Low Risk High Reward by Bob Reiss, with Jeffrey L. Cruikshank
Communication Skills, Salesmanship and Decision Making
Business Writing – This is an interesting topic, as it serves as a bit of a retrospective, as this book was published in 2000. Since, AI has been introduced to the public, where our reliance and use of the internet has steeply amplified. He begins by saying that writing isn’t a dying art., and I highly agree. There’s a huge emphasis on conciseness in business emails, but with effective communication.
Business Presentations – Skills like public speaking are essential, even though many people are terrified of it. This is definitely a skill that I’ve worked to become better at over time, however my largest audience may have been forty people, at most. Bob shares some tricks, like not relying on visual aids, like PowerPoints, focus on one individual in the crowd if you get nervous, interact with the crowdand be prepared for disasters.
Listening – We’re bad listeners because humans process ideas faster than they can be delivered verbally. Being a good listener means being an active listener. Keep the focus on the speaker’s ideas rather than your own ideas. Listening is the most important skill for an entrepreneur, as you can learn how people want to be sold to. Good negotiations depend on good listening, and you can bring these skills with you in your personal life too.
Salesmanship – Securing orders for your company’s products or service is one of the most critical skills for the success of your enterprise. There’s quite a misconception around sales, and that its specifically oriented towards extroverted individuals or traveling salesmen, but Bob dispels this, by giving examples of individuals who were top salesmen at their companies, that had stutters, or stage fright when speaking in front of a crowd. The Founder of Orchids Only, Barbara Todd, stated that the one skill that’s very important as a salesperson, is empathy. I agree with this sentiment, as I work in Sales, and have found that listening and empathy are fantastic ways to open doors to more information, which builds momentum into deals.
Decision Making – Entrepreneurs, especially in small businesses, have the luxury to make quick decisions, which is typically an edge. Bob warns that indecisiveness squanders that advantage. He also advocates for using intuition largely over a science or evidence based approach, as “gut based” decision making comes from an amalgamation of your own personal experiences, which grows stronger as you gather more experience. However, its important to do a significant amount of research prior to making these decisions. Jeff Bezos famously created Amazon Prime at the behest of his advisors at Amazon, based on instinct, as well as introducing a function on Amazon that reminds customers that they had recently purchased something. They did the research, and found that this function lost the company money in the long term, but he thought it to be such a positive customer service driven function, that even he enjoyed, that he made the decision to include it anyways. It goes without saying that he’s enjoyed phenomenal success in his approach, even when the data didn’t support it.