Business Intelligence

Practical Ideas From The Best Brains in Business
Joel Kurtzman (09100)

At one level, business isn’t as difficult to master as the business schools and other sellers of educational courses would have you believe. To be successful in business, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist. In fact, if you want to be well rounded and successful, there are ten key areas you’ll need to have some knowledge and expertise in:

1. Innovation
Always keep refininig and improving the product or service you sell.

2. Sustainability
Businesses must do more than make money — thye must contribute.

3. Accounting
For capital markets to exist, accurate financial information is required.

4. Strategy
For companies, strategy is all about direction and thinking clearly.

5. Managing
Good managers learn more from the people they manage than they teach.

6. Human Resources
Smart businesses stay that way by sharing knowledge between people.

7. Leadership
Self-improvement is the foundation on which successful leadership is built.

8. Marketing
Marketing and advertising are long-term investments, not expenses.

9. Communication
Communication can mean the difference between success and failure.

10. Execution
The best way to learn is to study the slip-ups of others and avoid them.

I have asked some of the best minds in business to put down some of their best thoughts. I have asked them to be candid, open, and opinionated. I have asked them to tackle the subjects they love from perspectives that they know work. I have asked them to give readers a glimpse of how they think about what they do. My goal is to help readers shift their vantage points, shake up their thinking, and stretch their minds.

–Joel Kurtzman

MBA in a Box

(16423) Dave Lakhani says:

The key to good advertising is to find your own message and drive it home. You won’t do that by using bits and pieces of your competitor’s ads. Instead, you have to tell the story only you can tell. You want ads that are so distinctive a competitor couldn’t come along and insert their logo instead of yours and run the same ads themselves.

Profitable and persuasive ads follow two straightforward steps:

1. Develop ads that interrupt and tell a persuasive story in and of themselves. First and foremost keep in mind that you’re trying to tell a story that will gently interrupt, persuade and then compel the audience to take some action. To grab attention, you need a headline that compels you to read or hear more. The body of the ad should then be a one-on-one conversation that tells an interesting story, answers questions and provides motivation to either learn more or take action. Persuasive ads use words and images to create dynamic pictures in the minds of prospective customers. They dramatize what the results will be if you do not use the product or service offered, and do so congruently rather than reading like a shopping list flung together for convenience. Great ads focus on one idea or one action item, and have a clear and concise call to take the next logical action. Persuasive ads have a rhythm and pace that figuartively lifts prospective customers and compels them to take action.

2. Measure the effectiveness of your ads. Pure and simple, the only measure of how well your ads are working is how much more or less business you have this year compared with last year. The only way you can track this is by measuring what sales are generated by which specific ads. To do this:

It really doesn’t matter how you track your ads as long as you actually do it. There is no substitute for good information. By tracking what makes some of your offers more persuasive than others, you gradually learn how to make your ads more persuasive. This will be far more profitable for you over a number of years than anything you could ever achieve by copying what your competitors are doing.

The Art of Selling Your Message
by Robert Miller and Gary Williams (09000)

A two-year study of 1,700 executives found that there are actually only five general types of decision making styles in use:

1. Followers (36%)
–who make decisions based on how other highly successful people have made decisions in the past.

2. Charismatics (25%)
–who get enthusiastic about new ideas but rely on others to think through all the details.

3. Skeptics (19%)
–who automatically distrust anything they hear, especially if it conflicts with their view of the world.

4. Thinkers (11%)
–who need to methodically work through all the advantages and disadvantages before making a decision.

5. Controllers (9%)
–who have to be hands-on and involved in every aspect of the decision-making process.

If you accurately identify the preferred decision-making style of the person you’re selling to, you can then tailor your sales processto provide them with more of what they need and less of what won’t influence them to act. This will ensure your message gets its best possible reception which, in turn, will lead to your being more persuasive and getting more business done.

The 5 Paths to Persuasion

(16422) Dave Lakhani says:

To be persuasive when selling, don’t just give a dry and lifeless recitation of features and benfits in the hope that someone will accept your ideas and agree to buy. Instead, use the ISELL persuasive selling process in this way:

I Identify qualified prospects Spend your time working with those who need your product and are a good fit. Don’t waste your time with just anyone who will talk to you, but have some simple screening questions to ask that will show you who’s able to buy and who is not.

S Start your story Make sure people are ready to listen and that it’s a good time for them before you launch into your attempt to persuade. Link what you’re going to tell them with the important issues they have already mentioned. Get things off to a good start.

E Educate, answer and encourage Build curiosity by asking good questions and then educate them as you answer those questions. Encourage them to ask more probing and specific questions as you go along to increase their interest. Provide high quality information.

L Lead them to their best decision Break the big decision down into manageable chunks and have them agree to these minor points throughout the discussion. Clear the stage so they can make the major decision, specify what the next logical step is and then ask them to move forward decisively.

L Let them buy Don’t keep talking when the person is ready to buy. That’s a recipe for disaster, as you can talk them out of buying. Whenever the person has convinced themselves this is the right thing to do, stop talking immediately and get the order signed, take their money start drawing up the contract. You might take the opportunity to up-sell by offering them add-on products and services. Keep in mind your goal is never to complete a one-off sale but to move the other person into a cycle that will generate multiple opportunities for them to buy additional products from you in the future. Therefore, when the other party agrees to buy, give some though to what you can do to lay a good foundation here for the future.

And Why They Can’t Make You Street Smart

by Mark H. McCormack (08900)

A business school can’t teach you how to be street-smart. You have to go out and get experience for yourself in the business world to start developing the ability to make the most of your business strengths.

Business is a competition, and any high-level, sophisticated competition is played more in the head than it is in the office. By keeping your eyes open to experiences happening all around you, and by thinking clearly about your own career and company, you can learn the effective techniques of salesmanship, negotiating skills, starting, building and running a business, managing people and getting things done.

The people making the most money in any business field are those who are at the cutting edge of their particular industry. Taking that edge requires innovative and creative thinking combined with intuitive business knowledge. The process is hard, but the payoff is worthwhile.

As an introduction to business, a Law degree or an MBA (Master of Business Administration) are worthwhile endeavors. However, as an education, both degrees are at best a foundation and worst a naive form of arrogance. The best lesson anyone can learn from a business school is an awareness of what it can’t teach you — all the ins and outs of everyday business life.

This is really about street smarts — the ability to make active, positive use of your insights, instincts and perceptions. Street smarts are simply applied people sense, the basis of any business association. Street smarts involves reading people and using that knowledge to get what you want.

Business demands innovation, of being on the leading edge of any field of business expertise. Intellect, intelligence or graduate degrees will never be substitutes for common sense, people sense and street smarts.

What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School
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