Dale Carnegie Redux

The Art of People – 11 Simple People Skills That Will Get You Everything You Want – Dave Kerpen

80 years ago a poor farm boy from Missouri released one of the bestselling books of all time, one that remains a perennial bestseller to this day; Dale Carnegie, How To Win Friends and Influence People. Millions of people seeking self-improvement, sales and improved interpersonal skills folk to Carnegie’s books for advice, which still stands the test of time.

Now, New York Times bestselling author Dave Kerpen offers up what some have dubbed as a book similar to the Carnegie classic, only “better suited for today’s world” with, The Art of People – 11 Simple People Skills That Will Get You Everything You Want.

 

Kerpen offers up over fifty puzzle pieces, short chapter length essays that fit nicely in the eleven categories the title describes. Those eleven include things like Understanding Yourself and Understanding People, Reading People, Leading People and Inspiring People among others.

Kerpen makes good on the titles promise of keeping things simple as he offers up personal anecdotes and advice for putting this guidance into play. He also adds a personal exercise, FAST – First Action Steps, a few simple steps/questions/exercises that you can quickly put into action to put what he is teaching into play.

Anyone who has spent any time working to improve themselves or their work/personal life, including Mr. Carnegies work, will find a lot of familiar themes here. While Kerpen isn’t really plowing a lot of new ground here, he has pulled together a very useful, very workable collection of things that will contribute to the positive outcome you are seeking.  

Don’t Overlook This Piece of Your Marketing Plan

So you’ve developed your marketing plan, fully funded your budget, launched your campaigns, optimized your website, held your event, aligned your content, your ads are flawless; you are ready to go and grow. Then when your customers come through your door the wheels come off because they have a terrible experience.

While you can design a brilliant creative campaign, have all of the pieces in place, but if your team isn’t ready to deliver the best possible customer service/experience, then all of the money you put into marketing will have been wasted. It behooves you to make sure that you don’t lose focus on what can be the most critical piece in your marketing plan; customer service.

A pair of new books offer up some great advice that truly spans the business spectrum that you can put in place with your team to either improve or begin your approach to customer service/experience.

Hello! And Every Little Thing That Matters – Impactful Ideas for Treating Your Customers Right – Kate Edwards

Could it really be as simple as saying Hello, when your customer enters your business? The answer from customer service consultant Kate Edwards is YES. Edwards who consults with some of the finest dining establishments in the world is out with a step by step guide, Hello! And Every Little Thing That Matters – Impactful Ideas for Treating Your Customers Right that businesses can plug into to help improve their customer experience.

Think about the last time you visited a retail establishment, restaurant, medical office or any place of business; did the staff make you feel welcome? If they did, what did they do to make that happen? And if they didn’t, what was missing? Did it seem like your being there was a bother that the staff didn’t really want to deal with? Was the greeting your received mechanical and without feeling?

Edwards make the case that the little things, like a greeting can make a difference and set the tone for your customers experience. But it’s more than just tossing off a “Hello and welcome to XYZ widgets” it’s about how you deliver the greeting and what follows; are you making what could be a simple visit a memorable experience.

If you deliver that personalized experience, it sets you apart from your competition and gets people’s attention in a busy, overloaded world. Edwards serves up plenty of ideas that you can put in place today.

501 Ways to Roll Out the Red Carpet for Your Customers: Easy-to-Implements Ideas to Inspire Loyalty, Get New Customers and make a Lasting Impression – Donna Cutting (Career Press)

Speaking of plenty of ideas, how about 501 of them? Donna Cutting, author, keynote speaker, founder of Red-Carpet Learning Systems and customer service expert services up plug and play ideas that cut a broad swath through a variety of industries in her new book 501 Ways to Roll Out the Red Carpet for Your Customers: Easy-to-Implements Ideas to Inspire Loyalty, Get New Customers and make a Lasting Impression.

Cutting takes things a step further by offering leaders insight into how to not only develop and improve customer service plans, but how to make the transition from the white board to actual execution of these strategies. While some of the bold customer service ideas Cutting serves up are fairly industry specific. It is easy to see how many can be adapted and adopted in other industries as well.

While that first impression matters, Cutting also preaches consistency, consistency, consistency, so that your customer service is ongoing and not a one off approach. This is what will not only keep your customers coming back, but also get them advocating on your behalf; while money can’t buy word of mouth, customer service, good and bad, certainly can.

Cracking the Code

The Creator’s Code: The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs – Amy Wilkinson (Simon and Schuster)

Imagine…you have spent countless hours accessing and interviewing some 200 successful entrepreneurs; in the process generating mountains of transcripts and information. Working your way through this mound of information you start to see trends emerge that you can boil down into an easily accessible list that aspiring entrepreneurs can put into play.

That, in a nutshell, is what Stanford lecturer and business advisor Amy Wilkinson has done with her book The Creator’s Code: The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs.

 

Wilkinson’s Six Essentials list includes:

1. FIND THE GAP: By staying alert, creators spot opportunities that others don't see.
2. DRIVE FOR DAYLIGHT: Just as race-car drivers keep their eyes fixed on the road ahead, creators focus on the future.
3. FLY THE OODA LOOP: Creators continuously update their assumptions. In rapid succession, they observe, orient, decide, and act.
4. FAIL WISELY: Creator set failure ratios, place small bets to test ideas, and develop resilience. They hone the skill to turn setbacks into successes.
5. NETWORK MINDS: Creators bring together diverse brainpower to come up with breakthrough solutions.
6. GIFT SMALL GOODS: Creators unleash generosity by helping others, often by sharing information, pitching in to complete a task, or opening opportunities to colleagues.

Working my way through Wilkinson’s list, it made sense that there was a level of interconnectivity between the pieces of the code puzzle. These six essentials tend to match nicely with business principles I have been a fan of for a long time; notably number one which matches well with my aspiration to Blue Ocean Strategy and creating new market space.

Is The Creator’s Code an Earth shattering business breakthrough…probably not, but it is a nice, concise volume that deserves a place on your business bookshelf.

Sweat The Small Stuff

Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends – Martin Lindstrom (St. Martin’s Press)

For years we’ve been told “don’t sweat the small stuff.” Now bestselling author and business consultant Martin Lindstrom makes the case that if you want to be a successful business owner that you should be doing the exact opposite; that you need to focus on the small things because the devil is in the details.

With his new book, Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends, the author of Buyology, makes the case that while so-called big data can tell you what people are doing, it is the small data that reveals why they are doing what they are doing.

Through his up close and personal observation of consumers in their environment, rather than in a sterile hotel conference room focus group, Lindstrom manages to drill down to the nuts and bolts of consumers and their behaviors based on methodologies that are rooted in ethnography (the scientific descriptions of people’s cultures and customs) and anthropology.

While hard core data scientists may blanch at some of Lindstrom’s gut level hunch approach to consumer science, it really is hard to argue with a guy who spends 300 nights a year traveling the globe and staying in the homes of those he observes. Consider it consumer science and marketing Airbnb- style.

 

Shift to What Fits

Under New Management – How Leading Organizations are Upending Business as Usual – David Burkus (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

David Burkus’ bona fides include; business school professor, bestselling author, contributor to Harvard Business Review and Forbes, speaker and consultant to Fortune 500 companies. With his latest effort Under New Management – How Leading Organizations are Upending Business as Usual, Burkus serves up an overview of a series of paradigm shifting business practices that have been put into play at a variety of business.

As with many dynamic shifts in long held business practices, these business practices will likely be met with some serious push back because they fly squarely in the face of “how we do things.”

 

While Burkus gives plenty of examples of companies who have put these shifts into practice things like pay people to quit, ban email and lose the standard vacation policy have a radical ring to them. Therein lies the rub; while at places like Zappos, Amazon and tech firms these kinds of things might make sense, the reality is, most businesses aren’t like those companies, which make these changes difficult if not impossible to implement.

The trick is to find which of these management shifts that makes sense for your business and you can implement in your company. One that is an easy starting place is the hire as a team concept. Rather than centralizing the hiring process with a human resources leader, why not involve those frontline staffers who will be working side by side with the potential new hire in the selection process? It’s those folks who are best attuned to the needs of their departments and what it takes to be a part of their team.

While banning email might not work, understanding the negative impact that high volumes of email have on your productivity and working to limit how you use email might be a better fit for your business. Burkus isn’t suggesting a one size fits all approach, but rather utilizing and adapting what works best for you.

You Can’t Teach Passion

The Power of Broke – How Empty Pockets, a Tight Budget, and a Hunger for Success Can become Your Greatest Competitive Advantage – Daymond John (Crown Business)

The story has been told thousands of times. It comes in many shapes and forms and from a variety of backgrounds, but it goes something like this; an entrepreneur, an ordinary average John or Jane as an idea and wants to start a business because they think they have a product or service that people want or need. Said entrepreneur pulls themselves up by their bootstraps and scrimps, scrapes and does without, working countless hours and through hard work and perseverance they grow a successful business.

Nowadays the story goes more like this; someone thinks up an idea for a product or service and then they build a slide deck, gather a bunch of venture capitalists or angel investors in a conference room and make a pitch for cash. Once they get the cash they rent a slick office with cool office stuff and try to find ways to make it to an IPO so they can really cash in.

Shark Tank investor and entrepreneur Daymond John, who built his fortune the old fashioned way, by scrapping and scraping his way to success makes the case for dialing back the clock and telling current entrepreneurs that the hunger to succeed and hard work in not a bad thing. John makes the case in the form of his new book The Power of Broke – How Empty Pockets, a Tight Budget, and a Hunger for Success Can become Your Greatest Competitive Advantage.

While everybody hopes for the rags to billions success, John says there is value to be gained from the struggle. When you grew up never hearing the word NO, it can be hard to take the first time you encounter it in the real world. Those who are accustomed to the no, work all that much harder to get to the yes. John points out that those who are in that boat, often come up with the most creative solutions to tackle those day to day business problems that most entrepreneurs face at one point or another.

By developing an early understanding of the value of hard work, many up from the bootstraps business people have a better understanding of value of success. It’s amazing how an intimate knowledge of how to do more with less can translate well to the business world. Fear is a great motivator and John makes the case that you should embrace the fear and continue to charge forward with passion.

 

Inspiration to Succeed – Three Ways

The School of Greatness: A Real-World Guide to Living Bigger, Loving Deeper, and Leaving a Legacy – Lewis Howes (Rodale Books)

Can everyone who has ever been driven and passionate towards a singular goal only to have that dream sidetracked and you left standing by the side of the road wondering what’s next, relate to Lewis Howes’ story? Howes had the burning desire to be an elite athlete; an All-American and an injury sidetracked his dream.

Left sleeping on his sister couch, Howes was left with trying to pick up the pieces of his life and chart a course to what was next. He relates that his first and what would prove to be his most fruitful steps including reaching out to leaders he admired in search of guidance and mentoring.

 

Along the way Howes developed not only a team of leaders but applied what he learned to launch a successful online business and took his hard earned education and used it to help others as a business coach and speaker. Now Howes continues that process by sharing what he learned and how you can apply it to your life and business in his new book, The School of Greatness: A Real-World Guide to Living Bigger, Loving Deeper, and Leaving a Legacy.

Howes anchors each chapter of the book buy illustrating a lesson he picked up from those mentors. Is it earth shattering or ground breaking? Probably not, but it does gather under one set of covers a broad base of knowledge and actionable guidance which makes it worth adding to your bookshelf.

Money Making Mom: How Every Mom Can Earn More and Make a Difference – Crystal Paine (Thomas Nelson)

While I am always willing to lend a helping hand to those in need, I am always a little taken aback by folks who’s first play is to look for a hand out and in this day and age of tough economic times and all too often it’s we are confronted by a sob story and a request to “go fund me.”

While I am not saying this to be mean spirited or hard hearted, I have always chosen to confront adversity by digging deep and working harder and that’s what makes Crystal Paine’s book Money Making Mom: How Every Mom Can Earn More and Make a Difference, so inspiring.

 

My small cheer when I read the line, “No matter what, never give up. Winners aren’t quitters. Keep going, keep pressing forward, keep learning, keep experimenting, and someday soon, you will start to see the fruit from your efforts” drew some strange looks from my family, but I could relate to that process of forging ahead and reinventing myself.

While Paine clearly directs her efforts towards inspiring women to higher achievement her advice and guidance can be a much needed shot in the arm for anyone striving to succeed. While much of this will be familiar territory to folks who read these kinds of books, Paine succeeds in the sense that all too often women must try to adapt “good old boy” approaches to their needs. Paine gives women permission to be successful. This one would be the perfect gift for not only your wife, but also your daughter.

 

The Entitlement Cure: Finding Success in Doing Hard Things the Right Way – John Townsend, PhD. (Zondervan)

Quick show of hands…who has heard this from a family member, friend or co-worker, “it’s too hard.” You can add your own level of whininess. Let’s face it, we now live in a world that moves at a high velocity; we are confronted both at how and work with doing more, with less and stress is maxed out.

At the same time we have evolved into a society that really doesn’t understand what hard times and sacrifice really are. We want things to be easy and we’ve been sold a bill of goods that if we just had this or that it would make our life easier. That process has created a generation of whimps who don’t understand work ethic and are easily overwhelmed.

 

All this as created an a sense of entitlement in our culture that Dr. John Townsend, a psychologist and leadership expert examines and offers up his solution for breaking the cycle in The Entitlement Cure: Finding Success in Doing Hard Things the Right Way.

Townsend examines the entitlement dynamic in our family life, our business life in society and in government and the detrimental impact it has on us all. He takes the next step by offering steps that we can take to “cure” the problem and develop the habits that will truly improve all of our lives. Will it be an easy process; probably not, but then again is anything worth truly doing ever really easy?