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Book
Review
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The
New Science of Selling and Persuasion:
How Smart Companies and Great Salespeople Sell,
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William T. Brooks, Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated,
April 2004
“Sales” has changed dramatically in
the last few decades, yet many organisations
and many salespeople continue to employ simplistic
practices that no longer work. This book brings
sales into the twenty-first century with carefully
researched tactics and strategies that work
in the real world of modern sales. Backed by
facts and figures, the author offers hard science
that dispels such time-honoured myths of selling
as: 1. Closing is the key to selling. (Truth:
Research clearly shows that how you open a sale
is more important to customers than how you
close it). 2. Persistence is the key to sales
success. (Truth: Badgering bad prospects doesn’t
work; concentrating on the right prospects from
the beginning does.) 3. Experienced salespeople
don’t need to prospect. (Truth: Prospecting
is an art and a science that inevitably leads
to more sales.) 4. Cold calling works. (Truth:
Cold calling is the least effective way to find
new prospects.)
More than just a guide for salespeople, this
book offers cures. |
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Shakespeare,
Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing
of Higher Education,
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David L. Kirp, Harvard University Press, November
2003
How can an English department be turned into
a revenue centre? How can students be graded
as “customers”? Wry and insightful,
this book takes us on a cross-country tour of
the most powerful trend in academic life today
- the rise of business values and the belief
that efficiency, immediate practical usefulness,
and marketplace triumph are the best measures
of a university’s success. With a shrewd
eye for the telling example, the author relates
stories of marketing incursions into places
as diverse as New York University’s philosophy
department and the University of Virginia’s
business school, the high-minded University
of Chicago and for-profit DeVry University.
He describes how universities “brand”
themselves for greater appeal in the competition
for top students; how academic superstars are
wooed at outsized salaries to boost an institution’s
visibility and prestige; how taxpayer-supported
academic research gets turned into profitable
patents and ideas get sold to the highest bidder;
and how the liberal arts shrink under the pressure
to be self-supporting. |
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Brand
Portfolio Strategy: Creating Relevance,
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Differentiation, Energy,
Leverage, and Clarity, David A. Aaker, The Free
Press, April 2004
In this long-awaited book the world’s premier
brand expert and author shows managers how to
construct a brand portfolio strategy that will
support a company’s business strategy and
create relevance, differentiation, energy, leverage,
and clarity. Building on case studies of world-class
brands such as Dell, Disney, Microsoft, Sony,
Dove, Intel, CitiGroup, and PowerBar, the book
demonstrates how powerful, cohesive brand strategies
have enabled managers to revitalise brands,
support business growth, and create discipline
in confused, bloated portfolios of master brands,
sub-brands, endorser brands, co-brands, and
brand extensions.
Aaker offers readers step-by-step advice on
what to do when confronting scenarios such as
the following: 1. Brands are under-leveraged;
2. The business strategy is at risk because
of inadequate brand platforms; 3. The business
faces a relevance threat caused by emerging
subcategories; 4. The firm’s brands are
tired and bland; 5. Strategy is paralysed by
a lack of priority among the brands; 6. Brands
are cluttered and confusing to both customers
and employees; 7. The firm needs to move into
the super-premium or value arenas to create
margin or sales volume; 8. Margin pressures
require. |
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