd and weird to practical and cool.

Place the gift cards on the board so players decide on who gets what while ranking the available gives from “Great” to “No way!” Players receive points for giving others gifts they like and lose points for giving a gift that gets a “No way!” The same concept applies for receiving gifts: Score points for the right ones and lose ‘em for getting the “I’ll be returning that one to the store” gifts. To win the game, a player needs to get both Give and Get markers in the GIFTED zone.

Imagine how hilarious it was to hear another player admit to wanting laser hair removal treatment. Not exactly something to give as a gift, but it loosened up everyone in the room within seconds.

The games business sees a disappointing trend. Manufacturers reissue older and classic games with cheap quality game pieces. But GiftTRAP doesn’t fall into this trap with its lovely gift bags and good quality game pieces and markers. The box contains colorful photos, as do the gift cards.

Side note: Something interesting lurks in the game instructions: a Creative Commons license! This is the first I’ve seen in a game, heck anything outside of the Internet.

Also the folks behind the game have a few fun contests happening. They’re accepting photos for use in the next edition of the game. Got my camera ready and hunting for odd gifts.

P.S. Anyone know what a space hopper is?

Included in GiftTRAP:

* 1 full size game board

* 640 Gift Ideas

* 1 Rules booklet [Read the rules online and see exactly how to play GiftTRAP]

* 8 Organza Gift Bags with each having:

* 2 scoring markers

* 9 gift tokens

* 4 choice tokens

* 3 advanced strategy cards

Players: 3 to 8
Age: 8+
Price: $39.99
Game play: One hour

Here are the best books I’ve read in 2006 in no particular order. Beware that not all of these books published this year, but rather they’re books I read.

* Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things: I haven’t written this review yet as I just finished it. Reading Norman’s follow up to Design of Everyday Things makes me want to read the original, but got other books that have priority.

* Next to Me is a lovely autobiography about a British businessman who happens to have Parkinson’s.

* Book Yourself Solid is a solid book that prompted me to make changes to my marketing efforts.

* Metaphorically Selling shows how to take a fresh approach to giving presentations and selling.

* The Corporate Blogging Book contains everything anyone needs to know about business blogging including making the business case and case studies.

* Writing White Papers helped me feel more comfortable about doing white papers.

* Blogging for Business is an easy flowing read that also educates people about business blogging.

* The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class refreshed my memory on facts I vaguely recalled and provided details on things I didn’t know much about.

* The Street-Smart Writer provides me with security so I know where to go if I run into problems in the writing biz.

* Tie (Fiction) Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is one of few fiction books I read this year. The book enlightened me on the Chinese culture in an absorbing story. You Could Do Better is a chick-lit style story that makes a great beach read. What I liked about it was the author’s attention to detail on TV history and trivia.

Thanks to Web sites and email newsletters, white papers have become a great way to market a product or service. A visitor can get a free white paper in exchange for signing up for an email newsletter or basic information. People can’t resist a free offer and white papers — when done right — can educate and inform.

Sure, a business wants to show how it has the solution to the problem identified in the paper. But a well-written white paper does more than market a solution. It also establishes a person or business as a thought leader, introduces a new idea or concept, and explains how something works. Too many white papers turn into infomercials and Stelzner walks the reader through the process of creating an effective white paper.

Stelzer covers everything including needs analysis, research, interviews, and other important steps in the white paper writing process beyond the actual writing. I’ve downloaded or received many white papers and few get my attention. For some, the title can scare a reader out of reading it. These titles sound like something written by a PhD for others in the field.

As a freelancer writer, I’ve written a few white papers and not with as much confidence as I would like. Writing White Papers gives me all the information I need to thoroughly and confidently write the next one without any lingering doubts or fears.

Writers who write few or no white papers will appreciate the chapters on “Interviewing,” “Researching,” “Writing the First Page,” “The Compelling Title,” and “Writing Tips and Strategies.” The advice in these chapters applies to various types of writing.

Most of the book’s contents focus on writing information technology-related papers — probably because they’re the most technical and difficult to write about — however, one of the examples is about personal accountability. The book doesn’t stop at the white paper writing process. Its last chapter focuses on marketing white papers.

The book demonstrates how to make a boring topic engaging — a problem that often faces the writers of white papers and contains two examples of white papers that retain my attention even though I’m not the prime audience. The book engages the reader making it a surprisingly fast read. Writers, technical writers, and marketing professionals will benefit the most from this well-organized, insightful, and clearly-written book.

FYI: Stelzner’s web site.

Title: Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged
Author: Michael Stelzner
Publisher: WhitePaperSource Publishing
ISBN: 0977716937
Date: October 2006
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 214
Cover Price: USD: $34.95 Amazon: $23.07

TV trivia and history fans who enjoy summer-style reading will quickly devour this story and its references to TV shows: past, present, and fictional. Lehmann introduces us to Daphne Wells, a TV lover who has the perfect job: museum curator at the Museum of Television and Radio.

Daphne meets Charlie, also a TV aficionado, who has written several unsold TV show pilots. As their relationship develops, Charlie works as an English teacher and has the opportunity to buy his grandmother’s house in New Rochelle. He decides to buy the house and propose to Daphne.

After the proposal, Daphne struggles with the thought of living life like Rob and Laura Petrie in the quiet suburbs of New Rochelle, leaving her love of city life in New York behind. The move would shorten Charlie’s commute, but lengthen Daphne’s. Throughout the story, we watch Daphne grapple with decisions regarding the wedding, the move, and her life with stable and “good man” Charlie.

A good novel has several dimensions and in this one, we learn of the special relationship between Daphne and her older sister Billie — a bond created by the death of both of their parents in a plane crash.

Meanwhile, we follow her life at the museum and learn about the themes behind each decade of television. Jonathan Hill, the book’s version of Steven Boccho or David E. Kelley and television producer of the hot and shallow TV show Supermodels, stops by the museum to look at film from a past TV show for inspiration as he’s run out of creative juice.

As Daphne and Jonathan get to know each other, Daphne hopes to link him with her sister, Billie, who is in a relationship with a married man. In reading about the interactions of the characters, Daphne compares her life to TV shows and lets them get in the way of tuning in to Charlie.

Daphne and Charlie are likeable characters who sometimes disappoint the reader with their imperfect human behavior. Most of the book explores the “compromise” relationship between Daphne and Charlie, the bond between sisters Daphne and Billie, and figuring out what will happen with Jonathan Hill.

The last part of the book feels rushed in an attempt create a conflict, resolve it, and work its way to the ending. The book might do better by condensing the interactions between Daphne and Charlie and prolonging the last bit of the book.

The story contains people with professions that only a lucky few can enter; the tie in to TV history makes the story different from your average escapist novel. I appreciated Lehmann’s attention to details that you won’t find in most fiction books — like a character using Spybot to clean the computer. Though it’s a small detail, computer users and TV lovers relate to the little things that enhance the story.

The minor faults don’t affect the reader’s enjoyment of the story, a textbook poolside read that takes only a few hours. I don’t read much fiction, and You Could Do Better satisfied my need to read a fantasy especially since I have an interest in TV history.

Lehmann is also the author of previously reviewed book, The Art of Undressing.

Title: You Could Do Better
Author: Stephanie Lehmann
Publisher: NAL Trade
ISBN: 045121854X
Date: August 2006
Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
Cover Price: USD: $12.95 Amazon: $9.97

Disclaimer: I did research for Debbie Weil for this book.

Yes, there’s a flood of books on business blogging hitting the market, but each one is different. Debbie Weil’s The Corporate Blogging Book is written for the corporate-minded person who isn’t sure about the blog thing especially in a business setting.

The book tells it like it is and is exactly what its title says. The book opens with 20 comprehensive questions about corporate blogging to answer the busy executive and manager’s immediate questions. Weil spends a full chapter on the fear of blogging, a persistent theme in business blogging.

The questions are the first of many “executive summary” style resources in the book. Weil provides summaries, lists, and narrative style content to help with scanning. Readers can read cover-to-cover, skip around, or skim and gain insight. With the table of contents, scannable content, and index, the reader can easily find the features of interest.

Quick read tips cover fears in blogging, ways to use a corporate blog (not just for external communications), ten tips for writing an effective business blog, blogging readiness assessment, what to cover in making the case for blogging to the boss, and a “Get Smart Glossary” so the reader won’t have a blank look when someone uses a blogging-related term.

Those familiar with Weil’s style through her blog and speeches will encounter the same style in the book: honest, straightforward, conversational, absorbing, and sharp. She answers every possible question that an executive or manager has about blogging including return on investment, making the business case for blogging, and how to overcome the common fears and doubts about blogging.

Even if a business hasn’t decided to blog, understanding blogs from a corporate perspective is a must for organizations of all sizes. Whether or not a company blogs, people will talk about your company. Are you prepared to deal with the blogosphere (the world of blogs)? Weil shares examples of situations where the blogosphere created negative publicity for a company because of a problematic product.

Businesses can’t jump into blogging like a personal blogger can. Weil covers the need for blogging policies, guidelines, and disclaimers while sharing a few samples in the bonus resources (like an appendix). With the book, the reader gets a clear overview of what blogging is and how it affects businesses. Further, it provides tools, ideas, and a plan for understanding and getting involved with blogging — most important, it answers all of your questions about business blogging.

I rarely comment on the size, look, and feel of a book, but this one is worth mentioning. The paper on the cover has a nice feel — not your usual hardcover smooth feel — rather just a touch of coarseness in a good way. It’s lightweight and a little smaller than an average hardcover book in length and width. Occasionally, a book’s “outside” surprises me because it’s easy to hold and read — and I notice. [ More info in a past entry... ]

Title: The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right
Author: Debbie Weil
Publisher: Penguin Portfolio
ISBN: 1591841259
Date: August 2006
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 240
Cover Price: USD: $23.95 Amazon: $16.29

If you spend your book reading time on non-fiction like me, here’s an opportunity to read a short fiction that provides a nice summer read and an history lesson. I probably spent about two to three hours reading the book.

See’s story explores the culture and lives of the people living in 19th-century rural China. The book provides a history lesson in the form of a fictional story that centers around two girls from childhood through womanhood.

The richly told tale begins with the tradition of footbinding to keep girl’s feet small therefore ensuring they’re “marriageable.” I knew about the small feet, but not about the horrifying and vividly described process.

After reading the book, I researched the topics covered in the story and discovered the author accurately captured 19th-century China. Readers learn about arranged marriages, different classes (poor, rich, farmer, butcher), friendships, married life, education, the secret writing of Nu Shu and the infighting in the country.

At times, the characters come across as unemotional or mean and it’s true. Sometimes you like and sometimes you don’t like the central characters, but it’s a reflection of those times. Besides, if the main characters were always happy go-lucky and 100% likeable, wouldn’t that be predictable and dull?

The book starts a little slow, but picks up speed after the footbinding. Once it grabbed me, I was eager to finish it. I don’t have many opportunities to read fiction and with this short book, I had the opportunity to quickly enjoy a fictional story while learning more about the Chinese culture.

Title: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
Author: Lisa See
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812968069
Date: June 2005 (Reprint: February 2006)
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Cover Price: USD: $13.97 Amazon: $5.58

We all know someone who, like Oklahoma's Ado Annie, just "cain't say no." These folks accept every project. Every volunteer job. While everyone around them loves and appreciates them (or not), they're often tired and do little for themselves. Some people who fall into this group may not even realize they're on automated mode when agreeing to help.

The Book of No contains 250 scenarios and how to handle them so that you say no. Before the entering the bulk of the book that contains the scenarios, Newman covers five basics to get you started with this No business as well as a 16-point No Credo to remind you that you have the right to say no. Saying no is a learned skill, and the scenarios can help the yes-person develop the courage to say no.

Each scenario poses a question or statement followed by three parts:

• What's going on here? – Explains the situation and possible motives.
• Response – How to respond so the answer ends in a No.
• Alert – A warning to help you the next time you get into the situation or contains insight so you better understand what's going on.

A person who has the courage to say no may feel terrible and guilty afterward. The scenarios don't simply advise saying no, but instead provide honest and guilt-free responses. For example, someone at work asks if you're available for lunch on certain days. The response, "Thanks for including me, but I can't squeeze another thing into my crammed schedule this week."

The scenarios are grouped into four areas for quick referencing: friends, family, work, and difficult people, which include situations with sales people and those who provide services.

The book concludes with a bulleted list of key lessons to provide reinforcement to keep you focused on the road to accomplishing more of what you want and less of what others want. The brief introduction and conclusion with the well-sorted scenarios in between make the book a great tool for people who need support in their journey to say no.

Title: The Book of No
Author: Susan Newman, Ph.D.
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Business
ISBN: 0071460780
Date: November 2005
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
Cover Price: USD: $14.95 Amazon: $9.72