Book review: Coffee, Lunch, Coffee

A few months back, I had (appropriately enough) lunch with Alana Muller, who was just putting the finishing touches on a book entitled Coffee, Lunch, Coffee. Last week, a copy of her book landed in my mailbox. Alana calls it, "A practical field guide for master networking".

The title of Alana Muller's book refers to the single-minded way she went about building her own personal network. Her goal was to have three meetings a day; for coffee in the morning, lunch, then coffee again.

Ever the networker, Alana had arranged to meet me through a mutual friend, who knew that I'd recently written Build a Brand Like Trader Joe's. That friend thought I might have advice for a new author navigating the shifting waters of the publishing industry. She turned out to be gorgeous, smart, ambitious, and well-organized. (That goes a long way towards explaining why when she's not hawking her book, she's the President of the highly regarded Kaufmann FasTrac entrepreneurial training program, but that when I'm not hawking my books, I'm a shiftless advertising copywriter who takes his dogs on long walks during business hours.)

Before she headed the FasTrac program, she was a fast-rising young executive at Sprint. But the writing was on the wall at a company that had rarely been profitable and it was time for a change. The challenge: She'd spent her career in one company, and had few connections outside it. She turned building her personal network into her job. As you'd expect from an MBA grad, she embarked on her networking plan with due diligence, and documented every step.

Coffee, Lunch, Coffee is full of practical advice for anyone who is building a network of personal connections, whether their goal is to find their next career destination, as Alana's was, or whether they're individual entrepreneurs whose network is the first line of prospects. The advice is fine grained, and ranging from the very specific (never send out a LinkedIn invitation to connect using the default text, always write a personal note) to the nearly esoteric (how to breathe; yes, it makes a difference.)

Alana's organized hundreds of tips into a practical workbook full of simple exercises that will take socially inept types (e.g., me) through the steps required to build their own networks. Like my advice on building a brand like Trader Joe's, it's simple stuff -- though not necessarily easy, there's hard work involved and it takes perseverance and discipline. Coffee, Lunch, Coffee readers don't have to go it alone, however. They can download a spreadsheet to keep track of their progress, and refer to Alana's Coffee, Lunch, Coffee blog for ongoing advice. The book concludes with Alana's email address.

If you want to build your network of personal connections (or improve the one you have) this book's highly recommended. Signed and inscribed copies are available directly from the author for $20 here. The price includes free shipping.

New York Times: Working in Apple Stores = letdown

Last Sunday's New York Times front page lead was a feature story about the majority of Apple's U.S. employees, who are employed in low-level customer service jobs in Apple Stores. The story, which the Times researched for several months, resonated with me both for the similarities between Apple and Trader Joe's (which readers of Build a Brand Like Trader Joe's will be familiar with) and some of the differences in the way employees are treated.

I particularly noted that Apple, like Trader Joe's, hires for personality and not product knowledge. As the Times put it, "the candidates of choice are affable and self-directed rather than tech-savvy. (The latter can be taught, is the theory, while the former is innate.)"

Bookshelf: The best advertising is ___ __ ____.

Trader Joe's knows that the best advertising is word of mouth. We all know what word of mouth means, but it's easy to assume that this kind of organic advertising just happens.

Click this image to go straight to Amazon and buy this book. 

Andy Sernowvitz' book, Word of Mouth Marketing doesn't take that for granted. In this book, Andy provides a structure you can use to really understand the situations that enable - and prompts that trigger - enthusiastic customer referrals. Then, he lays out dozens of practical techniques you can use to build buzz about you and your company.

As I read WoMM, I realized Andy could have used Trader Joe's to illustrate many (most) of the ways successful companies turn customers into fans (or even fanatics.) Like me, Andy wants your company to turn customer service into an ultimate sport. There were a number of times I thought, "Damn, I wish I'd thought of that when I was writing, Build a Brand Like Trader Joe's; I would have included it in my own book." No wonder his WoMM blog is found at: www.damniwish.com.

This morning as I was walking back from the farmer's market, it occurred to me that in the current efficiency-obsessed downsized and outsourced economic environment, word of mouth is more important than ever. In old corporate America, a small number of large corporations each employed lots of people. Big companies had big budgets, large-scale communications opportunities and, often, messages suited to mass media. Big companies had a few marketing specialists, but most employees had other responsibilities.

In new, outsourced America, millions of us are independent contractors. We don't have marketing departments; each of us is his or her own director of marketing. Nor do we have advertising budgets. That's why Andy Sernovitz' advice in World of Mouth Marketing is so relevant right now. This book is full of stuff you can do that won't cost you a cent, and will help you to build invaluable brand equity.