Dave Donelson's Blog: OutTakes, page 17
February 5, 2011
Competing With No-Overhead Operators
These days, deciding how to price your product can be especially difficult. Many brick-and-mortar retailers find themselves competing against online shops that have very little overhead. Some of these online companies don't take title to the merchandise they sell, and few provide for returns in the case of defects or mistakes. Other companies, such as well-run, sophisticated garages, are forced to compete with shade-tree mechanics who have never even talked with an insurance agent, much less bought a policy. Unfortunately, there are some customers who are going to do business with those folks because price is what drives their decision-making, whether by choice or necessity. But you can't let those customers set your prices because you'll never be able to compete—price-wise—with the no-overhead operators.
Your answer has to be providing value to your customers that justifies the higher prices you charge. You provide value by standing behind the merchandise you sell with reasonable return policies, providing side-by-side hands-on comparisons of optional equipment, and helping the customer make intelligent choices with face-to-face advice from knowledgeable personnel. These are all things the online drop-shipper has trouble doing. These may be intangibles that are difficult to quantify, but they add value to the customer's transaction with your business, making higher prices easier for them to swallow.
This same value-plus strategy holds when you're competing with a large chain store. They can't match the personal service and relationship with each individual customer provided by a small shop owner. Their volume purchasing may enable them to offer lower prices, but they'll never know every customer by name and every customer's favorite flavor of ice cream.
Competitive labor rates are tricky. Again, you're probably wise to not compete on price with the weekend handyman or shade tree mechanic. Instead, count on the value you deliver to justify a higher price. Your installers and technicians are fairly paid and receive at least some benefits, so they'll be around when the customer comes back. If they've moved on, you'll have hired someone else to take their place. You'll also have trained those staff members and added your own expertise to help them over the rough spots. Your customer should have a sense that his job is being handled by a team or professionals, which makes it worth a higher price.
With all these factors to consider, setting prices is part art and part science with maybe a little management magic thrown in for good measure. To create a profit for your shop's pricing structure, take one part cost of goods sold, add a portion of labor, two scoops of overhead and a dose of competition, then stir rapidly with a sharp pencil.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Your answer has to be providing value to your customers that justifies the higher prices you charge. You provide value by standing behind the merchandise you sell with reasonable return policies, providing side-by-side hands-on comparisons of optional equipment, and helping the customer make intelligent choices with face-to-face advice from knowledgeable personnel. These are all things the online drop-shipper has trouble doing. These may be intangibles that are difficult to quantify, but they add value to the customer's transaction with your business, making higher prices easier for them to swallow.
This same value-plus strategy holds when you're competing with a large chain store. They can't match the personal service and relationship with each individual customer provided by a small shop owner. Their volume purchasing may enable them to offer lower prices, but they'll never know every customer by name and every customer's favorite flavor of ice cream.
Competitive labor rates are tricky. Again, you're probably wise to not compete on price with the weekend handyman or shade tree mechanic. Instead, count on the value you deliver to justify a higher price. Your installers and technicians are fairly paid and receive at least some benefits, so they'll be around when the customer comes back. If they've moved on, you'll have hired someone else to take their place. You'll also have trained those staff members and added your own expertise to help them over the rough spots. Your customer should have a sense that his job is being handled by a team or professionals, which makes it worth a higher price.
With all these factors to consider, setting prices is part art and part science with maybe a little management magic thrown in for good measure. To create a profit for your shop's pricing structure, take one part cost of goods sold, add a portion of labor, two scoops of overhead and a dose of competition, then stir rapidly with a sharp pencil.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
February 3, 2011
Learn Better Sales Techniques From Free Podcast
Selling can be a fun, creative endeavor. Whether you do it for a living or rely on others to sell for you, it pays to know how to do it better. Learn how with the free podcast version of The Dynamic Manager's Guide To Sales Techniques: How To Create New Prospects And Make More Sales, available now from Podiobooks.com.The book is focused on how to create demand for your products or services with a personal selling approach that's painless and totally professional. Forget knocking on doors, high-pressure closing, and other unsavory sales tactics. The Dynamic Manager's way helps you build close bonds with your prospects so you turn them into customers who buy again and again. It's a sales strategy that's been proven in the field by thousands of salespeople in hundreds of companies.
To learn more, listen to a sample. And remember, the podcast version is free!
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
February 2, 2011
Advertising with Impact
It is a relatively common belief that advertising is what creates the need to buy in a customer's mind. But if you run a business in the real world, such as a home improvement center, you've likely learned that the need to buy arises not simply because a customer saw a commercial or billboard, but out of true necessity. If a customer's garden hose burst this morning or a skunk dug up their lawn last night, those events will bring them into the market for a new hose or some insecticide. And if they were exposed to your advertising just after those things happened, they are going to be very receptive to your message. Customers tend to respond to the last ad they saw or heard in the window of time after the need arose and just before they make their decision to purchase.
Since skunks don't attack every lawn in your market the same week, not all customers know they need grub killer at exactly the same time. Some need it this week, some next week; some the week after. The week you're not advertising, you miss the chance to influence the customers who have chosen to buy that week. Sure, there's some residual effect from the advertising you did in the previous weeks, but the ad with the greatest impact is the one the customer heard most recently.
So, what does this mean for your advertising budget? Should you spend more? Can you spend less? The answer is a resounding "maybe." The amount of spending isn't the issue here. What's most important is that you find a way to advertise as continuously as possible. Generally speaking, it's preferable to spread a small budget over more weeks than to bunch it up for more exposure during a shorter period (commonly called flighting). Don't spend your entire month's budget on one full-page ad. Run one quarter-page ad every week for four weeks instead. Don't run 300 radio spots in one week, then remain silent for the next five—schedule 50 spots each week for six weeks. Or even 25 per week for twelve weeks!
This is not to say that you need to advertise at a uniform level year 'round.You should still vary the amount of exposure you buy according to the sales you expect to generate each period. Nor does this mean that you shouldn't heavy-up for a weekend sale or other short-term promotion. What it does mean, though, is that one ad by itself doesn't work. You need consistent repetition to make your advertising work the same way you need lots and lots of seeds to start a lawn.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Since skunks don't attack every lawn in your market the same week, not all customers know they need grub killer at exactly the same time. Some need it this week, some next week; some the week after. The week you're not advertising, you miss the chance to influence the customers who have chosen to buy that week. Sure, there's some residual effect from the advertising you did in the previous weeks, but the ad with the greatest impact is the one the customer heard most recently.
So, what does this mean for your advertising budget? Should you spend more? Can you spend less? The answer is a resounding "maybe." The amount of spending isn't the issue here. What's most important is that you find a way to advertise as continuously as possible. Generally speaking, it's preferable to spread a small budget over more weeks than to bunch it up for more exposure during a shorter period (commonly called flighting). Don't spend your entire month's budget on one full-page ad. Run one quarter-page ad every week for four weeks instead. Don't run 300 radio spots in one week, then remain silent for the next five—schedule 50 spots each week for six weeks. Or even 25 per week for twelve weeks!
This is not to say that you need to advertise at a uniform level year 'round.You should still vary the amount of exposure you buy according to the sales you expect to generate each period. Nor does this mean that you shouldn't heavy-up for a weekend sale or other short-term promotion. What it does mean, though, is that one ad by itself doesn't work. You need consistent repetition to make your advertising work the same way you need lots and lots of seeds to start a lawn.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
January 27, 2011
How To Use New Media To Reach New Customers
I'm not so sure there are actually new rules for marketing and public relations as much as there is new technology to use to apply the old ones, but David Meerman Scott does an excellent job of telling you how to do it. His advice to "target a specific audience," for example, is certainly not a new concept to marketing professionals. In fact, I spend a great deal of time on that subject in The Dynamic Manager's Guide To Marketing and Advertising. The way he applies the rule to social networking sites like LinkedIn, however, is definitely worth exploring. The book is particularly useful when it comes to helping the technical novice understand such basic tools as RSS feeds and YouTube videos. The author's insistence that the marketer build an online presence around useful, unobtrusive content is particularly appealing.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
January 25, 2011
Stage Fright: Effective Energy
Do you experience stage fright before an important presentation or speech? If your answer is "yes," good! First of all, you're not alone. Secondly, your nerves can actually help you become a more effective speaker.
Over the years I've done thousands of seminars, sales presentations, speeches, and live radio and television appearances—and I still experience stage fright. I get butterflies in my stomach, sweat on my palms, and shortness of breath every time. I welcome them as signs that my energy level is going to be high—I want the extra energy that comes from an attack of stage fright.
Stage fright is your friend—all you have to do is control it. The first step is to recognize the symptoms as nothing more than a small rush of adrenaline. The next step is to make a conscious choice to focus your excess energy on the presentation you're going to make.
To control the intensity of your stage fright symptoms before your presentation, take the physical edge off them by doing some simple isometric exercises. Press your palms together—hard—for thirty seconds. Grip the arms of your chair as hard as you can for another half minute. This will burn off some of that excess adrenaline in your system while leaving you the energy you need to convey enthusiasm.
Now take a couple of deep, long breaths, using your diaphragm to fill your lungs completely. Let each breath out slowly to a count of ten. This will steady your voice and make you ready for a powerful opening statement.
Your stage fright has now become a reservoir of energy that you can tap into when you need it. You'll find that you're better focused and your presentation will be much more dynamic. You've made stage fright your friend.
Public speaking isn't everyone's forte, but most gallery owners are like Theresa Abel, owner of The Artisan Gallery in Belleville, Wisconsin who says, "I love talking to people about the work if they're really interested." She suggests turning that skill into group presentations because, "It's good for business because the more information and knowledge you give your customers, the more they appreciate it and the more they want to own a piece and take it home."
Catherine Bert, owner of Bert Gallery in Providence, RI, takes it a step further: "People are very intimidated by the art world. They feel they are unprepared to experience the visual arts and this is breaking down those barriers. We introduce people in very non-threatening ways to the visual arts." The result is good for everybody concerned. "They fall in love with what I have been in love with for many years: creative minds and looking at ideas and objects in the world from different artists' perspectives."
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Over the years I've done thousands of seminars, sales presentations, speeches, and live radio and television appearances—and I still experience stage fright. I get butterflies in my stomach, sweat on my palms, and shortness of breath every time. I welcome them as signs that my energy level is going to be high—I want the extra energy that comes from an attack of stage fright.
Stage fright is your friend—all you have to do is control it. The first step is to recognize the symptoms as nothing more than a small rush of adrenaline. The next step is to make a conscious choice to focus your excess energy on the presentation you're going to make.
To control the intensity of your stage fright symptoms before your presentation, take the physical edge off them by doing some simple isometric exercises. Press your palms together—hard—for thirty seconds. Grip the arms of your chair as hard as you can for another half minute. This will burn off some of that excess adrenaline in your system while leaving you the energy you need to convey enthusiasm.
Now take a couple of deep, long breaths, using your diaphragm to fill your lungs completely. Let each breath out slowly to a count of ten. This will steady your voice and make you ready for a powerful opening statement.
Your stage fright has now become a reservoir of energy that you can tap into when you need it. You'll find that you're better focused and your presentation will be much more dynamic. You've made stage fright your friend.
Public speaking isn't everyone's forte, but most gallery owners are like Theresa Abel, owner of The Artisan Gallery in Belleville, Wisconsin who says, "I love talking to people about the work if they're really interested." She suggests turning that skill into group presentations because, "It's good for business because the more information and knowledge you give your customers, the more they appreciate it and the more they want to own a piece and take it home."
Catherine Bert, owner of Bert Gallery in Providence, RI, takes it a step further: "People are very intimidated by the art world. They feel they are unprepared to experience the visual arts and this is breaking down those barriers. We introduce people in very non-threatening ways to the visual arts." The result is good for everybody concerned. "They fall in love with what I have been in love with for many years: creative minds and looking at ideas and objects in the world from different artists' perspectives."
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
January 19, 2011
The Psychology Of Persuasion Supports Effective Marketing Plans
The place to look for an explanation of why your marketing plans work or don't work, look deep into your prime customer's head. That's where Robert Cialdini takes you in this classic work on persuasion that will show you not only why behavior can be altered, but how to do it.
The author, Robert Cialdini, is a professor of marketing at Arizona State as well as president of a consulting company specializing in ethical persuasion. He's also a highly capable writer on what can be a confusing topic. Unlike my book on the subject, The Dynamic Manager's Guide to Marketing and Advertising (which draws heavily from the stories of business owners), some of the material here might be a little technical for the casual reader, but the serious business reader will find it worth the effort. Marketers, sales people, and managers of all stripes should take the time to understand the concepts in this substantive work.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
The author, Robert Cialdini, is a professor of marketing at Arizona State as well as president of a consulting company specializing in ethical persuasion. He's also a highly capable writer on what can be a confusing topic. Unlike my book on the subject, The Dynamic Manager's Guide to Marketing and Advertising (which draws heavily from the stories of business owners), some of the material here might be a little technical for the casual reader, but the serious business reader will find it worth the effort. Marketers, sales people, and managers of all stripes should take the time to understand the concepts in this substantive work.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
January 17, 2011
Use the Internet to Surprise Your Customers
Taking the extra step to "wow" a customer is made especially effective and easy when done online. The additional effort can be something simple, such as putting a picture of the results of your work for them on a calendar, coffee mug, t-shirt, or even a teddy bear. If you work in home remodeling, painting, landscaping, pool installations, or anything else with a visual impact, this sort of gift will be a real treat for your customer. Online services like Café Press (www.cafepress.com) will put your digital photo on a wide variety of merchandise for just a few dollars. There aren't any setup charges and you can order a piece at a time, too. All it takes is a photo and a few minutes online.
While you're cruising the web with marketing on your mind, look for websites, groups, or other online material your customer might find interesting. Then drop him or her an email with a link to the site you've found. If your customer is a Corvette owner, for example, send him a link to the nearest Corvette club's website. Even if he already belongs, he'll appreciate the fact that you were thinking of him. Just about every special interest group you can imagine is on the Internet someplace. It doesn't have to be anything exotic, either. If you know your customer is into music, send her a link to an up-and-coming band's MySpace site. It should go without saying that you need to know your customer to carry out this tactic.
The key factor is to make your surprise something with a personal connection to the individual customer. If your nursery sends a generic link to all the flower shows in your area to all your customers, that's fine, but you've lost that personal touch that makes the surprise such a potent marketing tool. Never forget, you're in the retail business, where you succeed by selling one customer at a time.
Speaking of websites, what's on yours? It's fine to have pages extolling the virtues of your experience, the value of your merchandise, and the expertise of your technicians, but you're missing a bet if you don't have a section devoted to your customers. For a mechanic, putting a picture of your customer's car on the web is like taping their kid's picture to the refrigerator door. It makes you both feel good. Just don't post any identifying information about the customer on the web: a caption describing the car and perhaps the work you did on it is enough. And never, ever, post a picture of the customer's kid on the Internet—with or without permission.
Once the picture is up, surprise him with the link in an email. These days, you don't even have to pay for a website. The social networks like Facebook or MySpace, photo sharing sites like Flickr, Shutterfly, and Kodak.com or even blog services such as Google's Blogger, are all free and can allow you to communicate with—and surprise—your customers online.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
While you're cruising the web with marketing on your mind, look for websites, groups, or other online material your customer might find interesting. Then drop him or her an email with a link to the site you've found. If your customer is a Corvette owner, for example, send him a link to the nearest Corvette club's website. Even if he already belongs, he'll appreciate the fact that you were thinking of him. Just about every special interest group you can imagine is on the Internet someplace. It doesn't have to be anything exotic, either. If you know your customer is into music, send her a link to an up-and-coming band's MySpace site. It should go without saying that you need to know your customer to carry out this tactic.
The key factor is to make your surprise something with a personal connection to the individual customer. If your nursery sends a generic link to all the flower shows in your area to all your customers, that's fine, but you've lost that personal touch that makes the surprise such a potent marketing tool. Never forget, you're in the retail business, where you succeed by selling one customer at a time.
Speaking of websites, what's on yours? It's fine to have pages extolling the virtues of your experience, the value of your merchandise, and the expertise of your technicians, but you're missing a bet if you don't have a section devoted to your customers. For a mechanic, putting a picture of your customer's car on the web is like taping their kid's picture to the refrigerator door. It makes you both feel good. Just don't post any identifying information about the customer on the web: a caption describing the car and perhaps the work you did on it is enough. And never, ever, post a picture of the customer's kid on the Internet—with or without permission.
Once the picture is up, surprise him with the link in an email. These days, you don't even have to pay for a website. The social networks like Facebook or MySpace, photo sharing sites like Flickr, Shutterfly, and Kodak.com or even blog services such as Google's Blogger, are all free and can allow you to communicate with—and surprise—your customers online.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
January 16, 2011
Black Swan Green - A Classic Of The Genre
Black Swan Green is a lyrical coming of age novel less noteworthy for its character and plot points than for its exemplary use of language to strike at the reader's heart. David Mitchell makes precise word choices and smoothly melds them into phrases and sentences that are greater than the sum of their parts. He's like a Wall Street hedge fund manager boldly using leverage to increase the reader's return on investment. He should be studied by every writer who wants to learn from one of the best.
In this book, Mitchell writes in the voice of a middle-class British school boy, using idioms and slang that may be a little off-putting at first. The slight effort to comprehend them is worth it, though, because it makes the casual reader show down a bit and enjoy the writing itself. From lyrical descriptions to crackling dialogue and heart-thumping exposition, Mitchell does it all well:
"I peered through Dad's razor-sharp blind, over the glebe, past the cockrel tree, over more fields, up to the Malvern Hills. Pale morning, icy sky, frosted crusts on the hills, but no sign of sticking snow, worse luck."
None of this is to say the story itself isn't compelling, although it's driven by mostly standard preteen angst. The protagonist, Jason Taylor, faces not only the usual afflications of puberty--unrelenting bullies, twittering girls, and a mountain of self-doubt--but a gut-twisting stammer that rules his inner life. His parents are engaged in a drama of their own, more sensed than seen, and outside events like the Falklands War and a local hate campaign directed at Gypsies add to the tensions in the story and flesh out the world he inhabits.
In addition to Catcher in the Rye, Black Swan Down will rank among the classic coming of age novels like A Separate Peace, A Boy's Life, and The Yearling. I suspect it is a book I'll come back to time and time again.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
In this book, Mitchell writes in the voice of a middle-class British school boy, using idioms and slang that may be a little off-putting at first. The slight effort to comprehend them is worth it, though, because it makes the casual reader show down a bit and enjoy the writing itself. From lyrical descriptions to crackling dialogue and heart-thumping exposition, Mitchell does it all well:
"I peered through Dad's razor-sharp blind, over the glebe, past the cockrel tree, over more fields, up to the Malvern Hills. Pale morning, icy sky, frosted crusts on the hills, but no sign of sticking snow, worse luck."
None of this is to say the story itself isn't compelling, although it's driven by mostly standard preteen angst. The protagonist, Jason Taylor, faces not only the usual afflications of puberty--unrelenting bullies, twittering girls, and a mountain of self-doubt--but a gut-twisting stammer that rules his inner life. His parents are engaged in a drama of their own, more sensed than seen, and outside events like the Falklands War and a local hate campaign directed at Gypsies add to the tensions in the story and flesh out the world he inhabits.
In addition to Catcher in the Rye, Black Swan Down will rank among the classic coming of age novels like A Separate Peace, A Boy's Life, and The Yearling. I suspect it is a book I'll come back to time and time again.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Black Swan Green - A Class Of The Genre
Black Swan Green is a lyrical coming of age novel less noteworthy for its character and plot points than for its exemplary use of language to strike at the reader's heart. David Mitchell makes precise word choices and smoothly melds them into phrases and sentences that are greater than the sum of their parts. He's like a Wall Street hedge fund manager boldly using leverage to increase the reader's return on investment. He should be studied by every writer who wants to learn from one of the best.
In this book, Mitchell writes in the voice of a middle-class British school boy, using idioms and slang that may be a little off-putting at first. The slight effort to comprehend them is worth it, though, because it makes the casual reader show down a bit and enjoy the writing itself. From lyrical descriptions to crackling dialogue and heart-thumping exposition, Mitchell does it all well:
"I peered through Dad's razor-sharp blind, over the glebe, past the cockrel tree, over more fields, up to the Malvern Hills. Pale morning, icy sky, frosted crusts on the hills, but no sign of sticking snow, worse luck."
None of this is to say the story itself isn't compelling, although it's driven by mostly standard preteen angst. The protagonist, Jason Taylor, faces not only the usual afflications of puberty--unrelenting bullies, twittering girls, and a mountain of self-doubt--but a gut-twisting stammer that rules his inner life. His parents are engaged in a drama of their own, more sensed than seen, and outside events like the Falklands War and a local hate campaign directed at Gypsies add to the tensions in the story and flesh out the world he inhabits.
In addition to Catcher in the Rye, Black Swan Down will rank among the classic coming of age novels like A Separate Peace, A Boy's Life, and The Yearling. I suspect it is a book I'll come back to time and time again.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
In this book, Mitchell writes in the voice of a middle-class British school boy, using idioms and slang that may be a little off-putting at first. The slight effort to comprehend them is worth it, though, because it makes the casual reader show down a bit and enjoy the writing itself. From lyrical descriptions to crackling dialogue and heart-thumping exposition, Mitchell does it all well:
"I peered through Dad's razor-sharp blind, over the glebe, past the cockrel tree, over more fields, up to the Malvern Hills. Pale morning, icy sky, frosted crusts on the hills, but no sign of sticking snow, worse luck."
None of this is to say the story itself isn't compelling, although it's driven by mostly standard preteen angst. The protagonist, Jason Taylor, faces not only the usual afflications of puberty--unrelenting bullies, twittering girls, and a mountain of self-doubt--but a gut-twisting stammer that rules his inner life. His parents are engaged in a drama of their own, more sensed than seen, and outside events like the Falklands War and a local hate campaign directed at Gypsies add to the tensions in the story and flesh out the world he inhabits.
In addition to Catcher in the Rye, Black Swan Down will rank among the classic coming of age novels like A Separate Peace, A Boy's Life, and The Yearling. I suspect it is a book I'll come back to time and time again.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
January 15, 2011
Delivering Happiness - A Management Autobiography
An autobiography can indeed be a how-to book, especially if you're looking for more inspriation than nuts-and-bolts about how to run a company. Tony Hsieh's story about how he succeeded in the online world, building Zappos into a company that Amazon was willing to pay more than a billion dollars for, is certainly inspring. Unlike my book,
The Dynamic Manager's Guide To Marketing and Advertising
, however,
Delivering Happiness
is not a particularly instructive book about how to deliver customer satisfaction. I took it more as a print version of a corporate culture manual designed to let people know what it's like to work for the company. The writing is delightful, though, and the book makes for an entertaining read.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.
