Take Your Perch
Get the bird's-eye view that can help alert you to potential problems.
Working deep underground, with limited oxygen and a long way to
go for more, old-time miners took canaries down with them to serve
as early indicators of trouble with the air supply. In the
metaphorically titled Corporate Canaries: Avoid Business Disasters
With a Coal Miner's Secrets (Nelson Business, $19.99),
turnaround expert Gary Sutton delivers a collection of simple and
practical tales that serve as entrepreneurial substitutes for
fainting songbirds.
The indicators are clear, and the prescriptions are emphatic. If
your company's sales are growing while profits are falling, for
instance, Sutton gives you 180 days to fix it or fail. What to look
at first in that situation? If your salespeople get commissions on
revenue, he suggests switching them to a compensation scheme based
on profits per sale. Brief and conversational, and loaded with
homey tales of the author's coal-miner grandfather, this may be
exactly the quick read a business owner needs when disaster
looms.
Catch Your Prey
Bureaucracy, red tape and more conspire to keep entrepreneurs from
the giant deals that can turn their own companies into behemoths.
But Steve Kaplan overcame it all when he landed Procter &
Gamble Inc. as a client for his six-person marketing firm. Now a
sales trainer, Kaplan says you can score big, too, in Bag the Elephant: How to Win & Keep Big
Customers (Bard Press, $19.95). Start by realizing that big
companies need you: They can't buy everything from other
giants. Also understand that big customers are more profitable
because it's easier to sell a lot to a few than a little to
many. But don't try it alone-Kaplan says you'll have to
engage every person in your firm to tackle a titan
successfully.
Mark Henricks is Entrepreneur's
"Staff Smarts" columnist.
Content Continues Below