Business Book Summaries

There is a saying famous in American business: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Famous and true, as it turns out.

Attributed to John Wanamaker, an American retail businessman, it has been paraphrased by any number in the decades since he first defined the primary problem every CEO faces in marketing. We all know our company must market. You only have to watch what happens when a company stops, to get the message.

Failure to market means becoming invisible, first in the eyes of your customers, then in reality. Yet, from the traditional print campaigns of the last century to contemporary Internet Pay-Per-Click, and Web 2.0 social media applications, CEOs of every size company still have no idea which part of their advertising/marketing budget works, and which part doesn’t.

What continues to remain elusive is knowing exactly which of their expenditures is getting the job done. And because of that, they spend more than necessary, squandering resources they could use elsewhere.

This is an issue that has never been more important. Significant changes have taken place in American companies in recent years, and these are certain to continue at a pace never previously experienced.

We are in an age of global markets with a digital presence that is increasingly becoming overarching. No one really knows the path ahead; it remains as murky as ever.

What worked just a year or two ago can already be obsolete, and what is successful today could be on the way out without our knowing it. Something new is always on the horizon, but which something new will make a positive difference is no clearer now than it has ever been.

This presents new challenges for marketing in ways that have never previously existed. But along with challenges are also opportunities — new Web 2.0 marketing communications tools such as corporate blogs, Wikis, and the increased specificity of marketing discussions through vertical channels as opposed to “talking to an invisible community.” All these are challenging every CEO to reexamine conventional practices.

For all the innovations of this brave new century, old issues remain. There exists, and has always existed, a fundamental disconnect between the CEO, sales, and marketing. Their personalities and objectives are quite different, and they profoundly affect the CEO’s functions.

This disconnect, about which I have much to say, is a result of our current economic corporate structure and culture, which were inadvertently fashioned to encompass it. The consequence is that it has an appearance of normalcy and a sense of permanence that are illusionary, but make it difficult to properly perceive, effectively manage and alter for the better.

In my experience, the CEO who follows the conventional and takes the commonly accepted management approach to the significant issues created by this disconnect, will never come to terms with the real issues. In most cases, in fact, the CEO will never even understand that the divide in these areas has been the fundamental cause of many, if not most, of his or her problems.

BusinessSummaries.com is a business book summaries service.Every week, it sends out to subscribers a 9- to 12-page summary of a best-selling business book chosen from among the hundreds of books printed out in the United States.For more information, please go to http://www.bizsum.com

Curiosity might have killed the proverbial cat, but without it, very real achievements would never occur. With this book as your guide, you’ll learn how to spark your innate curiosity, pounce on problems in ways you’ve never imagined, and enjoy greater success and satisfaction both at work and in your personal life.

Playful, profound, and positively upbeat, CATS provides what you need to tap into your power of innovation and then unleash it to every member of your organization. While most business thinkers view this challenge from the top down, Stephen Lundin sees the subject from a CAT’s eye view, explaining how to get every employee, no matter what level, to think and act in innovative ways. Inside, he examines the challenges to innovation and offers practical measures aimed at conquering them.

Prowling inside every employee is a questioner, a creator, an innovator – claws out and ready to pounce. Become a CAT and you may find yourself springing on ideas in a way that surprises you and everyone around you.

This book describes the nine lives of innovation, each of which is a step toward realizing your inner CAT and becoming a fully contributing member of an innovative organization.

BusinessSummaries.com is a business book summaries service.Every week, it sends out to subscribers a 9- to 12-page summary of a best-selling business book chosen from among the hundreds of books printed out in the United States.For more information, please go to http://www.bizsum.com

The Big Idea
If you’re going to do business in China, then you need to go to China. You must be on the ground conducting business on a day-to-day basis. Businesses that are managed remotely generally fail in China. You cannot make decisions or carry on negotiations on a one day business trip to China made every six months; you need relationships, understanding, and expertise.

Many entrepreneurs have found that in their years of working in China, no serious non-Chinese competition has emerged, largely because nobody sent anyone to come and live in China, get under the skin of the country, and understand how the system worked.

Why You Need This Book
Made it in China shares the insights of a group of non-Chinese entrepreneurs who give their first-hand account of their experiences in the country. These are people who have gone to China, invested their own money, gotten their hands dirty, and built successful businesses. These people are the real deal and (at the time of writing) are all actively working in (and on) their businesses in China.

This practical and entertaining book talks about the challenges faced by business entrepreneurs and how these were met, with their own observations and thoughts for dealing with each situation.

The series is intended for business-people, students, and anyone else who wants to know:

Where are the current business hotspots?

What’s happening in these places?

What are the most up-to-date business practices and thinking around the world?

What can I learn from these techniques and how do I implement them in my business?

Manufacturing in China
Paul Stepanek moved a Mid-West manufacturing company in China where he remained and ran the factory. The company grew and Paul got the opportunity to open and run other factories in China. After 7 years, Paul set up USActive, a consultancy specializing in helping foreign financial institutions and manufacturing companies with their initiatives in China.

He has made it in China by making things in China and by helping others to make it in China.

HOW TO MANUFACTURE IN CHINA
There are two main business models for manufacturing companies that want to manufacture in China:

Contract the manufacturing to an established factory.

LESSONS LEARNED
Here are lessons to be learned in having a happy manufacturing experience in China:

Communicating properly includes following up on a regular basis to ensure that the understanding is reinforced through the process.

The costs in China can be so much lower than they are in Western markets and the desire to outsource to China is often driven by costs. This encourages cost cutting in all areas of the business. Patience and persistence do pay off. Whether in setting (and maintaining!) the vision and values of your company or dealing with suppliers – patience and persistence have always proven to be effective.

Selling to the Chinese Market: Building a Chinese Sales Army
JC Lim’s entrepreneurial career was nearly cut short before it began. After a shaky start, JC found that he had an aptitude for sales and rapidly became his company’s highest achieving salesman. He so impressed the company that they sent him to Hong Kong where he was appointed as the sales manager and was charged with turning around the failing business.

ELEMENTS OF PAY STRUCTURE
Unlike Western practices, there isn’t simply basic pay and commission. Instead pay is structured as a number of different elements which reflect historic practices in China. Allowance for nutrition.

Filial fund: a fund to recognize the Chinese practice of sending money back home to parents.

New Year allowance: to recognize that people might need to buy some new clothes for the holiday.

Festivity Fund.

Transport Allowance.

Communications Allowance so that people can get themselves a cell phone.

Entertainment Allowance.

LESSONS LEARNED
It is extremely beneficial to learn from China’s history. The history of the Chinese people shows their resilience and adaptability. Find how to use the talents of the people you have rather than look for people who fit a preconceived notion. Enthusiastic people will always make the best employees.

Care for your people and get involved – it shows when you’re faking it. However, remember you are the boss. When you come to deal with the Chinese market, your product should be appropriate for the Chinese people. Take the time to train people properly and then make the training an ongoing process.

Try and work in the Chinese way and not the Western way.

Start-Ups in China: Get In, Get Money, Get Out, Nobody Gets Hurt
Richard Robinson’s focus as an entrepreneur is in creating new businesses, focusing on the sweet spot where media/entertainment and disruptive technologies intersect. Currently, Rich is the CEO of a business he co-founded – Kooky Panda Ltd – which creates socially connected casual mobile games using Flash Lite. In addition to this he is an angel investor and board member/advisor to a number of companies.

LESSONS LEARNED
Here are the lessons Rich learned from his success in China:

China is a cheap place to fail: you can bootstrap a company and burn for a much longer time while you figure out your company’s “destiny”. As anywhere, the more milestones that can be reached, the lower the risk and the higher the valuation for future rounds, and China is a greater place to tick off those milestones.

Having a solid China story can help with future fund raising.

China is a great outsourcing destination. Thomas Friedman got it right when he said that China will not be content with only being the world’s factory and leaving India to be the world’s office. China wants to be the world’s office and it is starting to drink India’s milkshake. Getting a few lieutenants who can speak English to coordinate with partners is key to leveraging China as an outsourcing base.

Negotiating in China: The Great Conjuring Trick
Graham Jeal is a British entrepreneur who founded Shanghai Vision in 2002. While in China Graham found himself negotiating with developers, property management companies, staff, and officials on a regular basis, and learned the tricks of the trade at first hand. He is now a veteran of smoky rooms, the extremes of endless Chinese meals, lawyer tantrums, and some dubious negotiating tactics.

Each business relationship has a shelf life and follows distinct phases:

The first phase is the getting to know each other phase. The second phase is the most productive phase where both parties are working together in a constructive manner. The third phase is where one party starts to take advantage of the other party, often by introducing unrealistic demands. One party takes the other party for granted: perhaps they have the money in the bank and see little reason for cultivating the relationship going forward.

LESSONS LEARNED
Here are some of the main lessons Graham learned during his time haggling in China:

Prepare to negotiate in China, not in a Western environment.

Everybody’s Number-One Challenge: Human Resources
Bob Boyce’s first restaurant was started because it was difficult to find straightforward, casual Western food at a reasonable price. By chance his room mate at the time worked in the restaurant business in Guangzhou, southern China. The two decided to give the food and beverage business a shot together.

LESSONS LEARNED
Here are some big lessons to remember:

Take the time to understand people and get to grips with the Chinese culture as best as you can – even if only so that you can understand when you are doing something that your people may find uncomfortable.

Hire great people. If you are training people, then enthusiasm counts far more than untested claims of experience that may be coupled with a poor attitude. Once you’ve got great people, then good processes will help these people succeed.

Fostering Creativity in China
Montgomery Singman (Monte) is the founder and CEO of Radiance Digital Entertainment, a Shanghai based online game producer and publisher that now employs over 100 people in Shanghai.

Monte looks at the challenges of finding the creativity in people who have been indoctrinated for generations with Confucian conformity and where creativity has been systematically removed over the last two generations.

LESSONS LEARNED
It takes time for certain ideas to sink in with your Chinese customers or employees. For some Chinese people in some areas – especially when it comes to management techniques – you have to show them how to do it. Hire Chinese people to manage Chinese people. This philosophy came from a Chinese saying, “use the foreigners to control the foreigners.” Learn from this ancient lesson.

Don’t count on everything going as planned because it won’t, especially in a creative industry, especially in China.

Creative people will not respond well to this.

Chinese Style Risk Management: The Need to Diversity
All Scott knew was there was a lot of energy being directed to look at China by big American corporations. Scott talks about how he grew his business and how he constantly challenges himself to diversify and stay ahead. For Scott, diversification has been both a growth and a risk management strategy.

LESSONS LEARNED
As a basic operating principle, most businesses in China diversify. The common non-Chinese reason for diversification is applicable in China, but is not the key motivator. Instead many businesses diversify so that if one enterprise gets closed down or fails there will still be others generating income.

Make sure the business has growth and scale potential.

Everyone gets sucked into the China philosophy where things are so cheap. That is a dangerous mentality to maintain – you still need to pay for quality, but make sure you put money in the right place.

Exploring the Road Less Traveled
Grace Liu is an ABC: an American-born Chinese. Both her parents were born in China but immigrated to the States where Grace was born and grew up. It introduced her to Jian Ping Li (JP), the person who was to become her business partner.

Since that shaky start, Grace and JP have together built Asianera into an internationally recognized brand whose unique hand-painted porcelain is now seen on fashionable dinner tables, and in high-end shops and restaurants around the world.

LESSONS LEARNED
If you’re a manufacturer, you can’t compete on price alone. Eventually there will be a lower cost manufacturer somewhere else. China will not be the lowest cost center of the world forever.

Good, honest, hard-working, and trustworthy Chinese business partners do exist. It will help a great deal toward product and brand differentiation.

Resilience and Persistence
Henry Winter arrived in Hong Kong looking to get into the music business but found this tough as he had no music business experience. Henry couldn’t crack the music industry through conventional means so he started his own music marketing company, Groove Street. This evolved into an interactive agency which introduced some highly innovative business ideas including being the first agency to execute a text (SMS) message marketing campaign in China.

While there have been many innovations, the business has had a bumpy ride, but few other businesses demonstrates so well, and in such practical terms, the necessity to be resilient and persistent in order to survive in China.

LESSONS LEARNED
Take the money, then renegotiate! All valuable business partnerships evolve over time, based on the changing value that the parties can bring to the table. If the other side offers to buy, and won’t budge from their price – SELL! If you really are worth more, they will realize they need additional service/help and will be willing to pay a fair price for it. This applies to getting work from big clients, and getting cash from investors. Don’t get stuck on price, get the deal done!

•    To get investment, you need a bidding war, no matter how low the bidding starts. Investors need motivation to pull the trigger and wire the money NOW. No amount of spreadsheets or business plans can supply that sharp poke. Intelligent people naturally dislike repetitive simple things. No – we invented chess and World of Warcraft to stimulate our minds. Intelligent people naturally seek to make things more complicated which equates to more interesting work.

BusinessSummaries.com is a business book summaries service.  Every week, it sends out to subscribers a 9- to 12-page summary of a best-selling business book chosen from among the hundreds of books printed out in the United States.  For more information, please go to http://www.bizsum.com.

Miami, Florida, April 2, 2009—BusinessSummaries.com, one of the leading e-commerce sites for business book summaries, announces that Al Betz, acclaimed author of Outfluence (published by Silverbear Graphics, 2008), is the Author of the Month for April 2009.

Al Betz is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Outfluence, LLC. He has a nationwide reputation as a realtime reporter, an author, and a leader in the court reporting world. Major legal matters he and his company participated in include the grand jury investigation of the Clinton Administration, and the recent litigation involving alleged accounting fraud of Ernst & Young, WorldCom and Enron.

As an author, Betz has interviewed and transcribed the stories of numerous subjects, including families of 9/11 victims in an effort to preserve their loved ones’ life stories. He credits his Outfluence approach to life and to business for enabling him to attract positive people to his life and to his business.

Outfluence is defined by Betz as a way to effect real, positive change – even if one doesn’t have all the authority, money, or clout that is usually required to effect such change. Applied consciously, outfluence creates a powerful, irresistible message that promotes growth in personal lives, relationships and businesses.

Outfluence turns conventional thinking about influence upside down – making a powerful force available to anyone who chooses to use it. Betz’s book on the topic, Outfluence, introduces the power of silent communication and teaches principles and behaviors to help people become more effective in their day-to-day interactions. It will also teach them that the effort extended to show others that we care makes an impression – whether our approach is in the form of speaking, writing, listening, or practicing patience and respect. Read more about Betz and his groundbreaking book at http://www.outfluenceonline.com/Al-Betz.html

The BusinessSummaries.com editorial staff interviewed Betz about his book and the story behind it. Key excerpts from the interview are posted at http://www.bizsum.com/author-of-the-month-april2009.php. The summary of Outfluence  was released to BusinessSummaries.com’s subscribers on February 9, 2009.

Every week, subscribers enjoy business book summaries of today’s business bestsellers in PDF, PDA, Powerpoint, audio, video and mindmap formats. The latest versions of the book summaries are all available online upon subscription to BusinessSummaries.com.

In today’s pop business culture of motivational phrases and self-improvement books on successful management, there is no shortage of slogans about the value of teamwork: “There’s no ‘I’ in teamwork.” “TEAM: Together Everyone Achieves More.” “None of us is as smart as all of us.”

The fact is, they all convey what we know instinctively: Teams are powerful. Through our own experience and supporting research, we are convinced that complex problems benefit greatly from the creativity that comes from diverse thought, backgrounds, and styles. But I have yet to see a slogan that reveals the underlying secret of the very highest performing teams.

A major consulting firm figured it out. The researchers studied “successful” teams and the truly “breakthrough” teams to try to determine the differentiators between the two. They looked at the size of the team, the combination of management levels, the gender and culture mix, among many other variables.

In the end, they concluded that the greatest determinant of a breakthrough team is that they members of the team care as much about each other’ success as they do about their own success.

It’s well worth the investment to institutionalize a method for hiring people that’s based not only on the capacity to do the job but also on the capacity to care. That is, if you care about more than just getting the job done.

To access more resources on leadership and management, please visit BusinessSummaries.com.

Miami, Florida, March 16, 2009—BusinessSummaries.com releases its new business book “The Adversity Paradox: An Unconventional Guide to Achieving Uncommon Business Success”, by J. Barry Griswell and Bob Jennings, St. Martin’s Press, 2009. Subscribers may now access PDF, PDA, Powerpoint, Audio, Video and Mindmap formats of “The Adversity Paradox”, and enjoy the book summary anytime, anywhere.

Miami, Florida, March 16, 2009—BusinessSummaries.com, one of the leading e-commerce sites for business book summaries, today releases the abridged version of one of the business bestsellers “The Adversity Paradox: An Unconventional Guide to Achieving Uncommon Business Success”, by J. Barry Griswell and Bob Jennings, St. Martin’s Press, 2009. This executive book summary is now accessible to subscribers in PDF, PDA, Powerpoint, audio, video and Mindmap formats.

Recovering from career-toppling adversity and going on to achieve pinnacles of success lies in gaining and making full use of firsthand knowledge of “the adversity paradox”. All those who have managed to accomplish this feat attest to having found that the knowledge they gained from overcoming adversity played such a crucial role in their success trajectories that they now consider adversity a friend.

Many motivational business books promise easy access to prosperity and power by way of secret insight, quick and easy steps, or so-called “insider tips” that are dubious at best. This book is different. The Adversity Paradox tells it straight and offers no secret formula or silver bullet. Instead it offers its readers candid accounts from people whose skills, resourcefulness, and confidence have been tested by adversity and who have put their misfortunes to good use by not caving in and by gaining invaluable business lessons from their harrowing experiences instead.

The Adversity Paradox offers lessons that are practical and inspirational and which can be applied at any stage of one’s career. You can end up as one of those people who emerge from even the most humble of beginnings or the most devastating of setbacks to achieve the success you’ve always dreamed of – an uncommon level of success, as the authors put it. No dream is ever impossible.

The paths to success are nothing if not diverse, but The Adversity Paradox identifies patterns that anyone can study and learn from. Business people working to overcome humble beginnings, lack of knowledge, unexpected setbacks, or any manner of misfortune may find their greatest tool for creating business success in this book.

Every week, subscribers enjoy business book summaries of today’s business bestsellers in PDF, PDA, Powerpoint, audio, video and mindmap formats. The latest versions of the book summaries are all available online upon subscription to BusinessSummaries.com.

Customer satisfaction scores for the majority of large corporations have not historically shown significant improvement. Although annual reports highlight the importance of customers (usually accompanied by glossy phoos and glowing tributes), many CEOs, when interviewed, have expressed a lack of confidence in their customer satisfaction efforts or a disregard for the programs that exist.

Billions of dollars a year are spent on customer satisfaction surveys and market research, and outcomes seldom seem to result in any real changes to the business. Consider your own experiences as a consumer. When you fill in a customer satisfaction survey, do you believe that something will happen as a result?

Research can be valuable for the organization, but viewing your investment in customer loyalty as a research project is setting your efforts up for failure. We unfortunately continue to witness the stereotypical annual customer satisfaction report, presented to a suspicious executive team that invests just enough time to argue its validity before consigning it to the corporate bookshelf for another year. This is the classic outcome of a program that is driven from the needs of research rather than the needs of the business.

It’s worth clarifying the difference between satisfaction and loyalty. Simply put, satisfied customers still defect. The fact is that satisfaction is a standard that had great meaning in the postwar industrial growth of Europe and the United States but falls short against the standards of global hypercompetition today. Worse, it provides a false standard thatundermines the impact that leadership could obtain byapplying a higher standard to their businesses.

If you turn on your TV and see a company claiming to have 90 percent customer satisfaction, what does it tell you? It certainly indicates that the company’s basic products or services seem to work as advertised. It might also suggest the company is able to handle inevitable problems in a reasonable and timely fashion. You might even suppose that this business’ help desk phones are not clogged with customers calling in to complain about the company. But does any of this sound like a basis for competitive advantage or an engine for growth?

Net Promoter programs establish a higher standard than simple satisfaction, one worth holding your business to. There is no false sense of comfort, just a real focus on the drivers of growth and competitive advantage.

Dell, the world’s largest direct-sale computer manufacturer, runs a global customer experience program and understands the distinction between satisfaction and true loyalty. Dick Hunter, who heads the global consumer support program, told us:

The thing I was struck by is that we were all hung up about customer satisfaction, and I frankly didn’t think that was the right goal. It’s one thing to have a customer call us with a problem. We solve their problem, and they’re satisfied with the fact that we solved the problem. It’s an entirely different matter if, after a customer calls us, they’re much more loyal to us and say, “I’m going to buy from Dell forever because I really get great service and that’s part of the overall experience that is great and I couldn’t imagine buying from anybody else.” There’s a huge difference between those two. And my view was that we had to go toward loyalty and move away from satisfaction.

We couldn’t agree more.

To access the full book summary of “Answering the Ultimate Question,” please visit BusinessSummaries.com.

A Top Sports Negotiator’s Lessons for Making Deals, Building Relationships, and Getting What You Want by Kenneth L. Shropshire

The Big Idea
Do you want to negotiate with the same success and confidence that you see among the professionals who handle teams, leagues, athletes – the sort of people you see in the sports pages and on ESPN – on a daily basis?

Negotiate Like the Pros tells the stories behind some of the most notable, complex, and lucrative sports deals of all time. A world-class negotiator in his own right, Kenneth L. Shropshire uses those stories to explore powerful negotiating strategies, and teaches you how to use them to score big in any negotiation.

Why You Need This Book
In Negotiate Like the Pros, Shropshire tells the stories behind some of the most sensational sports deals of all time and extracts powerful lessons on the skills you need to master to become a top-notch dealmaker.

This book offers an approach that challenges you to mentally analyze your own negotiating techniques, style, relationship-building strategies, and powers of persuasion. If you want to become stellar at deal making, building relationships, persuasion, and even leadership, then this book is for you – whether you are a sports fan or not.

Prepare With Passion
To begin, you’ll have to focus on the most important element in any negotiation: preparation. You’ll understand both how to prepare and why taking the time to do so can be the most valuable transformation you can make in your negotiating life.

That viewpoint dominates in sports, and it should be just as prevalent in business dealings. There are many coaching admonitions that dwell on the phrase “just do your job.”
CULTURAL, GENDER, AND RACIAL DIFFERENCES
In any global negotiation, you must take the time to learn and understand the negotiating style of the culture of your negotiating partner. Just as you wouldn’t like to be stereotyped as an “American-style” negotiator, those in other cultures also do not want to be stereotyped.

AGENDA SETTING
An important part of planning any detailed negotiation is to establish the road map to get from the beginning of the negotiation to the end result that you desire.

CONTEMPLATING THE APPROACH
Another key piece of the preparation phase is determining if there are any steps you can take to move your position forward that will be viewed positively by the decision maker on the other side.

According to successful coach John Wooden: “I believe there is nothing wrong with the other fellow being better than you are if you’ve prepared and are functioning in the way you’ve tried to prepare. Preparation puts you in the best possible position to win, whatever winning might be in a given setting.

ESTABLISHING CREDIBILITY
Credibility is important on two levels: your personal credibility and the credibility of the information you bring to the table. Even your counterpart will respect you more if you are credible.

WORST-CASE SCENARIO
You must be prepared for negative circumstances as well as for positive ones. Your counterpart may know that single piece of information you thought he lacked. Spend some time thinking about that worst-case scenario and how you will respond to it.

Stick with Your Style
This chapter guides you through both understanding your most comfortable bargaining style as well as how to use it to your advantage rather than fretting about a style that does not come easily to you. In sports, we most often express this as “playing within yourself.”

REVEL IN YOUR STYLE
Discover your strengths and base your preparation strategy on them. It is easy to be yourself for the long haul; imitating another style is a formula for potential failure. Be yourself, and assert that style to the fullest.

As much as you can control it, you want the negotiation environment to be as favorable as possible to your style and your comfort level. Once you have a grasp of your style, you want to set the stage for the negotiation so that it is advantageous to you and detrimental to your counterpart.

Set Goals and Aim High
This chapter relays the value of establishing goals and making them a regular part of your preparation process. It is not unusual for sports teams to begin a season aiming for an event or for the Olympics by setting goals for the number and types of medals they will win.

THE POWER OF GOALS
There is a psychology to getting successful negotiation results that is underused: visualizing the end result. The concept of visualization is valuable for everybody. You are more likely to accomplish goals if you actually have them and then picture them in your mind. You are certainly more likely to achieve success if you have goals than if you don’t have them.

GOALS, TARGETS, AND WALK-AWAY POINTS
If in the course of the negotiation you can deliver your plea and it passes the chuckle test (that is, no one laughs out loud at the suggestion), that is probably your goal position.

You should also know your walk-away point. Be as firm as you can about your walk-away point as you enter the negotiation. The target requires a high level of precision. What is the number, quantity, price, or whatever the metric is that you think, given the full impact of all of the information available, will close the deal fairly? This is the target, the bull’s-eye.

REFERENCE POINTS
Saying that you need to have a goal, target, and walk-away point is easy enough, but how should you establish goals? You do so with reference points, indicators that point you in the direction you want to go.

Seek Leverage
This chapter explores how lying and negotiating somehow seem to go hand in hand. It helps you push back against lying while focusing on the topic that is lied about most: tales told to create leverage. In sports and non-sports negotiations, the most prevalent lie is about how interested potential bidders really are in your goods or services.

LYING
When establishing leverage, honesty is essential. Anyone can have success with a single deceitful act – maybe even several successes. Caution: In your preparation, develop your game plan regarding competing offers carefully. But, of course, if you lie and get away with it, you may have substantially improved your position, unless your lie is uncovered.

LEVERAGE VIA TIMING
There are two issues related to timing and leverage that are important. The first is that leverage is fleeting. The other timing issue is how the parties view the future value of a deal.

LEVERAGE FROM CONSISTENCY
Leverage is often supported, too, by the element of consistency. People want the same standard applied to them that was applied to others. People want to be perceived as being reasonable and want to act consistently for that reason. This is especially the case where there is public information on similar previous deals.

Focus on Relationships and Interests
This chapter takes you beyond the monetary side of deals and focuses your attention on the other benefits that flow from them. For an athlete, such a side benefit may be a supportive relationship with the hometown crowd, as opposed to moving to a new city as a free agent for more money. In business, this benefit may be likened to a long-term relationship with a vendor or boss.

VALUING RELATIONSHIPS
The best negotiators incorporate a focus on relationships into their initial preparation as well as during the negotiation itself.

INTERESTS
Those most successful in courting relationships take the time and make the effort to understand the interests of their clients. In most deals, this means that you need to comprehend what there is in a relationship with a counterpart that is important beyond the dollars and cents of the deal.

ALIGNING INTERESTS
In creating your game plan, leave adequate time for thinking about relationships. The value of those relationships will be individual as well as cultural. If you are negotiating in another country, or with someone from a different country, be aware of the special issues that might be presented by virtue of this diversity.

Closely coupled with relationships is the importance of understanding the interests of the other side and those associated with them.

Often those interests, the real reasons why someone wants to get a deal done, are non-monetary. The two are intertwined, as you cannot always get to a party’s interests unless you extend the effort to develop a relationship.

RELATIONSHIPS IMPACTING FUTURE NEGOTIATIONS
Fully contemplate the importance of current and future negotiations. Make sure, too, that you understand your counterpart’s true interest in closing the deal. To be a successful negotiator, you must embrace the negotiating process and be fully engaged in seeking the best deal your circumstances allow.

Negotiate Like a Pro
Winning certainly has a different meaning in every negotiation. Achieving that desired outcome is most likely to occur when we use all of the skills that we possess in a carefully prepared manner.

The important point is that you must be prepared. Do the “practice” phase as thoroughly as possible.

Your bets get even better if your preparation is done at the highest level.

BusinessSummaries.com is a business book summaries service.  Every week, it sends out to subscribers a 9- to 12-page summary of a best-selling business book chosen from among the hundreds of books printed out in the United States.  For more information, please go to http://www.bizsum.com.

“Outfluence is the strategic use of silence and the giving of your good will to another person.”

Influence is an ephemeral power that operates without any direct or apparent effort. It is usually associated with prestige, wealth, ability, power, or position. The term often connotes negative behavior; although, with the proper motivation, influence is used to create positive results. Bill and Melinda Gates, for example, use their wealth to affect education around the world. In an effort to reduce poverty, former President Clinton is using his prestige to effect a worldwide movement that encourages others to give to the less fortunate.

A lobbyist is an influencer. The general purpose of an influencer is to bring something in, to call attention to himself or to his client, to win an opportunity. The primary role of a lobbyist is to promote the interests of his client through education and thus persuade legislators and others to act in a manner favorable to the lobbyist’s client.

Recognizing that temptations exist to illegally influence government and private employees, activities of lobbyists are regulated by the government. Despite this governance, some lobbyists violate the law by giving extravagant gifts and outright cash payments to politicians and government officials.

In 2006, superstar lobbyist Jack Abramoff pled guilty tofraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to bribe public officials in connection with his fundraising activities on behalf of the Republican Party. His were some of the larger transgressions that have afflicted both the Republican and Democratic parties. Businesspersons are equally guilty of influence peddling.

In 1973, Vice President of the United States Spiro Agnew pled guilty to accepting bribes while he was the Baltimore County Executive. Contractors were paying for special treatment from the county executive when it came time to award contracts. Businesses are in a race to attract and retain the best employees. Therefore, they seek to influence. A Google search uncovered 16,500 articles written about techniques that corporations and professional organizations are using to retain valued personnel. Law firms, for example, known for requiring their attorneys to work long hours in return for substantial salaries, are adjusting to a new generation of attorneys. The new generation values family time as well as the finer things in life that money can buy. Law firms are influencing talented lawyers to stay by offering in-house babysitting services and dry cleaning services; valets are available to run errands; and elaborate meals with the world’s finest wines are served, sometimes on silver platters.

How do you influence if you don’t have prestige, wealth, ability, or position? You turn to social influence.

Remember: Outfluence is the giving of your good will to another person in purposeful and sincere action that makes a person feel good about himself and about you and/or your business. An Outfluencer always looks outward, desiring to help another person first, secondarily thinking about the Outfluencer’s positive purpose.

Outfluence is often delivered silently. Its impact is enduring. It’s inexpensive, it’s natural, and it builds relationships. It identifies the social and business pretenders quickly, because insincerity is difficult to hide. Silent action focused on others is the key component to Outfluence.

BusinessSummaries.com is a business book summaries service.  Every week, it sends out to subscribers a 9- to 12-page summary of a best-selling business book chosen from among the hundreds of books printed out in the United States.  For more information, please go to http://www.bizsum.com.

The Big Idea
Barack Obama has brought the power of oration back to American politics. In speech after speech, Barack Obama has “fired up” millions of enthusiastic supporters with his inspiring vision, rousing rhetoric, and charismatic presence.

Creating Strong First Impressions – Image and Body Language
The strong first impression that Barack Obama makes reminds us that body movement and image speak a language to the audience as potent as anything said out loud.

Barack Obama is adept at establishing excellent first impressions. Good eye contact has also been valuable to Obama.

Effective Use of Body Language and Voice
In the delivery of his 2004 keynote address, Barack Obama demonstrated outstanding use of body language. In short, Obama created a very strong first impression.

Obama came across as authentic. Like Bill Clinton’s story, Ronald Reagan’s story, Harry Truman’s story…” This has helped him connect with audiences; his life story is viewed as a classic story and it has endeared Obama to millions of Americans.

Practices for Earning Trust and Confidence
Given Obama’s tremendous success, leaders have much to learn from the way he uses excellent communication practices to earn the trust and confidence of others.

Charisma helps leaders energize and motivate others.

Image and body language are also important for forming strong first impressions. Notable second impressions can reinforce strong first impressions.

Strong communicators remember the importance of props and staging in sending sub-messages that reinforce key themes. Obama’s success demonstrates many best practices with regard to winning hearts and minds.

Excellent communicators use details skillfully to demonstrate that they understand the experiences and perspectives of audience members. Empathy and action – these are things the audience seeks.

Driving Points Home
Leaders have much to garner and apply from Obama’s successes. Rhetorical questions help crystallize attention on key ideas.

When leveraging the “power of three,” skilled communicators underscore key points, building momentum or enhancing a sense of logic.

Conveying Vision
Leaders also have much to learn from the way Barack Obama conveys vision so effectively to audiences. Use of dynamic imagery represents another useful communication technique.

Finally, effective communicators often offer anecdotes, providing brief narration and short tales to breathe life into key themes. A speaker can inspire others to great achievements by employing words that resonate, including words that evoke shared values, patriotic values, and cherished principles.

Outstanding orators will build to a high point and end on that high, leaving listeners stirred, inspired, motivated, and focused on key themes.

This helps to keep those themes and ideas dominant in the minds of audience members.

BusinessSummaries.com is a business book summaries service.  Every week, it sends out to subscribers a 9- to 12-page summary of a best-selling business book chosen from among the hundreds of books printed out in the United States.  For more information, please go to http://www.bizsum.com