Here is a quick book review of some very good business books I have chewed my way through recently …
1. Mark Joyner’s “The Irresistible Offer”
2. Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail”
3. Ben Mack’s “Think Two Products Ahead”
What I have tried to do below is give you distilled information from the books, so you dont need to read the whole book, but you can do if you want to fill in the gaps. I do recommend reading these books, or at least fully understanding the concepts in them.
1. Mark Joyner writes with a clarity that helps you to read, and understand easily. The main overall point of the book is this …
Give your customer the best possible experience and you will sell again and again. Don’t focus on clever marketing, with special words etc to get people to part with their money – just focus on making the product and the offer to the customer so amazing that they will buy from you, remain happy, and then buy again.
There must be a quid pro quo – good for me – good for you – value exchange.
Mark Joyner turns on its head an oft over-used expression “ROI” or “Return On Investment” – from the viewpoint of the CUSTOMER, not the business. What is the customer’s ROI if they buy? Is what they are buying worth more than the money they are parting with? If yes, then that is good ROI for the customer, and they are more likely to buy from you again.
The “Great Formula” is …
1. Find a thirsty crowd
2. Give them “The Irresistible Offer”
3. Give them a second class
The Irresistible Offer is an …
“Identity building offer central to a product, service or company, where the believable return on the customer’s investment is communicated so clearly and efficiently that it is immediately apparent that you would have to be a fool to pass it up.”
The 4 Big Questions that are the unspoken inner dialogue of a potential customer are …
What are you trying to sell me?
How much (including hidden cost eg time)?
Why should I believe you?
What’s in it for me?
The Irresistible Offer consists of …
1. Touchstone – key idea expressed in a few words
2. Believability
3. High ROI offer (for the customer)
There is a free audio interview with Mark Joyner and Joe Vitale, where they discuss the book’s concepts in detail, at
http://www.markjoyner.name/widgets/calls/joe/tio.htm
2. Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail” is a seminal book – it is a landmark. It changes the way we see the world. In reality, he is showing us what was already happening, so it maybe shouldn’t be so groundbreaking, but it shows you the modern business world in absolute clarity.
In essence this is a book about economics, but before your eyes blur, it is about the economics of modern business, laid out in a way you will understand.
Historically, because of the costs of making products and distributing them, only a handful of products get sold. Within that handful, there are ‘hits’ that are pushed and marketed heavily to sell more. Some sell more than others. Because of this, the graph of the distribution of the sales levels of these products looks like this …
The hits on the left - The ‘long tail’ on the right
On the left of the graph is the big hits – the products that sell lots more than the other products. Because of the cost of making and distributing products, retailers can only afford to stock and sell the best selling products, to make enough money to cover the cost of their shop rent, staff, buying in stock etc.
However, because of 3 factors, most visible online, retailers are now able to offer products further to the right on this graph. That is, products that are more in the ‘long tail’ of the distribution graph are now able to be sold effectively. These 3 factors leading to the long tail effect are …
1. Democratising the tools of production – it is now cheaper/easier to make stuff
2. Democratising the tools of distribution – it is now cheaper/easier to get stuff to the customer
3. Search methods – filters – How customers find out about that product - eg search engines, “customers who bought this also bought that” suggestions.
This means that a retailer can cost-effectively sell products further down the long tail. Retailers can sell 1’s or 2’s of all those thousands of different products way over to the right of the distribution graph. Those 1’s and 2’s multiplied by thousands of different products adds up to a good profit for the retailer.
As a result of all this, as consumers, we now have more and more products available for us to choose from. If we want a CD of Led Zeppelin’s 1976 B-sides only, now we are much more likely to be able to find that – or anything far more obscure.
This brings us to the concept of ‘niche’ - which is small sections of the long tail. The internet allows a certain niche to be explored fully and potentially profitably. A business may be a pure niche eg 1950’s baseball caps, or a niche aggregator, like Amazon (because Amazon has such a massive range of niche books and music).
What we end up with is a world of massive choice as a consumer – it is all about being able to find what you want.
For a business, we end up with possibly massive opportunities, where we can serve this new audience of fragmented customers who want different things, by serving either deep into a niche, or across many niches.
More info at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail
3. Ben Mack’s “Think Two Products Ahead” can almost be understood from the title, especially if you have already read “The Irresistible Offer”.
The idea is similar to a good snooker/pool play or a chess player - you dont just make the best move for now - you make the best move for now, and the next move, and the next - so you are planning your move now in light of your future moves.
This book is essentially about your brand. And before you sigh a bored sigh or think “Branding is far too expensive for me”, read on – branding is not what you think.
Mack outlines your brand as being about whatever a potential customer or customer thinks of you and your product. A good brand will better encourage that customer to buy again and again.
The main aim of this concept of branding is to give the customer what they want and keep them happy, encourage them to use your products (particularly after they have purchased) and remain happy – they are then more likely to buy from you again.
Reading Mack’s book is harder going than Joyner’s book – Mack is very intelligent and makes me think he has watched a lot of Marx Brothers film, by the way he plays with words. This makes it entertaining, if a little harder to quickly read.
Mack goes into some examples of his ideas - for which you would be best to read the book.
You will most likely find all these books in your local book store. Personally I got these books either at www.amazon.co.uk for the paper version, or www.audible.co.uk for the audio book which is easier to digest while I am doing something else.
I hope this helped
