Andy Sernovitz, founder of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, delivers an amazing step-by-step guide to building word of mouth buzz around your company and products in his Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking,

In keeping with the principles Sernovitz outlines in his book, the companion website wordofmouthbook.com has a plethora of information to peak your interest.

The Word of Mouth Marketing Manifesto

1. Happy customers are your best advertising. Make people happy.
2. Marketing is easy: Earn the respect and recommendation of your
   customers. They will do your marketing for you, for free.
3. Ethics and good service come first.
4. UR the UE: You are the user experience (not what your ads say you are).
5. Negative word of mouth is an opportunity. Listen and learn.
6. People are already talking. Your only option is to join the conversation.
7. Be interesting or be invisible.
8. If it’s not worth talking about, it’s not worth doing.
9. Make the story of your company a good one.
10. It is more fun to work at a company that people want to talk about.
11. Use the power of word of mouth to make business treat people better.
12. Honest marketing makes more money.

The book takes you through the basics of word of mouth marketing and then jumps right into practical tips you can start implementing today. In fact, the author guarantees that after reading his book, you can pick one of his techniques and start seeing an immediate increase in attention to your company.

Joe’s Recommendation

Buy a Copy – Word of Mouth Marketing is a short-yet-solid manual on leveraging the power of your customers and others to do your marketing for you. You can foster these marketing efforts and see your business bloom significantly more than if you try to do everything yourself.

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John Naisbitt’s Mind Set! is divided into two main parts tied together by his common theme of seeing the future. The first half of the book outlines eleven “mindsets that the author has identified to help him better forecast the future and identify opportunities.

Mindset #1

While many things change, most things remain constant

The news and media would have us believe that everything is changing. The biggest, brightest, most compelling stories make it to the forefront. However, life goes on for the majority of people and things are pretty constant.

Naisbitt counsels us to “distinguish between real and apparent change, basic shifts and fads, remembering that in the history of the world, most things remain constant.

Mindset #2

The future is embedded in the present

Looking back it is easy to see how historical events shaped the future. For us today, we need to keep our eyes open and filter out the constant noise to identify what current events will really indicate future direction.

Mindset #3

Focus on the score of the game

Use sports as the model for determining the outcome of business and politician decisions. Once a game is over, you know the score. It is final and the winner is identified. In politics and even business, people will try to distort the outcome to make them look favorable. Don’t get distracted by rhetoric.

Mindset #4

Understand how powerful it is not to have to be right

Imagine how much more open you’ll be to new ideas and opportunities when you stop being so proud and stubborn!

Mindset #5

See the future as a picture puzzle

Piecing together these mindset ideas will help you better identify future trends.

Mindset #6

Don’t get so far ahead of the parade that people don’t know you’re in it

If your great idea is so far out there that it is impossible for people to understand, you’ll have a very slow adoption. By leading efforts of innovation, you need to keep your ideas close enough to the present that people can easily make the jump.

Mindset #7

Resistance to change falls if benefits are real

Your job as the leader is to clearly communicate the benefits of change. Once your audience internalizes these concepts, they’ll drop their defenses and accept your ideas.

Mindset #8

Things that we expect to happen always happen more slowly

Our expectations always seem to outpace the implementation timeline of those great ideas. Naisbitt states: “almost all change is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Mindset #9

You don’t get results by solving problems but by exploiting opportunities

Trying to solve the problem restricts your ability to think in the bigger picture. You’re stuck fixing the problems of the past instead of seeking the opportunities of tomorrow.

Mindset #10

Don’t add unless you can subtract

Determine what is really important and if new issues arise, drop other things on your plate. Failure to keep the proper load will lead to under-performance in all areas.

Mindset #11

Don’t forget the ecology of technology

New technologies should enable us. When something new is introduced, we should ask ourselves how things will improve or get worse. “What new opportunities does it present?

Part Two

The second half of the book uses these mindsets to look at the future direction of our society as a whole, and specific regions like China and Europe.

Niasbitt forecasts the continued rise of China and the “mutually assured decline in Europe. Throughout the book, the author includes both historical and current events to help define and prove his points.

Joe’s Recommendation

Buy a Copy – I particularly enjoyed the first half of Mind Set! where Naisbitt outlines his eleven mindsets. He artfully weaves personal stories and history together in discussing his points. I’d buy the book for his mindsets alone but if you like history and current events, the entire book is a relevant read as you look to the future.

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Robin Sharma’s latest book The Greatness Guide offers 101 tips on making yourself great.

Sharma pulls together his own experiences and combines them with succinct quotes from others to illustrate numerous ways that you can better yourself or your company.

You may have heard a lot of his advice before. Some points will be new. Either way I found this book a great kick in the pants on some things I know I should be doing but haven’t been.

This book is a very quick read with short one or two page chapters. You may even want to read one a day to get your daily dose of inspiration.

Sharma touches on a little of everything: time management, family life, goal setting, determining what is really important, and more.

Some of my favorite quotes include the following:

Success isn’t sexy. It’s all about working the basics of excellence with a passionate consistency.

The urge to chase after “get rich quick” schemes must be tempered by reality. Most success doesn’t come from winning the lottery, it comes from consistently working at something over time.

Your schedule is the best barometer for what you truly value and believe to be important.

I caught myself thinking about my schedule. Are the things I claim to be important really taking up the majority of my time? While reading this book, I often was compelled to think about my situation and how I could make some positive changes.

Every time you say yes to something that is unimportant, you say no to something that is important.

Too often I let little things distract me from my bigger goals. Just because I’m busy doesn’t mean I’m making forward progress.

It’s never too late to become the person you have always dreamed of being.

We don’t have to procrastinate any longer. Make a simple change today and you’ll see the difference it can make.

Joe’s Recommendation

Buy a Copy – I truly felt uplifted and inspired by Robin Sharma’s The Greatness Guide. You’ll find at least one point that will help change your life or business for the better. After reading this book, you’ll just have to take that enthusiasm for change and act!

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Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg, the authors behind Call to Action, deliver another insightful read with their latest book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing.

Their previous work, Call to Action, talked mostly about online conversions and optimizations. The Eisenberg brothers’ latest book, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark, takes a broader look at marketing in general and how you can specifically increase your conversion rates across media channels.

The Eisenbergs start by describing the current marketing environment through several examples that did or didn’t turn out like the vendor wanted. These stories are told from the customer perspective, which you should always be seeking.

Where Call to Action mentions a few persuasion techniques, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark outlines the full “Persuasion Architecture system. Their system is composed of six phases:

1. Uncovery – “The goals of uncovery are to identify the value of the business and articulate it in a way that matters to the customer.
2. Wireframing – “Defines the “what of the creative process, providing the structure that will deliver the persuasive experience.
3. Storyboarding – “iteratively creates the mock-ups in which you flesh out the structure of the wireframe
4. Prototyping – “… the prototype is virtually indistinguishable from the final product.
5. Development – “produce everything that was specified in the prototype
6. Optimization – “Testing and measuring in order to optimize is … the only way you can determine how closely you are meeting your objectives and how you can improve results.

Cross Channel Unity

Your customers view your company as a single entity. They don’t know or care that you have five divisions and that your website department doesn’t talk to your retail locations. Customers need a unified experience from beginning to end. As you define your “persuasion architecture, you’ll need to follow the customer from first contact through the buying process all the way to post-sales support. If the customer gets lost as they move from one media channel to another, even within your same company, they may be lost forever.

Measure Results

You must measure your system once it is in place. In order to do this you’ll need to have metrics and reports that provide the pulse of what is happening. These measurements should allow you to tweak your system and react to customer needs quickly. A truly efficient system will allow adjustments that continually improve results.

Understanding Customers

You’ll make the sale when your message directly speaks to the customers’ needs. You can tailor your copy writing and marketing by creating “personas for the different types of customers you have.

My favorite part of this book was the chapter titled “The Human Operating System which dives into the details of four customer temperaments. The Eisenbergs teach you how to sell to each of these types of people by understanding their individual triggers. I thought the book was worth it just for this chapter.

Joe’s Recommendation

Buy a Copy – This book contains solid principles that will reform your marketing efforts. Waiting for Your Cat to Bark will make a great first-time read and a ready reference on your shelf as you continue to optimize and improve your business processes.

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Kate Newlin’s book Shopportunity!: How to Be a Retail Revolutionary is a slap in the face of big box and impersonal retail stores. The cover boldly proclaims the premise of the book: “Why discounts have destroyed the thrill of shopping.”

If you long for the days of the small grocer or local hardware store, this book’s tales will resonate with you. The dilemma of the current retail market is that people have given up so much in service and product quality just to save a few dollars.

Shopportunity outlines twenty-one steps that you, as the shopper, can do to better the retail situation. While they are directed at the buyer, the seller (your business) should take note and treat your customers the way they deserve. Some of my favorite points included:

• Let Brands Transform You – Brands display an image or status, embrace it and show the world what you want to be.
• Kick Your Addiction to Price – “No more discussions of price… Do you really want that jar of pickles enough to shop at a place that won’t give health care or a living wage to its workers?”
• Don’t compromise on the everyday – “Buy the best in class of every single thing you buy. This doesn’t necessarily mean the most expensive: It means the best… Buy better and you’ll buy less is my guess, and you’ll enjoy each purchase more.”
• Shop where the staff knows more than you – “if they can’t or won’t help you because they simply don’t know anything about what they’re selling, move on.”
• Follow the Passion – “Shop where the retailer’s passion meets your own.”
• Seek the Ethic – “Go behind the scrim and figure out what these firms stand for and shop the ones with which you agree.”
• Calculate Value Beyond Price – “Who is going to be there for you when you need them — and what is that worth?”
• Invest in Relationships, Not Cheap Transactions – “Probe the salesperson about their follow-up to the sale — and if you don’t like what you hear, move on.”
• Reward the Personal – “When you find a salesperson who ‘gets you,’ … stick with that person. Go back to them.”
• Make the Seller Pay for Dissing You – “Make sure you follow up every time that you receive unsatisfactory service.”

If all consumers followed Newlin’s guidelines, big box retailing as we know it would fail. Unfortunately, this process would require that the majority of people actually change their habits in mass which doesn’t seem realistic. Nevertheless, if customers did follow these principles when shopping, their money will speak for itself.

If you as a business or retailer can tailor your company’s service to match these characteristics of a consciencious shopper, you’ll gain even more business and profits. Even if customers aren’t looking for these specifics, they’ll notice the positive difference in doing business with you. That difference will help close the sale and drive repeat business.

Joe’s Recommendation

Check it out at the library – Since I’m not a big shopper I did find myself skimming through some of this book for the little golden nuggets of wisdom. Nevertheless, the points Newlin makes are powerful and deserve your attention when dealing with customers.

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Have you ever wished you could leave the drudgery of your day job and really make a difference in this big crazy world of ours?

Maybe you’d love to help those less fortunate than yourself but can’t seem to find the time to make it happen. If you answered ‘yes’ you’ll empathize with John Wood’s story in his book Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur’s Odyssey to Educate the World’s Children.

The Story

John recounts his transition from a super busy Microsoft executive in the late 1990’s to the founder of Room to Read, a non-profit organization that helps educate children around the world. Realizing that his career was consuming his entire life, John took a vacation to the mountains of Nepal to get away from it all. While hiking in the peaks of the Himalayas, the author had an encounter with a local educator. He visited a school that had only a handful of books in its non-existent library.

That eye-opening visit prompted John to rally friends and family to gather books to donate to this school. This first successful book collection lead to others and the eventual formation of Room to Read. John’s non-profit then expanded to several other countries, including Vietnam, India, and Cambodia. He focused on building schools, computer labs, libraries, and funding scholarships for children.

The author reviews the inspiration for his non-profit’s formation and the amazing sequence of events that marked its initial growth and success.

Lessons from Microsoft

Wood takes a chapter to outline the guiding principles he learned during his time at Microsoft that he wanted to emulate in his ventures. He jumps into the details of how he came to understand these principles and why they really mattered. His list included:

• Maintain an intense focus on results.
• Treat others with respect and tact: “You cannot attack a person, but you can attack an idea.”
• Be data driven. Everything can be measured and should be metered against past performance or relative benchmarks.
• How much you know about the business will show how much you really care.
• Be loyal to your people.

The Business

Throughout this book, the author shares his organization’s successes and failures that provide very valuable business insights. The overarching message I got was that you have to be passionate about your work. It may be thought that heading a non-profit organization would be an easy job after the rigors of a high pressure Microsoft position. However, John Wood still worked insane hours and traveled all over the world to make his Room to Read organization a well-respected and successful non-profit.

The principles and concepts taught through his narrative can be applied to your business.

Inspirational Read

You need to be passionate about your work. If you’re not, maybe it is time for a change. You’d be amazed just how much you can do when your heart is into something. This book is a stimulating read that will inspire you to take action. You’ll probably visit Room to Read’s website. You may even make a donation to them or your favorite charity. You could even give of your time in doing some service locally.

No matter what service you are inspired to perform, the lessons learned and the principles discussed in this book will make you want to be a better person both in society and business.

Joe’s Recommendation

Buy a Copy – This book is inspirational and definitely worth the read. I don’t think it makes a good reference book to put on the shelf but you’ll get some value out of just one reading.

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Buy First, Break All the Rules from Amazon

After a recent promotion to the ranks of management, I had a chance to read the classic business book First, Break All the Rules. It was an eye-opening education into best management practices.

The book is the result of years of surveys and interviews with managers across the world. The authors then distilled the vast amounts of data down to key principles that really distinguish a quality manager.

Employees = Profits

No matter the business, the only way to generate enduring profits is to begin by building the kind of work environment that attracts, focuses and keeps talented employees.

As you are well aware, acquiring and training new people is very costly. It is therefore in your financial best interest to hire the right people, with the right talents, and then keep them happy over the long term.

Good Manager = Increased Productivity

The talented employee may join a company because of its charismatic leaders, its generous benefits and its world-class training programs, but how long that employee stays and how productive he is while he is there is determined by his relationship with his supervisor.

A manager’s role is vital to the success of the company because they directly affect employee satisfaction. As the book highlights, “employees leave managers, not companies.”

Some Rules to Break

The book discusses the conventional wisdom that is broken by the most successful managers. Great managers:

• Treat each employee differently. They are, after all, each individuals.
• Hire talent and not experience. Forget the long resume of positions and projects. If the employee doesn’t have the talent for the job, past experience doesn’t really matter.
• Don’t try to fix weaknesses. Focus on strengths and manage around weaknesses.
• Focus on results and not the “process.” Don’t get hung up on official process or procedures.
• Don’t promote the best performers out of their role and throw them into management. Not everyone that is really good at what they do will make a good manager of their peers. Don’t make management the only career path. Recognize and honor your senior and talented role players.

Evaluation Questions

According to the authors’ research, if your employees can answer these 12 questions positively, you’re doing a great job:

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best everyday?
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does my supervisor or someone at work seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
12. This last year, have I had the opportunity at work to learn and grow?

Copyright (c) 1993 – 1998 The Gallup Organization, Washington, D.C. All rights reserved.

The companies where employees can positively answer these questions have lower turnover rates, higher customer satisfaction, and more productive businesses.

Recommended

First, Break All the Rules should be mandatory reading for all managers in your company. Pick up a copy today.

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Buy Kiss Theory Good Bye from Amazon

Bob Prosen’s new book Kiss Theory Good Bye delivers on it’s title by outlining practical steps you can take in your business to get the results you seek.

Crippling Habits

Prosen starts the book by highlighting the “five crippling habits that attack from within.” I guarantee you’ll see some of these problems in your company:

1. Absence of clear directives
2. Lack of accountability
3. Rationalizing inferior performance
4. Planning in lieu of action
5. Aversion to risk and change

These points often hit where it hurts and will show you how you may have problems and not even know it. Prosen details the symptoms of these crippling problems and how you can overcome them.

Highly Profitable Companies

After helping you identify the obvious problems in your business, Prosen jumps into the “five attributes of highly profitable companies.” These chapters are well worth the read:

1. Superior Leadership
2. Sales Effectiveness
3. Operational Excellence
4. Financial Management
5. Customer Loyalty

Prosen doesn’t write at a high theoretical level. He dives deep into the how-to steps required to better your business. Each chapter has thought-provoking questions to help you identify your situation and help you improve.

I particularly enjoyed Prosen’s points about rewarding results and not just activity. Too many times people seem busy and yet, nothing is completed. You can’t continue to give raises and praise to mediocre workers. The author encourages you to reward handsomely those who perform well. This will inspire the rest of the workforce to greatness.

Another disjoint Prosen highlights is the gulf between your company’s declared business goals and the line worker’s understanding of such. Do each of your employees understand the company goals and know how their work is affecting the overall company’s results? By helping your employees feel some ownership of the big puzzle, you’ll have an entire company of people aligned behind the same goals. This unity will lead to amazing accomplishments for your business.

Execution

The final section of the book discusses execution of the earlier topics. Overall, I thought this was a great read. Every manager at your company from the CEO down to the individual team lead should read this book. A lot of the material is tailored to upper management but the principles can be applied to any level of leadership.

Recommended

Kiss Theory Good Bye is an insightful read with concrete advice you can apply to your business today. Pick up a copy today.

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Buy Crossing the Chasm from Amazon

Geoffrey Moore’s bestseller Crossing the Chasm dives into the mechanics of marketing your high-tech product all the way from inception to the mainstream customer.

Moore groups customers by where they are most likely to buy in your product’s life cycle. Each of these categories is then analyzed and you are shown how best to market to each of these groups:

Innovators

Innovators pursue new technology products aggressively … because technology is a central interest in their life, regardless of what function it is performing.

This group is obviously the easiest to persuade to try out your product. They become pivotal in pushing your product along to the next group.

Early Adopters

Early Adopters … buy into new product concepts very early in their life cycle … they are people who find it easy to imagine, understand, and appreciate the benefits of a new technology, and to relate these potential benefits to their concerns.

These influencing individuals will help give credibility to your product in your attempts to move to the mainstream public.

Early Majority

The Early Majority … are driven by a strong sense of practicality. They know that many of these new-fangled inventions end up as passing fads, so they are content to wait and see how other people are making out before they buy in themselves.

Late Majority

They wait until something has become an established standard, and even then they want to see lots of support and tend to buy, therefore, from large, well-established companies.

Laggards

These people simply don’t want anything to do with new technology

Don’t waste your energy on this group. In fact, it may be more valuable to focus on a new product by the time you hit this part of the customer base.

The Bell Curve

These groups form a bell curve with Innovators on the left leading edge and Laggards on the far right. The Majority fit squarely in the middle of the curve with the largest amount of customers.

The Chasm

Unfortunately, marketers can’t progress smoothly from one category of customer to another across the bell curve. There are “cracks in the curve” with a huge chasm between the Early Adopters and the Early Majority.

Moore outlines specific strategies for marketing your product as you transition from one group of customers to another. The main focus of the book is, of course, how to cross the large chasm between the Early Adopters and the Mainstream customer.

Today’s Web Boom

I found this book of particular interest in today’s revived Web Application boom. If you’re building the next great web application, you need to read this book. Failure to cross the chasm after the TechCrunch/Silicon Valley crowd will destine your product to stagnate and fizzle out before it reaches the masses of customers needed for long-term growth and profitability.

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Getting Real is the self-published e-book by the guys at 37signals. I read their previous book Defensive Design for the Web and currently use their online organizer Backpack everyday. Since my experience with 37signals has been very positive, I gave their latest publication a spin.

What is Getting Real?

Getting Real is a collection of short essays on how to be more effective in building a web application. This book leans heavily on 37signal’s own experience in creating their successful suite of products. It also includes real world examples of success using these ideas. Many of the principles described will sound familiar to you if you’ve followed the authors’ blog Signal vs. Noise.

Get to Work

Getting Real is about skipping all the stuff that represents real (charts, graphs, boxes, arrows, schematics, wireframes, etc.) and actually building the real thing.

I hate nothing more than unneeded paperwork that is characteristic of bureaucracy. With an interactive web application, it is nearly impossible to communicate the user experience with any thing short of a working prototype. Besides, once you start building you’ll quickly discover issues that you never could have identified on paper.

Keep it Simple

Getting real is less. Less mass, less software, less features, less paperwork, less of everything that’s not essential (and most of what you think is essential actually isn’t).

The less overhead you have, the easier it is to adapt to changes and fix problems. Planning for hypothetical situations can easily overwhelm your project. Stay focused on the basics and cross the “hypothetical” bridges when they come.

Agility

Getting Real is staying small and being agile.

By nature, the larger the ship, the harder it is to turn. Small teams, unbound by red tape, can easily outmaneuver the bloated org charts of larger companies.

User Experience First

Getting Real starts with the interface, the real screens that people are going to use. It begins with what the customer actually experiences and builds backwards from there. This lets you get the interface right before you get the software wrong.

Using the interface as your guide, you can tailor your underlying code to the problem instead of conforming your interface to the code’s assumptions and restrictions.

Rinse and Repeat

Getting Real is about iterations and lowering the cost of change. Getting Real is all about launching, tweaking, and constantly improving which makes it a perfect approach for web-based software.

The beauty of web applications is that you don’t have to wait for the next year to release another software CD. You can roll out some changes during lunch if you like. Get something working and out for the public and then make continuous improvements.

No Fluff

Getting Real delivers just what customers need and eliminates anything they don’t.

Have you ever used all the hundreds of features tucked away in Microsoft Word? Probably not. Think about what the bare minimum your customers need to succeed and then implement that solution.

Conclusion

I love the simplicity of the ideas and examples presented in Getting Real. Although the content is focused specifically on building web applications, the principles can easily be applied to other business and marketing situations.

I recommend you pick up a copy of Getting Real and see what you can apply to your project today. I had several “light bulb” moments while I was reading that were worth more than the purchase price.

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Update April 21, 2006:
If you don’t already own a copy of Getting Real, you can enter Return Customer’s birthday contest and win one!