I wished I had read this book before.
I'm not in the marketing business. Or am I?
I don't do marketing for my company, but I do marketing of myself everyday in my job,
In my relationships, in my studies.
This easy and quick to read book is full of many interesting tips.
It is structured in fourteen rules, one for chapter.
Some of them are obviously important, but maybe overlooked in day to day business, such as "Make the Problem more Important than the Solution."
Others seems counterintuitive, such as "Reject Strategically", but if I think back to my many errors, I'm sure the use of this rule would have helped me a lot in my career.
I liked the many examples of negotiating in the work environment too.
The book contains many example from real life situation that make the book easy to read and pleasant.
As I said, I wished I had read this book before. ( )

This book was great! Normally I don't read many marketing books, because it doesn't have to do with my field of work, but I enjoyed this one. The author used stories to give an example of each of his rules which made his rules very understandable and also helped to illustrate that his rules do work for the field of marketing. I'm a librarian and am going to suggest this book be made part of my library's collection because it is very useful for marketing a business. ( )

I am a past Chapter President for an NPC sorority. At the time of my installation, this particular chapter was recruiting very poorly and was on the verge of being shut down due to low numbers. Within the span of about a year and a half, I helped lead this group of about 15 members to recruit over 100 new members thereby saving the chapter and winning us all very positive attention from the university and the national organization. To this day I believe the single most effective thing we had going for us, as chapter leaders, was innocent and honest passion for the organization. I believed in what we were doing, I had dreams about what our chapter could be, and I intuitively knew that acting “desperate” (or like hungry lions) was not going to bring us the recruits that we needed to stay open. At the time I was not able to put it into exact and clear words as Deo has don for us, but I realize now that, without knowing how or why, I instinctively put into practice many of Deo’s principles toward recruiting new members and managing the sorority. I say this because Mark Deo’s book translates beautifully into recruiting for a sorority and because of this I’m convinced that all of the principles he outlines WILL work for ANY business at all.

What he has to say in this book is particularly pertinent to the current economic climate. Many businesses out there and many sales people are feeling desperate right now and desperation leads to taking any and all business that might come around. The problem with this is while your only stipulation for client selection is to check for a pulse, you are watering down your clientele and essentially ruining yourself for those clients who would choose you based on your expertise in one area. YOU CAN’T BE ALL THINGS TO ALL PEOPLE. This is SO important for business people to remember. However, if you can be THE ONLY solution to a narrower group of clients and their problems, you can solidify a strong clientele for yourself and THEY WILL COME TO YOU because of your expertise. The way this worked for my sorority was that the product we were selling (membership) went from being something that was open to anyone and everyone with a pulse because we were desperate for numbers, to a targeted recruitment effort toward carefully selected potential clients—those young ladies who were extremely involved in campus clubs, but who never thought they needed to be in a sorority before. We harnessed their desire to be involved, and marketed our group as a women’s club whose founding principles happened to match up very nicely with the principles of the university they chose to attend. We redefined sorority for all the girls who didn’t identify with typical sorority girls. We turned some applicants away if it wasn’t a good fit for us or them—and put up with A LOT of chastising for this by the higher ups in the organization who were very afraid that this counter-intuitive measure would fail. But after a year of “planting our bamboo” suddenly we reached a Gladwell-ian Tipping Point and women were seeking us out asking to join! We no longer had to “sell” membership—we just had to believe in our activities, be who we were, plant the seeds and be patient. I know from experience, what Deo is preaching DOES WORK.

I have read a lot of business and recruiting books over the last few years and I can say without a doubt that Deo’s book is not only entertaining and quick to read, it is full of great sense and wisdom. My family owns and operates a string of very successful Century 21 franchises and I will be recommending this book to all of the agents for obvious reasons, but I will also be recommending it to the managers and leaders because it is completely relevant to them as well. ( )

A well-written book that will give anyone who owns any type of business strong ideas and suggestions to become even more successful. I found that I can even incorporate many of the author's ideas into my girl scout troop and the school PTA. ( )