There are a few classic sales books and tapes that you might want to review during your business planning phase: Jeffrey Gitomer’s Sales Bible; Mark McCormick’s What They Didn’t Teach You at Harvard Business School; Harvey MacKay’s Swim with the Sharks; and Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal. And, of course, this very book. [...]
It is also important to create and execute market surveys prior to entering any particular business area. Find as many of your potential marketing targets as possible and give them an incentive to complete a well-thought out survey. When you analyze the results, you should have valuable information to guide your decisions. The larger the [...]
We also recommend that you read profusely so you can better understand your opportunities: namely broad business periodicals, your own trade journals, and local business press. Some national names to consider are The Economist, Fortune, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Washington Post and The New York Times; the local business sections of other newspapers, [...]
Another option would be to consider niches of big industries. For example, instead of trying to be the leader of the “widget” industry, strive to be the leading analyst of the industry or the leading supplier of specialty marketing services. You should be spending huge amounts of time considering every creative element that might suit [...]
Finally, a Third Bet, which fits most new business candidates (if you are not applying your First or Second Best Bet), would be to choose a relatively random line of business after exhaustively studying research and financial models on emerging industries, even if you have no personal interest or history in that particular line of [...]
Spending your life training for one particular type of business would probably not be easy or always fun and this may not be the right path for you. Nevertheless, if you were to do so, there is usually a significant financial benefit. Then again, if you did train for much of your life in one [...]
Peter Lynch of Fidelity Magellan Fund put forth the mantra, “Invest in what you know or what is near to you.” Ostensibly, to invest in something you do not understand would be folly. Warren Buffet invests in the same way, as you can tell from his investments in See’s Candies, Coca-Cola, and Dairy Queen, and [...]
