Differentiate or Die, Jack Trout

With enormous competition, markets are driven by choice. The customer has so many good alternatives that you pay dearly for your mistakes. Your competitors get your business and you don't get it back easily. Companies that don't understand this will not survive.

What Is Not A Differentiator?

• Creativity is NOT a differentiator
• Price is RARELY a differentiator
• Breadth of line is a DIFFICULT differentiator

What Is A Differentiator?

• Being FIRST is a differentiator.
• Attribute Ownership is a differentiator.
• Leadership is a differentiator.
• Heritage is a differentiator.
• Market specialty is a differentiator.
• Preference is a differentiator.
• How a product is made is a differentiator.
• Being latest is a differentiator.
• Hotness is a differentiator.

Once you've established what makes you different, your next assignment is to reflect that difference in everything you do. This single-mindedness will influence not only your customers but your own employees as well.

Founders At Work, Jessica Livingston

Interviews Max Levchin, co-founder of Paypal:

Livingston: What advice would you give to a young programmer who's thinking of starting a startup?

Levchin: Try to have a good co-founder...if you have a good team, you're halfway there.

Livingston: You didn't make any mistakes?

Levchin: There are all sorts of tactical decisions that we made here and there that played out to be wrong, but its not like I dould have predicted it. It's not one of these things that I'm now smarter and therefore I could have done it even better. I think, given the information available at that time, I would have likely chosen the same outcome.

Livingston: Was there anything hat was misunderstood about what you were trying to do?

Levchin: ... I don't think there was ever any clarity as to who we were until we knew it was working...

Interviews Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple:

Livingston: What is the key to excellence for an engineer?

Woz: You have to be very diligent. You have to check every little detail. You have to be so careful that you haven't left anything out. You have to think harder and deeper than you normally would. It's hard with today's large, huge programs.

Livingston: What advice would you give to hackers who are thinking about starting a company or making something of their own?

Woz: ... Always seek excellence: make your product better than the average person would...it's better to be young because you can spend a lot more nights, very, very late. Because you have to get things done, and there's almost no other way to get around that. When the times come, they are critical.

Interviews Ray Ozzie, founder of Groove Networks (now with Microsoft):

Livingston: What advice would you give to someone who was thinking or joining a startup?

Ozzie: Learn to respect and appreciate other people's skill sets, because you are going to need other people if you do start a company and you are a technologist. Understand that it's a rare, rare case when a tech enterpreneur is the right one to lead a startup for a long period of time...

That's where I think working for another company [first] and building those relationships is extremely valuable. Frequently, people think just running from school out into doing a startup is the best thing to do. But I think that getting some experience within a number of companies is really positive because you meet people and you start to develop patterns in your mind of the types of people that you need, and the types of people that you can trust, and the types of people you never want to work with.

Interviews Tim Brady, First Non-founding employee at Yahoo:

Livingston: Any advice you'd give to someone who was starting a startup?

Brady: ...you always hear "Don't do business with friends, bad idea." So, one of the things that really helped me was that [Jerry] and I had a conversation before I joined, "OK, here are the ground rules." ..."OK, if this happens, I walk away." We had the conversation in order to preserve our friendship, having no idea what was going to happen, but that conversation got me thinking abou it and why I was involved.

Interviews Charles Geschke, cofounder, Adobe:

Livingston: What were some major turning points?

Geschke: ...The other lesson that we had to learn, though, is that you can't be a one-product company. There's a very high risk...that eventually a combination of changes in the techological and competitive landscapes will eventually cause you to begin losing market share.

Livingston: Is there any other advice you would give to someone who was thinking of starting a startup?

Geschke: If you aren't passionate about what you are going to do, don't do it. Work smart, and not long, because you need to preserve all of your life, not just your work life.

Interviews Joel Spolsky, cofounder, Fog Creek Software:

Livingston: What advice would you give to a programmer who's thinking about starting a company?

Spolsky: ...Don't start a company unless you can convince one other person to go along with you.

Selling The Invisible, Harry Beckwith

Study your points of contact

To get started, study every point at which your company makes contact with a prospect.

Usually, you find only a few contact points.

Your receptionist.  Your business card.  Your building/store/office.  Your brouchure.  Your public appearances.  A sales call or presentation.  Just a few points of contact -- the moments that decide whether or not you get the business.

Then ask: What are we doing to make a phenomenal impression at every point?

Don't squander one point of contact.  It may be your only one.

The points of contact continue once the person becomes a client.  But again, the moments are surprisingly few.  A call here and there.  A meeting now and then.  A few points of contact.

Did you get everything possible from those points of contact?  Did the client feel respected, amazed, impressed, delighted?

Study each point of contact.  Then improve each one -- significantly.

Arsene Wenger The Professor, Myles Palmer

• "When you have people who speak ten different languages in the dressing room it is very difficult to get them to speak together, apart from being very polite.  A group that doesn't communicate together has a very low dynamic" Arsene Wenger.

• "When you are a manager and you feel the appetite of somebody you'd be guilty if you didn't try to help" Arsene Wenger.

• He had the patience to work with young, inexperienced players, which some top coaches lack.

• "In Japan, I learned a lot about myself and how I could be, ... I realised that football was what I enjoyed; the rest was just people's opinions"  Arsene Wenger, on his coaching stint in Japan.

• He doesn't allow any complacency to breed in any part of the club.

• He would never single out any player for blame in any public interviews.

The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton Christensen

• Read Chapter 8, How To Appraise Your Organization's Capabilities and Disabilities for a summary of the thesis.  Especially the Resources-Process-Values framework.

• In the start-up stages of an organization, much of what gets done is attributable to its resources - its people.

• Over time, however, the locus of the organization's capabilities shifts toward its processes and values.  As people work together successfully to address recurrent tasks, processes become defined.

• And as the business model takes shape and it becomes clear which types of business need to be accorded highest priority, values coalesce.

• Once members of the organization begin to adopt ways of working and criteria for making decisions by assumption, rather than by conscious decision, then those processes and values come to constitute the organization's culture.

• Culture enables employees to act autonomously and causes them to act consistently.

• But when the capabilities have come to reside in processes and values and especially when they have become embedded in culture, change can become extraordinarily difficult.

The End of Marketing As We Know It, Sergio Zyman

• Rather than be caught up in consistency, I have found it is far more important to be willing to try things that might work, and then test, measure, and revise.  Change my mind, you bet!  New info, new tactics.  Same strategy.  Fixed destination.

• When you refuse to change your mind, you miss the opportunity to capitalise on your learnings and do a better job of whatever you are trying to accomplish.

• You don't have to win every round to win the fight!

• You don't want virtual consumption... what you need is sales.

• Being successful today does not mean you are goint to be successful tomorrow.  You are going to have to develop a whole new set of skills, or you might need to hire people who have a whole different set of skills than the ones that you had before.

• I am constantly rethinking what is going on with my brand or product, or what is going on in the marketplace.

• Make sure everyone understand that marketing is too important to be left solely to the marketing guys.

Paradigms The Business of Discovering the Future, Joel Barker

• A paradigm is a set of rules and regulations (written or unwritten) that does two things: (1) it establishes or defines boundaries; and (2) it tells you how to be behave inside the boundaries in order to be successful.

• And sooner or later, every paradigm begins to develop a very special set of problems that everyone in that field wants to be able to solve and no one has a clue as to how to do it.

• A paradigm shift, then, is a change to a new game, a new set of rules.

• When a paradigm shifts, everyone goes back to zero.
  

• So who changes the paradigm?  The short and unsettling answer is that it will probably be someone who is an outsider.  Someone who really doesn't understand the prevailing paradigm in all its subtleties (sometimes they don't understand at all!).

• The four categories of paradigm shifters:

Category 1: A young person fresh out of training.

Category 2: An older person shifting fields.

Category 3: The maverick.

Category 4: Tinkerers.

• You don't have to be a paradigm shifter to get all the advantages.  Just being a paradigm pioneer [or early adopter -- emphasis mine] is sufficient.

• You manage within a paradigm, you lead between paradigms.

• I have seen an interesting pattern of choices that occurs during a paradigm shift.  It is really an oscillation between shifting paradigms and changing customers.  Here are 3 patterns in order of ascending impact:

Keep your paradigm; change your customer.

Change your paradigm; keep your customer.

Change your paradigm; change your customer.

Million Dollar Consulting, Al Weiss

1. People you meet on airplanes, no matter how cordial or at what level, virtually never hire you.
2. Acquisition of clients is the bedrock of success.
3. I'm concerned that the key to my ability to help that client demonstrably lay in refusing to allow myself to fall into a single preconceived role based on what I've been told.
4. It doesn't matter at all -- not all all -- what your billings are or how much you make.  The only thing that matters is how much you keep.
5. The best consultants strive to establish special relationships with clients, irrespective of their products, services, techniques, and other offerings.
6. "In matters of taste, swim with the current; in matters of principles, stand like a rock."  Jefferson
7. When buyer commitment is low, a low fee isn't the answer to create the sale you need because the result is indifference.

                            

8. The most important transition period is escaping the thinking that confines you to small successes.
9. Eight secrets for retaining Key Business as you grow [or change]:
• Involve the client in the change ans seek feedback
• Present the changes as opportunities, not threats
• Don't explain the changes ans raise your fees simultaneously
• Request ongoing feedback
• Introduce the change to clients as a group
• Offer to "grandfather" or otherwise safeguard the services being phased out
• Time your explanation with a client to coincide with a successfully completed assignment
• Be prepared to move a client who simply will not accommodate your evolving business approach to Category 3
10. Base fees on value, not time or tasks.
11. First impressions will influence whether an executive feels the relationship should exist at his or her level or at a lower one.
12. Always, always, always provide the prospect with a choice of 'yeses'.
13. READ Chapter 8 : ESTABLISHING FEES

Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got, Jay Abraham

• One of your breakthrough goals is to always make you, your business, or your product special, unique, and more advantageous in your client's eyes.
  
• Fifty questions to check strengths and weaknesses of your business -- Read Chapter 3.
  
• Make it easy for your customer to say YES.
  

Influence Science and Influence, Robert Cialdini

• RECIPROCATION: Because there is general distaste for those who take and make no effort to give in return, we will often go to great lengths to avoid being considered a moocher, ingrate, or freeloader.
  
• COMMITMENT & CONSISTENCY: The drive to be (and look) consistent constitutes a highly potent weapon of social influence, often causing us to act in ways that are clearly contrary to our own best interest.
  
• We must be wary of the tendency to be automatically and unthinkingly consistent.
  
• Click & whir.
  
• We are phenomenal suckers for flattery.
  
• SOCIAL PROOF: People, especially when they are unsure of themselves, follow the lead of similar others.
  
• LIKING: We most prefer to say 'yes' to those people we know and like.
  
• We are phenomenal suckers for flattery.
  
• There is a natural human tendency to dislike a person who brings us unpleasant information.
  
• AUTHORITY: Acting contrary to their own preferences, many normal, psychologically healthy individuals were willing to deliver dangerous and severe levels of pain to another person because they were directed to do so by an authority figure.
  
• SCARCITY: People seem to be more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal value.
  
• Freedoms once granted will not be relinquished without a fight.
  

Execution, Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan

Here is the fundamental problem.  People think of execution as the tactical side of the business, something leaders delegate while they focus on the perceived "bigger" issues.  This idea is completely wrong.  Such leaders are building houses without foundations.

Negotiate to Close, Gary Karrass

• We sellers must remember to always say "no more one more time before we say yes".
  
• Read Chapter 20 The Longterm Relationship
  

Presentation Zen, Garr Reynolds

• Symphony is about utilizing our whole mind -- logic, analysis, synthesis, intuition -- to make sense of our world (i.e. our topic), find the big picture, and determine what is important and what is not before the day of the talk.  It's also about deciding what matters and letting go of the rest.
  
• Playfulness and humor can go a long way toward making a presentation palatable.
  
• Few things can be more rewarding than connecting with someone by teaching something new, or sharing that which you feel is very important with others (meaning).
  
• Don't hang out with people who dismiss the idea of enthusiasm, or worse still, with those who try to kill yours.
  
• Constraints are simply the way of the world.
  
• Make your ideas sticky by making them simple -- a presentation is never just about the facts.
  

Presenting To Win, Jerry Weissman

• WIIFY - what's in it for you.
  
• Overwhelming majority of business presentations merely serve to convey data, not to persuade.
  
• The good presenter is one who effectively manages the minds of the audience.
  
• The person who is able to tell an effective business story is perceived as being in command and deserves the confidence of others.
  
• Every feature must be translated into benefits.
  
• Build a presentation tailored to one audience, on one occasion, presented by one set of presenters, conveying one story, with one purpose.
  

The Story Factor, Annette Simmons

• The self seeks to achieve what it wants - whether it is profit, destruction, justice, or martyrdom.  The psychological goal of influence is to connect your goals to your listeners' self-interest in some manner.
  

• Before you can influence you must establish some connection.
  

• When we assume that people already know who we are and jump into persuading them to do what we want, we sabotage our own ability influence.
  

• You can't influence people if they can't remember your message.
  

• Getting to "yes" too fast only creates the temporary illusion of successful influence.  Implementation over the long haul is the real test.  Regardless of how "right" a decision might be, if people don't like this decision, it won't happen -- not like it was supposed to happen.  It is short-sighted to focus on an event (decision) when your real goal is to influence behaviour -- and behaviour is and forever will be primarily motivated by feelings.
  

• The secret to perseverance is found in the support of people who love you and believe in you.
  

• The individual or goup may agree with your cause, yet they don't take action because they believe they are powerless.  Your job is to help them see their power, then influence them to use it.  It ain't easy.
  

Introduction

This blog will just contain what I think are the key thoughts in the books listed.

I've also read a lot of forgettable books -- those are not listed.  But recently, I've taken to listening to my books instead.   Audio books are great!