December 12, 2006

Four (or 20?) great business reads to help you roar in 2007

by Gordon Graham, Editor, SoftwareCEO

Just in time for the holidays, here are four terrific new books.

These offer a wealth of pointers on everything from getting great ideas, to bringing them to market effectively, to organizing your sales people into an unbeatable army.

No time to read, you say? These books are worth your while.

You might come up with some brilliant new ideas for your software, a powerful new marketing campaign, or some solid new tactics for a sales offensive... or even the missing "aha" that can help you tie everything together, and come roaring back to the fight stronger than ever in 2007.

Great business read #1: How to engineer great business ideas, with "Lightning in a Bottle"
The problem: Most businesses have no systematic way to develop viable new business ideas, and that includes new genres of software, or new features for the software you already sell.

The evidence: Only one in 10 new businesses and new products launched actually succeeds in the marketplace.

The solution: Start using "idea engineering" — "the proven system to create new ideas and products that work."

"Idea engineering isn't driven by brainstorming and focus group results, but rather by a disciplined, financially driven method, which ensures that only successful ideas make it to the marketplace," say co-authors David Minter and Michael Reid at Minter + Reid.

The pair claim 25 years experience in idea development for clients that include AT&T, Blockbuster Video, Motorola, and Sony.

They have certainly put together a very readable book on this neglected area of business development. This text is not software-specific, but it's easy to apply to our industry.

Among their interesting insights is this list of the way most new ideas originate now, and why each is fatally flawed.

Incoming: Ideas come in from all directions at once, with no systematic way to evaluate or monetize them. Sound anything like the wish-list from your customers?

Brainstorming: Lots of people in a room come up with outlandish ideas; the more, the better. But no one does any homework beforehand, and most of the ideas are worthless.

Focus groups: The authors say repeatedly that most focus groups are "a waste of time." Why? They're too rushed, too inconclusive, people don't say what's really on their minds, and no one makes a buying decision with a group of strangers.

Gee whiz!: You fall in love with your own technology and create a product in search of a market — a solution in search of a problem. This issue clearly plagues many software firms.

Rip off: You outsource your R&D to other companies, and then copy whatever they do when it gains traction. It's certainly cost-effective. But the problem is, you're always a follower, never a leader.

(And if you stoop too low and actually cut and paste someone else's code, they will likely sue you.)

If none of these approaches works, what does?

Idea engineering, of course. The author's clear seven-step process is analogous to the scientific method of working from data to hypothesis to theory.

Idea engineering step #1. Learn: Read all the important information ever published on the topic. Like 500 pages or more, like for 50 to 100 hours.

That's a cheap investment compared to wasting thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ill-considered idea.

Idea engineering step #2. Develop working theories: Write down your findings, including your beliefs, what you think prospects want or don't want, what worked or didn't work in the past, and whether another industry or market has ever solved the same problem you're wrestling with.

Idea engineering step #3. Develop ideas or concepts from working theories: Write down some concepts in simple language, like an ad, to test out on your prospects.

Idea engineering step #4. Do financial due diligence: Do some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations, nothing too detailed, just enough to confirm that your idea can work. If not, discard it now.

Idea engineering step #5. Talk to prospects, not in groups, but one at a time: Interview at least 30 people for at least one hour each. And be prepared to really, really listen; two of you from your company at once.

"Do this one thing and you will immediately increase your odds of developing better ideas," say the authors.

Idea engineering step #6. Adjust ideas while listening to prospects: Adjust your concepts based on what you hear. Keep talking to prospects as you refine your idea.

"Never go into interviews thinking you have the final answer," the authors write. "Always be ready to scramble. Scrambling — adjusting your ideas as you learn — is another way to immediately improve your ideas."

Idea engineering step #7. Take the best concepts and "monetize" them to predict real-world revenue: Interview 800 to 1,000 prospects by phone or through the web. (It may be best to leave this step to professional researchers.)

What pops out at the end of the idea-engineering process should be a statement in the form, "Idea X will generate $Y million in incremental revenue the first 12 months, and $Z million in the second 12 months."

You will also have a good understanding of your market, and a sound basis for positioning your new idea, already test-driven with 1,000 prospects.

These steps are explained in much more detail in the book, along with more background and case studies from numerous businesses. It all sounds workable and sensible to us. And this approach will likely appeal to any software entrepreneur keen to come up with breakthrough ideas for any market.

Check out "Lightning in a Bottle"; it's only $13.57 from Amazon. You may never look at new ideas the same way again.

Great business read #2: How to find and engage prospects, with "Lead Generation for the Complex Sale"
OK, so you have some great new software, or a sizzling new version of your flagship product. Now you just need some leads to tell about it, right?

For a soup-to-nuts introduction to the best contemporary thinking about B2B lead generation, this is the book: "Lead Generation for the Complex Sale."

Author Brian Carroll covers everything from "what is a lead?" through how to get your sales and marketing teams working together — a perennial, nagging issue — on to which specific tactics to use, and how, and when.

Needless to say, Carroll is sold on the consultative approach to selling, where sales people strive to become trusted advisors instead of commodity peddlers... which he says makes it 70 percent more likely to eventually land a sale.

He explains how to define and score a lead, and how to design an effective shared database that can help build revenues.

He describes how sales people can be backed up by teleprospectors — telephone callers who gather information on prospects without working from a tight script — to increase an individual sales person's results by 50 to 150 percent.

By the way, he notes that a full-time teleprospector averages between 40 to 80 calls a day, and reaches eight to 10 true decision-makers.

Carroll talks about why some of the best tactics of the past (cold calling, branding, direct mail) are not as effective today. Then he reviews the phone, e-mail, PR, events, websites, direct mail, blogs, and podcasts, fitting each into the spectrum of possibilities in a multimodal approach.

Along the way, Carroll quotes the best ideas of many other contemporary thinkers, lots of which we've featured in this space, including:

• Bob Bly ("The White Paper Marketing Handbook")
• Mike Bosworth ("CustomerCentric Selling")
• Jill Konrath ("Selling to Big Companies")
• Kristin Zhivago ("Rivers of Revenue").

The text is packed with bullets, tables, and old-fashioned but completely up-to-date common sense. If you need to understand lead generation today, you cannot go wrong with this book. It's just $16.47 from Amazon.

By the way, the author has a blog with some interesting content at http://blog.startwithalead.com/.

Great business read #3: How to close the sale, with "Why Johnny Can't Sell... and What To Do About It"
OK, you've got some great software, and some solid leads to work. You fire up your sales force and turn them loose... so why aren't the deals rolling in?

Could it be you never trained your sales force properly?

Are they still using the old-fashioned approaches from the 1990s, and fumbling the ball on the 10-yard line?

This book aims to clear up all that, and bring your sales force — and management — into the 21st century. It's clear, up-to-date, and compelling. And it's hard to see how any sales person who follows this step-by-step process can fail to close deals.

Co-authors Michael Nick and Robert Kantin are familiar with the software world, with consulting and training clients like Great Plains (now Microsoft), HP, and Oracle. Both have published previous books, and this one is equally meaty.

"Why Johnny Can't Sell" starts out with chapters on bad habits, myths you need to shatter, and how to morph into a business consultant. There are numerous checklists that any sales person (or manager) can use to assess themselves and their company's support for their efforts.

Then the book introduces an eight-phase selling cycle, driven by real-world research, compelling ROI statements, and hype-free sales tools. The text is livened up by checklists, tables, and even cartoons that spell out the message in accessible terms.

Along the way, we hear how Johnny has worked at IBM, at a CRM startup, at a network services firm, and then at a small software firm. Now he is stumbling through another career move with a new company.

"Johnny is a true story of a salesperson who was once good, but had to relearn his whole approach. Each chapter deals with another aspect of that," says co-author Nick.

"In software, there's a big difference between what it can do, and what it can do for someone," he says.

In other words, always stress how your software offers an attractive ROI and solves a real business problem, rather than focusing on the glitzy new features it may offer. Most prospects don't care about that anyway.

At the end of the book, Johnny is at a crossroads again. Will he do the right things: apply himself to research to narrow down his prospect list, encourage marketing to create appropriate sales tools, and get proper support from upper management?

Or will he do what he always does: gloss over these steps, hope to make a few appointments, and pray that they turn, somehow, into big sales?

If you prefer the first outcome, pick up this book. It's only $13.57 from Amazon. From the associated website, www.whyjohnnycantsell.com, you can get workbooks and training materials for your whole team.

And co-author Nick is giving a webinar on December 14 to discuss how these ideas can help you become a better sales person. He's worth a listen, and it's free.

Great business reads #4 through 20: Study the masters of marketing, with "The Marketing Gurus" (17 books in one?!)
Feeling out of the loop because you've never read some of the classic books that software people mention all the time, like "Crossing the Chasm" by Geoffrey Moore?

Well, look no further than "The Marketing Gurus." This new title from the editors of Soundview Executive Book Summaries gathers together the summaries of what they judge to be "17 essential marketing classics."

It's a quick survey that will give you a taste of what you missed in each book, or confirm that you can safely skip it, at lightning speed.

For example, you can get the essence of Moore's book in just 15 pages. This summary even includes his signature graphic, showing the chasm opened up between the early adopters and the early majority. (Now I get it?!)

Just listing the other titles summed up in this book would take a whole screen of this newsletter. Among the highlights:

• "Relationship Marketing" by Regis McKenna
• "The One-To-One Future" by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers
• "Purple Cow" by Seth Godin
• "The Anatomy of Buzz" by Emanuel Rosen
• "How to Drive Your Competition Crazy" by Guy Kawasaki
• "Unleashing the Killer App" by Larry Downes and Chunka Mui
• "Differentiate or Die" by Jack Trout with Steve Rivkin

This is the perfect book to give to your marketing director, along with a second copy for her to share with her team. There's something for everyone in here.

How can you lose, with 17 books for $16.47 from Amazon? Looks like Boxing Day came early this year!