Obama's Nobel Prize; Book of Failures; Torres Black Book; Seth Godin's Tactics

"...keeping you great"

HEADLINES:

Book of Failures -- Fortune Small Business is looking for stories for their Owner's Manual section in the magazine. This is a story where an entrepreneur describes a business mistake s/he made and then goes on to describe how s/he learned from the mistake and went on to prosper. Email adriana_gardella@timeinc.com

Book of Failures, part 2 -- during my call with Jim Collins, in preparation for his presentation next week at the Growth Summit, he reflected on how rare it is that we study failures vs. successes which is how his latest bestseller, How the Mighty Fall, came to fruition (we hope your team will tune-in to his LIVE webcast if you won't make the Summit). A week later I heard of a concrete process by which a centuries old firm has done just this -- systematically documenting and learning from its past mistakes...

Black Book of Torres -- ...Miguel Torres, 5th generation of Torres Wines (60 million cases, 140 countries, 300 year old vineyards), spoke at the EO University in Barcelona. During his presentation he described their "Black Book of Torres" which formally documents the mistakes they've made going back 50 years! Whenever a mistake is made, the person responsible writes it up in the black book -- then whenever anyone is hired, they are required to read the black book -- obviously, the importance of studying failures. BTW, the last entry had to do with the CFO not listening to the rest of the executive team which strongly advised against a certain currency hedge resulting in a $200k loss. Stuff like that.

Building Books (or anything) That Sell in the Digital Age -- Seth Godin, the marketing guru, has written 10 bestsellers. And he's used some non-traditional tactics to promote his books. In a recent blog post he linked to a video of a presentation he gave eighteen months ago where he details the tactics he used to sell books -- tactics he thinks can help you sell anything in the digital age. For those of you writing books as a promotional tool for your business, this is a must watch -- for the rest of you, there are powerful marketing lessons in this video -- watch at your next weekly marketing meeting.

Book to Attend Seth Godin's Workshop -- Nov 19, NYC -- $880. And I might be too late in announcing, but Seth is offering a rare one-day public marketing workshop -- come learn from the #1 marketing guru of our time.

Would You Call a Book "Book" -- Brad Skelton, CEO of Brisbane-based Skelton Sherborne, has a BHAG to win 95% of their business without quoting. In the meantime, they still have to send out quotations and he wondered, first, if there was something better to call them. They've been using "Rate Confirmation." Second, he wanted to know how to properly position his price in the rate confirmation. So we posed the question to Mark Burton of Holden Advisors, the pricing guru that spoke at the Sales Summit:

"One of the top experts in proposal writing is Tom Sant. Tom is a friend of our firm and one of his key pieces of advice: Never title your proposal "Proposal" which doesn't say anything the client can't figure out themselves. But, oddly enough, that's what most proposals are titled (it's a little like writing a book and titling it "Book", isn't it?). Instead, try writing a substantive title that states a benefit to the client: Increasing Network Reliability and Convenience Through Automated Fax Capabilities. So using Tom's advice, every proposal is a means to further position and confirm your value -- right on down to the title at the top of the page. Brad should consider a series of high-impact titles that reflect the value that his team delivers to customers."

Price is About Trust -- continued Burton "A key driver in presenting price is trust. Shipping can be a complex business and I'm sure that many shipping firms use this complexity to layer in fees. As soon as a customer feels like they have to read the fine print, trust is being eroded. So anything that Brad can do to keep things simple and as obvious as possible will be consistent with the way that he is trying to position the business development and affirmation process."

John Assaraf's Book out in Paperback -- I'm a fan of his book The Answer and his use of vision boards -- a concept anchoring the new EO Injected program (for companies over $15 million in revenue and/or seven years in EO). The Answer is now out in paperback -- pick up plenty for your team.

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize -- and this column brought me to tears -- and I read it to my children. Thomas Friedman remains my favorite Op-Ed columnist of all time. Read (if you're a U.S. citizen) his piece on what President Obama should say when he accepts the Nobel Prize in December.