Who Stole My Customer?? Winning Strategies for Creating and Sustaining Customer Loyalty
by Harvey Thompson

Here’s an interesting title … for a couple of reasons.

The first reason, it’s a question currently being asked by a growing number of businesses across industries. The answers vary of course. I’ve heard a wide variety of responses … everything from “a bad economy” to “growing competition.” I’ve even heard references to a “technical revolution” resulting in the loss of customers. However, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone referring to the subject of “customer service.”

The second reason is even more intriguing! “Who Stole My Customer?” is a question which should be asked by many more organizations than are currently asking it. Many are totally unaware that their customers are even missing. It’s not that they’ve stopping buying … they’re simply buying from someone else! And the reasons are varied.

This book focuses a great deal of its content on the simple but crucial fact that far too many businesses today are focusing on customer satisfaction. You might think that’s a good thing. In reality, it is not.

Times have changed. Customers have changed. Many businesses have not. In today’s business environment, the focus must be on establishing LOYALTY rather than customer satisfaction. Doing so results in continuous repeat business and priceless word-of-mouth advertising … two critical elements contributing to ongoing success in today’s competitive marketplace.

The author, Harvey Thompson, formerly served as IBM’s Global Executive for customer-focused business strategy and design. He previously authored the BusinessWeek bestseller, The Customer-Centered Enterprise.

In his second book, Thompson shares “The Top Ten Myths About Your Customers,” the need for “Customer Visioneering,” and the importance of “Institutionalizing Loyalty.”

At the end of each chapter, the author recaps key learning points with an exercise he calls “You Are the Customer.”

This book pragmatically helps you understand how to design highly successful businesses from the customer view in. You must take care of your customers now or lose them to competitors who are more in tune with your customers’ needs and wants.

If you’re wondering “Who Stole YOUR Customer,” you’ll want to read this book!

Who Stole My Customer?? Winning Strategies for Creating and Sustaining Customer Loyalty is available from Amazon. The AchieveMax® company is an affiliate of Amazon.com.

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

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Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
by Tony Hsieh

For those of you who have read more than a few of the more than 200 book reviews I’ve written on our website, you know that I have a personal policy of never reviewing a bad book. I provide reviews to encourage our readers to discover valuable information that may enhance their business or personal lives. I simply don’t believe in wasting my time in writing a negative review or encouraging you to waste your time reading a book which has no value to you.

This book, however, falls into a rather unique category. Readers of this particular book will either love it or hate it. I’ve decided to share it with our readers because it definitely offers a unique insight into a visionary leader and a corporate culture which has led to unprecedented success. Sadly, many will ignore these words of wisdom because they disagree with the philosophy, beliefs and values of the author. Other will feel he may not have earned his success due to the fact that he was born into wealth and greater status than most.

Nonetheless, there is a wealth of information in the 253 pages of Tony Hsieh’s (Shay) best-selling book. A few weeks ago, I discussed this situation in a blog article (Evaluate Your Choices!) which you may want to review for a little more insight into Tony’s background and track record.

Delivering Happiness examines Zappos.com, a shoe retailer, and the creation of a unique corporate culture dedicated to employee empowerment and the promise of delivering happiness though satisfied customers and a valued workforce.

Yes, this is a book about both customer service and corporate culture and how the two go hand in hand.

Tony Hsieh sold LinkExchange, the company he co-founded, to Microsoft for $265 million. He then joined Zappos as an adviser and investor, and eventually became CEO.

In 2009, Zappos was listed as one of Fortune magazine’s top 25 companies to work for, and was acquired by Amazon later that year in a deal valued at more than $1.2 billion on the day of closing.

The author shows how using happiness as a framework can produce profits, passion, and purpose both in business and in life. Zappos.com is doing more than $1 billion in gross merchandise sales every year. Let me share a few of the unusual concepts which pass as standard operating procedure within this unusual culture. Then you decide if you want to learn more by reading the entire book.

• Pay new employees $2,000 to quit.
• Make customer service the entire company, not just a department.
• Focus on company culture as the #1 priority.
• Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business.
• Help employees grow both personally and professionally.
• Learn to live and deliver “WOW.”
• Understand the importance of embracing and driving change.
• Take advantage of creating fun and maybe even a little weirdness.
• Learn to pursue growth and learning.
• Top 10 ways to instill customer service into your company

This book is an uplifting tale of entrepreneurial success, personal growth, and redemption.

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose is available from Amazon. The AchieveMax® company is an affiliate of Amazon.com.

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

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Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service
by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles

I don’t care if you work for a world-renowned Fortune 500 company or a small family-run business consisting of 6 employees … this 138-page book can have an enormous positive impact on every person in your organization and every customer you serve!

It was originally written in 1993 and continues, to this day, to enhance realities for companies worldwide. Written in the parable style of The One Minute Manager, Raving Fans uses a brilliantly simple and charming story of a new area manager who meets his male fairy godmother (don’t even ask!) who appears to reveal the three magic secrets of creating raving fans.

Although written quite some time ago, this message is probably more pertinent in today’s competitive, chaotic environment than it was in ’93. America is in the midst of a service crisis that has left a wake of disillusioned customers from coast to coast. The authors’ message is simple:

“Your customers are only satisfied because their expectations are so low and because no one else is doing better. Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create Raving Fans.”

The fairy godmother escorts the new area manager on a journey to visit fictional companies which have created an environment of delivering awesome customer service. Their phenomenal success is based on three simple principles … Decide, Discover, and Deliver. You’ll learn the intricacies of each illustrated in a variety of scenarios.

Each visit offers nuggets of common sense, startling new tips and innovative techniques that can be implemented in any company that seeks the benefits of raving fans … customers who tell others how wonderful you are. Learn to develop stories your customers will want to share with others. Create those magic moments the book calls “giving symbolic hugs.”

Read the book, share and discuss the examples, tips, tools and strategies with your entire staff. Create a revolution in your workplace as you convert current customers into life-long, devoted, loyal, raving fans!

This book may very well follow the K.I.S.S. theory (Keep It Short and Simple), but its content and message is indeed profound. It is by far the best customer service book to reach book shelves worldwide!

Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service is available from Amazon. The AchieveMax® company is an affiliate of Amazon.com.

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

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“I Love You More Than My Dog”: Five Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad
by Jeanne Bliss

First of all, you’ve got to love the title! I’ve always admired those authors who could immediately grab you with a title that would make you think or want to delve between those book covers for more of that creativity! This title does just that … especially with a subtitle that reveals content I know I’ll find valuable. The photo of the adorable dog sitting in a shopping cart simply adds charm and respect for the author’s ability to relate to readers.

While many talented authors can weave a fine story based on their experience and expertise, the reader is still faced with the opinion of a single source. In this book, however, Jeanne Bliss offers a vast array of case studies to solidify her sound advice as to how to obtain and sustain customers who love you rather than just like you.

Bliss suggests five basic principles, called decisions, that companies can make that will put them on the road to having customers care about the status of the company they deal with.

She illustrates the power of these decisions by sharing examples from successful organizations which have gained distinction and respect as purveyors of exceptional service to their growing list of customers. Here are just a few: Southwest Airlines, The Container Store, Zappos, Harley Davidson, Wegmans, Netflix, Chick-Fil-A, and IKEA … to name just a few.

In today’s digitized world, the need for authentic, humane, heart-felt connection and service has never been greater. And yet, one has to search to find it. Opportunity abounds for those who really want to obtain new heights of growth and success.

Jeanne’s five decisions will lead you to drive extreme, “for life” customer loyalty in good times and bad. This book provides everyday tips, tools and strategies that you can use to understand how you make the proper decisions to become a beloved company with devoted customers.

I must warn you that the author poses MANY questions that will challenge your thinking. However, they will also provide you with a game plan to achieve superior customer service and inevitable success.

No company is recession proof and immune from dramatic shifts in the economy. We see the growing evidence of that fact almost daily. However, making the author’s five decisions will certainly provide a cushion that will increase your chances of surviving tough times, growing and retaining your customer base, while maintaining quality employees.

“I Love You More Than My Dog”: Five Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad is available from Amazon. The AchieveMax® company is an affiliate of Amazon.com.

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

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Earn Their Loyalty: Treating Customers and Employees Like People
by Robert Brown, Ph.D.

I truly enjoy storytelling as a means of learning new information, and I indeed respect any author who can do it well. In a mere 199 pages, Robert Brown has provided an intriguing story, great wisdom and has certainly done it well.

The author shares the story of George Corbett, a high-powered senior vice president of a growing furniture company in the American Southeast, who has had it rough the past few years. He takes a solo vacation to Scotland to sort things out and chances across Angus McTavish, Ph.D., M.D., M.B.E., who is an extraordinary man from a small village who, with the assistance of a super computer, becomes somewhat of a mentor for George. Based on this unique collaboration, George learns lessons which will propel his company to the top in customer loyalty and employee satisfaction.

What George learns as a result of his time with Angus and the super computer can easily be applied to any business and/or industry. I’m not going to share the details, but you’ll find the following information very useful in your own quest for excellence, productivity and profitability:

• The three necessary criteria for hiring the right person
• The four Cs of service
• The critical service continuum
• How to insure that your employees can end the workday happy
• The importance of virtual customers

At the end of each chapter, the author shares a note page of key points summarizing what George feels will greatly enhance his business. I found these summary pages to be quite helpful in organizing my own thoughts.

In this revealing read, the author also focuses on the importance of:

• Personal mission statements
• Customer service value streams
• Moments of truth
• The importance of human-to-human connections
• The critical need for cccountability
• The benefits of scripts and mnemonics as customer service tools
• The primary role of management
• Employee-created vision statements
• Building team dynamics

The author’s bottom line is simple yet challenging. Creating loyalty isn’t easy. You cannot mandate it, standardize it or make it happen through policies and procedures. You have to earn it.

Earn Their Loyalty provides a practical blueprint which can be successfully executed by any organization.

Earn Their Loyalty: Treating Customers and Employees Like People is available from Amazon. The AchieveMax® company is an affiliate of Amazon.com.

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

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Who’s Your Gladys?: How to Turn Even the Most Difficult Customer into Your Biggest Fan
by Marilyn Suttle and Lori Jo Vest

I have more than 3,400 books in my personal library. It’s quite obvious I’ve read my share of what’s been offered in book stores over the years. For our book reviews section, I’ve written 201 reviews of books which we feel might benefit our clients, blog subscribers, and readers.

Of the 201 reviews, 13 have thus far focused on customer service, and I can’t help but note that they all share a very common thread … “Customers are the backbone of ANY business.” Care of those customers should be of the utmost importance to any organization that hopes to prosper in today’s challenging and very competitive marketplace. That statement is so obvious that it’s almost reached a point of ad nauseam (a disgusting or ridiculous degree). If that is, indeed, true … why is it so difficult to find good customer service today?

Our co-authors both agree that when times are tough, it’s the companies with exceptional customer service that survive. They then proceed to provide their readers with a blueprint on how this is accomplished by some of the most diverse and successful companies in the nation.

They use a very unique approach to accomplish this task. Every successful book must have a “hook” if it hopes to hold the attention of the reader throughout the content they offer. These talented authors took no chances inasmuch as they provided several “hooks.”

The first “hook” is “Gladys”. You’re going to hear a lot about Gladys from cover to cover. She’s actually a combination of those people who represent a company’s most challenging client—the one who requires a high level of skill to manage. This person could be a man, woman, or child. They may be young or old … a long-time customer or first-time patron. We’ve all had to deal with this challenging person, and Gladys will probably never go away. This book will not only provide strategies to cope with Gladys but will show you how to turn “your Gladys” into a Raving Fan. Now that’s a transformation that certainly makes your effort worthwhile!

Here’s another powerful “hook.” While it’s quite obvious that our authors are both well-educated, experienced, and very accomplished, they choose to make their very valid points by providing real-life examples rather than their own opinions. They offer detailed case studies on how 10 very successful companies deal with their most challenging customers. Each of the case studies demonstrates a unique solution to relatively common customer service challenges. They interviewed front-line employees as well as leaders within each organization to discover how each has learned to deal with a variety of challenging circumstances in dealing with Gladys. This approach allows us, as readers, to learn from realistic successes and failures of real people in authentic circumstances.

To illustrate the diversity of the case studies, the authors chose a moving company, a self-help organization, an airline, a polyethylene piping product supplier, a spa, an eyeglass distributor, a medical center, a high-end guitar manufacturer, a residential building business, and a television production studio. That kind of diversity alone proves that you simply can’t escape “Gladys” so you’d best focus on pleasing and transforming her!

The following “hooks” are frosting on the cake! The authors aren’t about to let you forget their valuable content. At the end of each chapter, you’ll find:

• Practical Points … a multi-page review of the critical points outlined within the previous chapter.
• Progress Checklist … a challenge to review those critical chapter points and rate yourself and/or organization on a scale from one to ten. After an honest appraisal, you’ll have an accurate snapshot of what areas to recognize and reward and what areas need enhancement.
• Lessons Learned … a list of critical questions as to how you can and will apply what you’ve learned from that chapter to your own daily situation. These questions are excellent for group discussions among your staff members.
• Answers … after you have discussed the previous questions, the authors provide additional thoughts to ponder for each of the questions.
• Who’s Your Gladys? … a closing chapter statement that can lead to further discussion of the chapter content as well as providing food for thought before you move on.

Upon completion of this pleasant and strongly informative read, you’re not going to walk away feeling as though you’ve been exposed to the typical customer service “fluff” which we’re all so familiar with. You’ll be armed with real-life, marketplace-tested, tips, tools, and strategies that will surely put a smile on the face of any Gladys you may have to deal with!

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

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Monkey Business: 7 Laws of the Jungle for Becoming the Best of the Bunch
by Sandy Wight, Mick Hager, and Steve Tyink

Here we have another of the numerous “mini-books” adorning book store shelves today. Three experienced consultants have combined their experience, talent and creativity to fill a mere 114 pages with a light-hearted approach to the serious business of engaging customers and employees in a mutually beneficial relationship.

What I found intriguing was the fact that they managed to accumulate, in so few pages, so many basic rules, lessons, ideas, principles and strategies for creating the optimum customer service environment—most of which are not being used by the majority of today’s organizations.

The jungle provides a clever metaphor of today’s business climate and that theme is astutely carried out from cover to cover.

You’ll discover the profound power of “Monkey See-Monkey Do” as well as the 7 Laws of the Jungle for Becoming the Best of the Bunch.

1. Establish Your Rock.
2. Create Your Value Vine.
3. Live the Exclamation Factor!
4. Set Your Customer Connection Points.
5. MMFI (Make Me Feel Important).
6. Take Full Responsibility for Our Customers.
7. Use the Energy Advantage!

Utilizing the magic of analogy and fantasy, the authors have created a guidebook on customer service that will captivate readers from start to finish.

To enhance your experience, you’ll discover useful and unique tips and tools in the form of sidebars on most every page. They’ve been arranged in four categories:

• Monkey Wisdom – (66)
• Monkey Magic – (14)
• Monkey Instinct – (10)
• Monkey Speak – (15)

Join a special spider monkey, Leader, on his journey through the jungle, and you’ll learn along with him how to create an enduring, relationship-driven, service-focused, customer-centered, profitable organization.

(This book review was originally published in 2009 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 20.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars,
keynote presentations,
and consulting services.
Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership,
stress management, teamwork,
and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

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What Clients Love: A Field Guide to Growing Your Business
by Harry Beckwith

Harry Beckwith is a critically-acclaimed international best-selling author, best known for his marketing classics Selling the Invisible and The Invisible Touch. He heads Beckwith Partners, a marketing and branding firm that has advised 29 Fortune 500 clients … including Microsoft, GM and Target. Beckwith is also an internationally acclaimed speaker and teacher on marketing and customer relationships.

What I really appreciate and enjoy about this book is the fact that I can open the book to any page and start highlighting content. This reader-friendly format doesn’t require that I start with chapter one and read chronologically until finished. There are approximately 175 short 2- to 3-page essays allowing you to choose those which most intrigues you or best meet your needs immediately.

Beckwith focuses on selling, servicing, and branding in a marketplace where the average consumer is deluged with 3,200 advertising messages a day. He also addresses successful approaches to positioning, marketing, client attraction, customer retention, and communication strategies emphasizing the importance of every member of an organization contributing to its growth.

I especially enjoyed his many references to pop culture, motion pictures, clever ads we’re all familiar with, and lessons learned from so many of the companies we all know and patronize.

Beckwith also provides readers with “A 7-Page Checklist of Questions to Ask in Building an Exceptional Business,” “A Reading List for Growing a Business,” as well as 20 questions for choosing a name for your business.

The author applies his unequaled clarity, insight, humor and expertise to a new age of global competition, mass communication, financial challenges, and mass confusion. He shares four crucial trends we must all deal with in our pursuit of success:

• Option and Information Overload
• The Decline of Trust
• The Rise of Invisibles and Intangibles
• The Wish to Connect

Rather than describing the unique content of this book, I think you’ll get a better idea of what to expect by sharing some of the essay content titles. You’ll quickly realize this book certainly has something for everyone.

• Finding the White Hot Center
• The End of Missions
• Fortune Favors the Bold
• New Economy, Same People
• Mark Twain’s Marketing Lesson
• Harpers, McPaper, and Tiger
• Wield a Velvet Sledgehammer
• What Would Aesop and Jesus Do?
• Lincoln Had No Slides At Gettysburg
• Think Pterodactyls and Typhoons
• Familiarity and the New 80/20 Rule
• Gerber Unbaby Food and Salty Lemonade
• Omaha Surfing and Jefferson Airplane
• Clients Love Odd Things
• Harley, Ogilvy and the Incredible Shrinking Name
• Imagineering’s Six Commandments
• Clients Understand with their Eyes
• Boiled Critter at Tiffany’s
• What Your Clients Actually Buy
• Efficient Tools Aren’t
• Your Fastest Way to Improve Client Satisfaction
• Ten Rules of Business Manners
• Ritz-Carlton’s Shortcut to Satisfied Customers
• Why Do Some People and Businesses Thrive?

If these few examples don’t tweak your interest, this book isn’t for you. In addition, you’re going to miss some terrific tips, tools and strategies which can be easily and quickly transferred back to your workplace to insure greater success. Better hope your competitors don’t read this one.

(This book review was originally published in 2009 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 19.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars,
keynote presentations,
and consulting services.
Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership,
stress management, teamwork,
and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

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The Must-Have Customer: 7 Steps to Winning the Customer You Haven’t Got
by Robert Gordman and Armin Brott

One of my favorite authors, “Anonymous,” once said: “You can tell whether a person is clever by his/her answers. You can tell whether a person is wise by his/her questions!”

Veteran business consultant Robert Gordman believes success in business is simple: It’s literally there for the asking. What he advises executives to ask—and keep asking—are questions that help them understand what their company does well, what it could do better and what its competitors do that lures customers away. Of course, listening without bias and incorporating that feedback into a strategic plan is essential as a follow-up strategy.

The expertise you’ll find within these pages was developed through more than 30 years of business consulting and executive management for retail companies. You’ll learn the tactics and wisdom Gordman used to help dozens of companies, such as IBM and Berkshire Hathaway, improve their sale range from about $10 million to an astounding $80 billion!

The seven steps and the lists of survey questions he shares with you are simple and easily applicable to any business. When I realized this, my thought was obvious. If so elemental and obviously productive and successful, why in the world isn’t everyone doing it? I’m not even sure Gordman can answer that one as this is one of the great mysteries in the history of organizational management. The author shares a number of examples—from Coca-Cola to JCPenney—of companies that failed to employ the seven simple steps successfully and suffered the consequences as a result. He asserts that most companies do not die of natural causes but from poor decision-making that drives away profits, one customer at a time. Take the time to do a little research and you’ll find that the majority of business authors and consultants would tell you exactly the same thing after years of observation. Apparently, many see but few learn and respond.

I don’t want to demean Gordman’s “7 Steps to Winning the Customer You Haven’t Got” in any way. I say that because his strategy has been proven to be very effective time and time again—for those who have applied it. However, I think you’ll agree that each of his 7 Steps are very basic and considered by some to be nothing more than “common sense” … or maybe we should call them “uncommon sense” because so few are taking advantage of them. After close examination of each step, you’ll understand why so many companies have failed over the years and how to avoid that same fate while enjoying sustained, profitable growth.

1. Who are our Must-Have Customers?
   The author gives you tools to identify three customer groups and what they mean to your business.
2. What Is Our Market Position?
   Gordman will show you how to determine where your customers have positioned you and how to use that information to create a business strategy that will attract more customers while meeting the needs of those you have.
3. Sweet Spots and Why You Need One
   Identify and define your “sweet spot.” Then learn how to study the competition and how to use research to develop a business plan that ensures that your company’s sweet spot remains defensible.
4. Why Are Our Satisfied Customers Buying from Our Competition?
   Learn why satisfying your customers isn’t enough and why you must create undying loyalty. Then face the frightening reality that will bring you success: Fire the customers who are more trouble than they’re worth.
5. Critical Success Factors: Do You Know What You Don’t Know?
   Learn the difference between what’s important for your company and what’s critical. Build a strategic plan and receive the tools you need to develop two or three critical initiatives to assist you in outlining cohesive goals that everyone in your organization can work toward.
6. Must-Have Employees
   Use the questions in this chapter to discover why Must-Have Employees are so critical to your success.
7. Are We Communicating Effectively with Our Must-Have Customers?
   Learn why increased sales don’t necessarily translate into increased profits and how and why this step is so essential to your future.

(This book review was originally published in 2005 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 14.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars,
keynote presentations,
and consulting services.
Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership,
stress management, teamwork,
and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

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There’s a Customer Born Every Minute: P.T. Barnum’s Secrets to Business Success
by Joe Vitale

When many of you read the title of this book, the name P.T. Barnum more than likely came to mind immediately. This famous entrepreneur and showman is perhaps best known today for having said something very similar to this title, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” As a youngster, I was well aware of Barnum’s affiliation with the “Greatest Show On Earth,” the Barnum and Bailey Circus. My grandfather took me to see this spectacle every time it arrived within 100 miles of our home. As much as I cherished every visit to this exhibition of extravagance (give me a break—we had no cable TV or video games), I must admit I had little, if any, respect or feeling for P.T. Barnum. As I look back I’m quite certain it was due to the famed “sucker” comment that was always credited to him. It never set well with me.

Now, decades later, I learn from this book that Barnum never once uttered that statement! In actual fact, he believed that there was a customer born every minute, and this belief—that everyone was a potential buyer—was just one of the many solid business principles that led him to a long and successful career.

The author of this page turner, Joe Vitale, is President of Hypnotic Marketing, Inc., a marketing consulting firm. To create this best seller, Vitale studied books about Barnum, read stacks of his letters, listened to a rare Edison recording of his voice, watched the various movies and commentaries made of his life, visited with collectors of Barnum materials, and reread his lively autobiography, titled Struggles and Triumphs, the primary source to read if you want to know about this fascinating man’s life.

Barnum created what the author calls “10 Rings of Power” for making any business into a money machine. These business principles are straightforward, very effective, and obviously timeless. Vitale shows you how to apply and adapt these key principles to your own business. It doesn’t matter if you lead an established company or plan to start your own entrepreneurial venture; what worked so successfully for Barnum can do the same for you.

In addition to the Rings of Power, this captivating read will provide you with a number of useful new marketing ideas that you can utilize immediately with fantastic outcomes. For instance:

• Learn the secret of “The King’s Magic Ring.” (It’s as relevant today as it was at the time of its creation!)
• Discover Barnum’s “Secret for Living at No-Stress Level”
• Adopt Barnum’s “Secret for Surviving Disasters and Tragedies”
• Uncover the “Three Steps to Publicity”
• Understand “What People Really Want”
• Master the “World’s Oldest Formula” (AIDA)
• Discover “Ten Easy Ways to Grab Attention”
• Become an Audacious Idea Generator
• Acquire the knowledge to “Barnumize Your Business”

(This book review was originally published in 2005 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 14.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars,
keynote presentations,
and consulting services.
Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership,
stress management, teamwork,
and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

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