Recommended Resources – The Boy Billionaire

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The Boy Billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg In His Own WordsThe Boy Billionaire: Mark Zuckerberg In His Own Words

edited by George Beahm

About the Book

The Boy Billionaire edited by George Beahm reveals Mark Zuckerberg’s core philosophies and approaches to building Facebook in a way no other author has been able to achieve… because these insights come directly from Mark Zuckerberg himself. George’s book systematically covers a wide range of topics from ‘Mission’ to ‘Process’ and ‘Vision’ to ‘Accountability’ and ‘Values’.

Throughout The Boy Billionaire, several central these are revealed:

  • identify the very few things that add value and focus on those
  • move quickly and don’t be afraid to make mistakes
  • empower people to connect, to control, and to take bold action

Benefits of Reading this Book

StrategyDriven Contributors like The Boy Billionaire because it reveals the intimate thoughts and beliefs of the man who is arguably created one of the world’s largest companies (albeit unintentionally) and who is also one of the world’s greatest social connectors. While Mark Zuckerberg didn’t set out to build a highly successful enterprise, his understanding of people’s inherent need to connect and ability to translate that need into a power online experience reveals important lessons for any business leader seeking to gain customers via the internet.

StrategyDriven Contributors appreciated the layout of The Boy Billionaire, the organization of quotes around meaningful topic areas, the dating of each quote, and Mark Zuckerberg’s life story timeline provided at the end of the book. We found that knowing the setting and circumstances of the Mark Zuckerberg’s quotes provided insightful context from which to interpret them. As such, we recommend first-time readers review the ‘Milestones’ timeline presented at the end of the book first and refer to it often when reading individual quotes.

The only drawback to The Boy Billionaire is that Mark Zuckerberg’s relative youthfulness and media shyness results in far more limited insight to his core beliefs than similar works on Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett.

For it’s intimate portrayal of an unintentional American entrepreneurial icon, The Boy Billionaire is a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Management Observation Program Best Practice 10 – Foundational, Situational, Event-based, and Random Observations

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StrategyDriven Management Observation Program Best Practice ArticleWhile management observation programs serve many purposes, they primarily exist to drive achievement of the organization’s goals in a manner consistent with its values. These formal, documented observations accomplish this by shaping and reinforcing personnel behaviors critical to supporting excellent operational performance. To provide adequate coverage, these observations should be performed on a recurring, situational, event, and random basis.

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Four words: Winner. Whiner. Smart. Dumb. Pick two!

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QUESTIONS: Who’s going to win the next Super Bowl? Who’s going to win the next World Series? Who’s going to win the next Masters Tournament?

ANSWER: The team or the player that’s best prepared. The team or the player that makes the fewest mistakes. The team or the player that stays steady and keeps its cool. The team or the player that creates breaks and takes advantage of them. The team or the player that prepares one razzle-dazzle play, takes the risk at the opportune time, and pulls it off. The team with the most dedicated players. The team or the player with the best coach.

Same in sales.

In this year’s Super Bowl, both teams were capable of winning. But victory does not always go to who’s the best. It more often goes to who’s the SMARTEST. Smartest coach. Smartest players. And, of course, whomever got the breaks, and took advantage of them.

Same in sales. The smartest will win, especially if they get the breaks. (Or do smart people create breaks?)

BIG QUESTION: What does smart selling mean to you?

MY ANSWER: It doesn’t take as much brains as it does take understanding. So, I have created the perfect acronym to help you:
S – SMILE.
M – MAKE FRIENDS.
A – Have the ATTITUDE of a WINNER.
R – Take RELATIONSHIP ACTIONS.
T – TAKE RESPONSIBILITY.

Pretty simple. No memorization required. No “find the pain” manipulation. Just an easy to understand formula that will guide you to more business.

Let me deepen the SMART SELLING definitions:
S – SMILE. This defines your warmth, approachability, and overall feeling. It’s a greeting beyond a handshake that sends a welcome, open message. It’s both peaceful and reassuring.
M – MAKE FRIENDS. This is not as easy as it seems. Some prospects want to keep it ‘all business.’ Your responsibility is to create friendly dialog that might result in finding some common ground. Look for their smile. That’s a sign you’re breaking the ice. And note my mantra: All things being equal, people want to do business with their friends. All things being NOT QUITE so equal, people STILL want to do business with their friends.
A – Have the ATTITUDE of a WINNER. This is not just a positive or a YES! Attitude. This is a winning attitude that combines your will to win, your preparation, and yourself-belief. It’s a positive, internal confidence based on previous wins. Not cocky, more like self-assured in a way that passes your confidence on to the customer.
R – Take RELATIONSHIP ACTIONS. This means you take long-term oriented actions. Actions that will stand the test of time. Actions that give your customer the feeling you represent their best interest, not just your own. You speak the truth, have high ethical standards, and are known for service. You’re taking service actions, and value actions beyond the sale. Not sell and run (the 1970’s definition of ‘hunter’), rather stay and help. Earn the relationship to a point where it becomes referral based, and testimonial possible.
T – TAKE RESPONSIBILITY. Taking responsibility starts with who you are as a person, and transcends to who you are as a salesperson. As a smart salesperson, youhave to know the responsibility is yours if you lose a sale – the same as if you win a sale. The good news is when you become responsible for both success and failure, you also become a student of sales and life. Blaming others (the opposite of responsibility) allows you a hall pass form self-education. It’s forgotten or passed-on rather than studied.

MAJOR AHA! I just tweeted: “When it’s raining outside, and you blame the rain, keep in mind it’s raining on everybody. Take responsibility. #gitomer” – RESULT: 42 re-tweets and 14 favorites within 1 hour – on a Sunday morning!

Here are a few more critical elements of Smart Selling: Product smart. Customer smart. Value smart. Preparation smart. Follow-up smart. Service smart.

BIGGER QUESTION: How smart of a salesperson are you? Now that you have my definition, the reality is you may think you’re smarter than you actually are.

SMART SELLING REALITY:

  • Smart salespeople don’t sell on price.
  • Smart salespeople don’t reduce price.
  • Smart salespeople don’t match price.

BIGGEST QUESTION: Now that you have read this, are you still as smart as you thought you were a few minutes ago? Probably not, but that’s a good thing. Now that you’re aware of what ‘smart-selling’ consists of, you can begin to take advantage of it.

There’s one more element of smart selling – it’s the two word essence of a successful salesperson. To find out what it is, go to www.gitomer.com, register if you’re a first-time visitor and enter the words SMART SELLING in the GitBit box.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 66 – An Interview with Mark Sanborn, author of Fred 2.0

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StrategyDriven Podcast Special EditionStrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 66 – An Interview with Mark Sanborn, author of Fred 2.0 explores the actions anyone can take to achieve extraordinary results and to build and lead teams to do the same. During our discussion, Mark Sanborn, author of Fred 2.0: New Ideas on How to Keep Delivering Extraordinary Results, shares with us his insights and experiences regarding the:

  • StrategyDriven Podcast Special Editionwhat it means to be a ‘Fred’ and the four Fred Factor principles
  • what to do if others take advantage of your ‘Fred-ness’
  • the importance of asking “Will I regret not doing this?” instead of “Will I regret doing this?”
  • what it takes to be a ‘Head Fred’
  • actions required to build and sustain a team of ‘Freds’

Additional Information

In addition to the outstanding insights Mark shares in Fred 2.0 and this special edition podcast are the resources accessible from his website, www.MarkSanborn.com.   Mark’s book, Fred 2.0, can be purchased by clicking here.

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About the Author

Mark Sanborn, author of Fred 2.0, is the New York Times bestselling author of The Fred Factor as well as seven other popular books. He is the president of Sanborn and Associates, Inc., an idea studio dedicated to developing leaders in business and in life. Mark is a noted authority and in-demand speaker on leadership, customer service, and extraordinary performance. To read Mark’s complete biography, click here.

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal, and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

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Strategic Planning – How Much Should Organizations Spend on Business Planning?

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StrategyDriven Strategic Planning Principle ArticleWell-crafted strategic and annual business plans provide a sense of purpose and direction. They establish the operations and initiative activities the organization will implement in order to achieve defined outcomes. Furthermore, these business plans serve as a communications mechanism to drive alignment of management decisions and employee actions to the effective and efficient achievement of the organization’s mission goals. (See StrategyDriven article, Why Do Organizations Need Strategic Planning.) Without business plans, time and effort may be applied to activities less directly focused on achievement of the organization’s goals thereby wasting the business’s precious limited resources.

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.