Dave Concannon

Reflecting back on the satisfying chunk of Joel’s MBA reading list that I’ve gotten through, I’ve noticed that most of the books were well within my comfort zone in that they cover topics I already have an interest and a bit of grounding in. A lot of the books I didn’t enjoy cover topics I’m not experienced in, or just not interested in. Taking this as a starting point I decided to take a look back through these books and try to determine what the underlying theme that unites them is. It didn’t take me too long, and in fact there’s a one-syllable summary of this segment of literature that signals dischord – “Sales”.

I have a deep mistrust of sales people, but one that isn’t really based in prior experience. I have never been sold a lemon of a car that falls apart as soon as it leaves the lot, or a financial product that sunk quicker then the Lusitania. Having read Jeffrey Gitomer’s “Little Red Book of Selling” I think it is because I’ve encountered salespeople who epitomise the “Don’ts” of his advice.

Gittomer is a veteran salesman, and writes a weekly sales column which reaches around three million readers. And, he may yet redeem my faith in “Sales”. His basic philosophy is similar to Dale Carnegie’s – people will want to interact with people they like, and if your “interaction” is letting them buy something, then they may buy.

“The Little Red Book of Selling” is a manual like “Peopleware”, and should be read at regular intervals until it’s ingrained upon your mind. It is not a manipulative step-by-step manual that shows you how to trick and confuse your prospective customer until they are left with no option but to buy, but a manual on how to improve yourself. Gittomer attributes his success to ditching television, and spending the time improving yourself – reading, attending seminars, and public speaking. Each chapter ends with a handy summary to sum up the advice, and a few additional ideas to work with.

Some snippets:
• It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you – Self publicity is essential. You need to demonstrate that you are a leader in the area you represent. Do this by writing and public speaking regularly.
• Don’t pitch – Nobody wants a sales pitch, they want answers to their concerns. Every potential client has problems that they want solved, they don’t want to hear your canned sales patter. Find their pain, and demonstrate how what you provide will make it dissapear.
• Get your foot in the door – If you are continually pushing a profit driven product or service nobody will want to know. If you are genuinely attempting to provide value to your clients they will be the ones calling you. If you are making sales appointments and they aren’t showing up, or continually cancelling then you haven’t addressed their fundamental need.
• Make them laugh – The author recommends picking a “safe” topic that isn’t going to offend anyone and making light of it. No good at being funny? Learn! If you make people laugh they’re far more likely to buy.

This is an excellent book. First of all, the presentation of the hardback version itself is expensive looking. It has a weighty cover, bookmark ribbon, and embossed front cover. Even before I read it I was pleased I bought it as it is a thing of beauty. The contents are likewise worthwhile; the style is easy and humourous and the book is laid out for quick reference. The right-hand side of the book has a colored edge to allow for easy access to different chapters and the summary at the end of each chapter is great if you need a quick refresh. I’d recommend it highly – not only is it it the first book on sales that I didn’t feel like I had to wash my hands after reading due to sleazy or manipulative content, but it was a very enjoyable and informative read.

Firstly – my sincerest apologies for the long delay in posting to anyone reading this weblog. In a lottery of several jobs, myriad miscellaneous projects, and various other responsiblities writing articles drew a losing ticket. My next review from Joel’s MBA software reading list is Paul Graham’s “Hackers and painters”.

Paul Graham co-created an early web application with Robert Morris, and reaped a very lucrative buyout as the economy (or Yahoo in this case) threw money at every startup in town. As their next collaboration, they started Y-Combinator, an incubator which helps young entrepreneurs turn their ideas into salient products.

Hackers and Painters is a collection of Graham’s writings from his website. Although available for free, I always find it easier to read printed material. Also, having a stack of books next to my desk allows me to pretend I’m smart (until I open my mouth and ruin it all). There is no central theme to these essays although they generally stay within the “tech” umbrella and furtively dart into dark and murky industry corners.

The book is enjoyable although the essays can occasionally slip into subjective and emotive thought. Graham loves LISP, certainly understandable as his original fortune-making application was written in the language. For some reason though, this keeps cropping up. While I may be exaggerating the frequency of his soliloquies to this programming language the overwhelming impression I was left with after reading this book was “Man, this guy really digs LISP.”.

Occasionally the crux of his argument is a little tentative, for example in the article which gives the book it’s name Graham argues for the similarities between Hackers and Painters. While reasonably convincing, I think it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to compare Hackers to several other creative disciplines, though the fact that the author has studied classical art would seem to have influenced his opinion. In another he argues that companies who use proprietry software such as Oracle databases aren’t worth worrying about, as they’ll be “too slow” and populated by mediocre drones. It’s perfectly acceptable to love technology for personal reasons, but dismissing any company out of hand for chosing a particular technology could be considered myopic.

Minor gripes aside, some of these articles are required reading and will certainly inspire lateral thought. This is a collection of opinion pieces though, so any reader looking for hard fact and step-by-step instructions should look elsewhere. Here are some links to articles I feel stand out:

• Why Nerds are unpopular – An interesting explanation for why Nerds don’t get along with the “popular” kids.
• How to make wealth – The difference between working hard and working smart.
• What you wish you’d known – All the things you wish someone had told you back in school.

To be objective, I wouldn’t put this book at the top of your reading list as Graham’s articles are available online. He certainly doesn’t pull any punches on his opinions, and if you sit on the wrong side of the technology fence some of his comments might smart.  I would definitely recommend that you check out his online essays; there’s gold in them thar hills.

My latest read from Joel Spolsky’s MBA reading list is “Rules for Revolutionaries” by Guy Kawasaki. Guy is founder and current CEO of garage.com, a firm that provides seed capital to technology startups. His pedigree is impressive – he was involved on the original team that developed the Macintosh, and was the Chief Evangelist of Apple.

I had stumbled across Guy’s weblog a few months ago and it immediately became one of my top five reads; Guy has a wealth of knowledge that he manages to convey succinctly in staccato bullet points and in a self-deprecating, humourous style that I wish I could emulate. Hagiography aside – Guy writes informative and entertaining books that richly deserve their place on an MBA reading list.

It is difficult to categorise “Rules for Revolutionaries” – the essential pigeonhole would be “Evangelism”, which I interpret as a mix of marketing, business strategy, and vision amalgamated into a driving force to turn your dreams into reality, your reality into products, and your products into customer magnets (to quote directly from the book sleeve). Kawasaki divides these goals into three main sections: “Create like a God”, “Command like a King”, and “Work like a slave”. Each section covers fundamental issues at each stage of bringing a product from imagination to cash cow.

This is the kind of book that I find far more useful then a dry academic tome in that each point is backed up with a real-world example I can relate to. Every section is peppered with interesting and relevant quotes from industry mavens, and finishes with a recommended reading list which would compose an MBA reading list on its own. Picking some points completely at random and out of context:

• Ne Te Terant Molarii – This literally translates to “Don’t let the plodding millers grind you down”; Guy describes it simply as “Don’t let the Bozos grind you down”. The world is full of people who will shoot down an idea, tell you to quit, and naysay until they’re blue in the face. It takes temerity and indomitable spirit to be able to focus on your own vision with enthusiasm and prove them wrong.
• Churn! – You may create a product for an initial purpose, but it might not be the one that you stick with. Continually soliciting (and listening to) customer feedback is the only way to ensure that the product you develop satisfies the needs of your current customers; churning back these new concepts into the initial design means you can capitalise on markets you hadn’t envisaged originally. Synonymous with the concept of Kaizen.
• Avoid death magnets – Companies can try to follow paths which seem to be positive ways to drive the business, but are actually paths which lead to a deep pit full of faeces-covered punji stakes. Concepts such as planning on making a product which is not quite as bad as the competitions, religiously obeying a budget to the detriment of common sense, or relying on a brand name above any evidence that the product has quality. Conventional approaches lead to conventional results – more often than not this means failure.

In summation, this is one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read so far on the reading list. Above the excellent information that it imparts, it’s genuinely funny. As a result I’ve ordered two other of Guy’s books and at the tentative half-way stage through reading his latest book I can also recommend “The Art of the Start” (review pending…).

Techies like gadgets. For people primarially involved in developing back-end computer systems or networks this usually means the gadget which has the most features, and is technically superior to the competition. If the item in question requires a manual which would rend an industrial-strength paper shredder to sheets of twisted metal, or has an interface which loses to an Altair 8800 in a game of Gadget Top Trumps, then all the better.

This worldview is perfectly acceptable; techies like learning, and there’s a certain sense of achievement in getting your toaster to pick up satelite channels from Kyrgyzstan. This perception can sometimes lead to synapic connections which unfortunately don’t make sense. If I want something which has the most features, surely other people want the best technical solution too? So if I set up a business writing software that’s “better” then the competitions offering – has more features, is more flexible in terms of the install platform and system requirements, then surely I just have to present this idea to a large company and they’ll give me millions of dollars to spend on more gadgets?

Michael Cusumano’s excellent book “The business of software” comes with the tagline “What Every Manager, Programmer, and Entrepreneur Must Know to Thrive and Survive in Good Times and Bad”. If you can identify with any of the gross generalizations presented in the previous paragraphs, this is the tonic to shake out any lingering preconceptions.

Cusumano divides his time between advising various companies on their strategic direction, and lecturing in Strategic Management, product development, and entrepreneurship in MIT’s Sloan School of Management. His experience in the area is evident in a book which lives up to it’s tagline – If you are pursuing a career in technology, this should be compulsary reading.

The underlying theme of a company evaluation is Cusumano’s “8-point lens”. A company should have an equally strong showing in each of the areas identified in order to build a sustainable, profitable, long term business. The author then evaluates a half dozen companies under these criteria and points out critical events in the company history which lead to success or failure.

• A Strong Management Team – Investors typically provide money for people, not groundbreaking ideas. Without an experienced management team, most companies are sunk before they begin.
• An Attractive Market – The potential for a companies main product has to be large enough, growing fast enough, or be potentially profitable enough to warrant investment.
• A Compelling product offering – The product or service should aimed at a particular type of customer. On the typical “MBA” chart of X = Value to customer and Y = uniqueness, you want to be at a point in the top right hand corner. (A famous animal trainer once spent 15 years training a camel to walk backwards – It had never been done! The first audience who were shown this amazing feat barely blinked. Who wants to see a camel walk backwards?!)
• Customer interest – If need evidence that someone’s going to buy the product. Many startups develop a business plan which involves grabbing a tiny percentage of an enormous market; the usual outcome is that they grab nothing. You need letters of intent from actual interested customers that aren’t just a nebulous projection on a powerpoint presentation.
• Credibility – Don’t leave me high, don’t leave me dry. Customers want assurances that your company isn’t going to explode, leaving them with an unsupported product that they can’t use. You need a list of customers who are using your product, a chain of partners and suppliers who can support your product if the worst should happen to your company. You may even have to give the thing away to get customers on your list. Cusumano intially recommends companies to focus on a niche market which doesn’t require longevity, and then gradually persue more long term strategies.
• A sensible Business model – The dot com days are long gone. Investors have a stronger grip on their wallets. As above.

In previous posts I’ve reviewed books on the mechanics of getting a business running smoothly and books on the general rules of positioning a product. This review covers a seminal classic for technology companies, a book which combines these two concepts into something suitably focused for the required audience – defining the landscape for technology marketing and the management flexibility required to turn a great high-tech idea into money in the bank.

Geoffrey Moore’s bestseller “Crossing the Chasm” defined ideas that are now ubiquitous in startups such the categorization of technology customers into five main groupings and “the elevator pitch”. I got a particular sense of deju vu from one of the early chapters which described the usual ascent of a startup; initial customer interest prompting raised morale and a few swanky meals out for the staff, followed by the realisation that these aren’t being followed by sustained sales, and finally leading to a further round of financing – with the caveat that that a few minor tweaks in the staff will be required. My own experience of this process left me jobless when three of the original seven staff of our dot com rollercoaster were made redundant. The ironic part of this trip down memory lane is that the management of this particular startup swore by Geoffrey Moore’s principles, yet they didn’t hear the train coming even with their ears pressed to the tracks. C’est la vie.

Past war wounds aside, Moore’s doesn’t write the most readable of books. The information delivered is essential, yet the manner in which it is presented is a quite drawn out and verbose. This is my second attempt at the book, and the first time I’ve managed to make it through to the other side. The humourous style of the initial chapers is pushed aside, and the introduction of large amounts of labels slows the pace. With that said, this isn’t a Mills and Boone romance novel – it is an essential treatise on technology marketing, and it is worth the effort.

The book builds on the Everett Rogers diffusion of innovations, describing the five main technology customers arranged into a neat bell curve. These are:

• Innovators/ Enthusiasts- Visionaries who “dig” technology, and are adventurous in seeking out new ideas.
• Early Adopters / Visionaries- Customers willing to accept a few bugs in order to shape a promising concept.
• Early Majority / Pragmatists - The bulk of a technology market, and where the chasm lies. These customers want a stable product that has an independant level of support; a very different proposition from the early adopters.
• Late Majority / Conservatives – This demographic will accept a product when everyone else has it, talk about your catch-22 situation.
• Laggards / Skeptics - Bringing up the rear are the laggards. These customers are the technology equivalent of Charlton Heston – you’ll replace their old technology when you “prise it from their cold, dead hands”.

The key focus is how to take a technology company from the early adopter stage to the early majority, and through to the late majority and it’s associated riches, glory, and infamy. This is where the “chasm” of the books title comes into play – the needs of these market segments are very different and the skills required to develop the markets are completely at odds with each other. The author argues that to make the transition between these markets the company must move from focusing on products to a market-centric view.

The main flaw with the book is the overly verbose presentation. If the ideas were presented in a sharp point format and then expanded upon, or summarised at the end of each chapter it would make for a more readable and easily referenced manual, rather then the slightly more academic feel that the current format has. While trying to review the main items in Moore’s work in my usual postmortem I scratched out the main points from memory, but was unable to find succinct definitions or supporting points that would provide a reliable reference once my memory fades. Regardless, this book defines the battlefield for any technology entrepreneur and merits its status as a bestseller.