How do businesses influence customers? My next book tells you how. I sent the 50,000-word manuscript to a few publishers this week, and I’ll let you know when it’s available. Title: The Way of the Warrior in Business: Battling for Profits, Power, and Domination—and Winning Big! It applies military strategies and tactics to business operations. My buddies at the Veterans Center on Hafen Lane should get a kick out of it. Here’s what each of the 11 chapters is about.
Chapter 1: Basic Training: When a business executive knows and uses military strategy and tactics, his market share, sales, and profits greatly increase. This chapter helps you develop the killer instinct that turns innocent lambs into powerful business warriors who win big and win often! Some play this power game for money. Some for security or fame. Others for sex. But the master players seek power itself, because they know power can be used to obtain money, sex, security, or fame. The very basics of the power game is in Chapter 1. It jump-starts your mindset, and you’ll start thinking and acting like a well-oiled military machine!
Chapter 2: Strategy, Tactics, and Surprise: Strategy is deciding what to do. Tactics is deciding how to do it. You’ll learn here that the business warriors who are the biggest winners go after and conquer competitors who are easily conquered. They do this by distracting and deceiving their enemies, by confusing them, and by using tactics that work. Especially surprise tactics—play upon their fears, make them feel trapped. Make them make mistakes—and never interrupt them when they’re making a mistake. In short, don’t die for your country—make the other poor bastard die for his country (as General George Patton said).
Chapter 3: Planning, War Games, and Winning Big: Become the 800-pound gorilla in your industry by following the 11 planning steps in this chapter. Other highlights include:
• How to stop procrastinating
• Rules for making decisions without ulcers
• The “So what?” analysis—it’s the most insightful analysis you can make
• Learn what kind of risk profile you have—are you a falcon, a sitting duck, a chicken, or a dodo bird?
• Decision-making by the numbers
• Going inside business simulations—the best war games on the market
Chapter 4: Winning the Battle for Your Customer’s Mind Using the Three Power of Marketing Warfare—Personality, Positioning, and Psychographics: Here are some of the highlights:
• How to describe your brand as if it were a human being
• Market segmentation of the mind
• Why it’s so important to be first
• What you can do if you’re not first
• Why you shouldn’t be over-macho: The macho way of attacking leaders head-on usually leads to disaster
• How well-fortified weaker brands can not only repel attacks from big dogs but actually defeat them
Chapter 5: The Creative Business Warrior—How to Out-Think Your Competitors: Learn the 20 characteristics of creative people and the six characteristics of the creative company. If you’re not that creative, this chapter gives you many ways to become a lot more creative, including
• Becoming more like a child
• Brainstorming—a much better way than you’ve ever seen
• Forced relationships—how cartoonists get ideas for gags
• Put your judgment on hold using the PIN technique
• The bug list
• 101 uses
• Nine dots, six glasses
Chapter 6: Guerrilla Don Hendon’s Four Battlegrounds of Business—All About Strategy: Here are some of the questions this chapter answers:
• Is my brand a star, question mark, problem child, cash cow, or dog?
• How can I find out without guessing and by using very simple math?
• How can I keep a star in orbit?
• Should I get rid of my dogs?
You’ll also learn:
• Simple winning strategies to turn your brands into stars with staying power
• Techniques to keep your cash cows pumping out that profitable milk
• When and how to strengthen and fortify your weak brands so they become cash cows
• When to use a scorched earth policy and when to use a contested withdrawal
Chapter 7: Offensive and Defensive Weapons—All About Tactics: This chapter prepares you for guerrilla warfare (chapter 8) and warfare the big dog’s way (chapter 9). You’ll find out what tactics work best in Battlegrounds 1, 2, 3, and 4. There are 70 of them—yes, 70. And you’ll learn to master them here. They include six groups of tactics: 8 maneuvering, 13 attacking, 11 pursuit, 11 defense, 18 retreat, and 9 rejuvenating. And you’ll also learn about five kinds of attacks—enveloping, frontal, wing, flank, and guerrilla The chapter closes with the six stages of battle.
Chapter 8: Winning Business Warfare the Guerrilla Way—Getting Big by Thinking Small: Who is the ultimate guerrilla? Why, Sam Walton, the legendary founder of Wal-Mart, of course. You’ll learn how he used Mao Tse-Tung’s guerrilla tactics to become the number one retailer in the world. The rest of this chapter gives you 43 valuable tactics to use in the three phases of guerrilla warfare.
Chapter 9: Winning Business Warfare the Big Dog’s Way: There are six kinds of big dogs, and this chapter tells you how to tell them apart. This is important to know, because the most successful business warriors find that each kind of big dog is most easily conquered by a different set of strategies and tactics. Some big dogs are so dominant, you’ll never beat them. And some are on their last legs. This chapter gives you two very valuable checklists with 52 out-of-the-box tactics you can use against any and all of these big dogs. If you use them correctly, you’ll increase your sales so much that you’ll become a powerhouse in the market.
Chapter 10: Definitely Not Your Father’s Four P’s—Hidden Gems You Didn’t Learn in Marketing 101: Here are some of the things you’ll learn in Chapter 10:
• How to win a price war—4 ways
• When to charge high prices, when to charge low prices—16 rules-of-thumb
• 15 reasons new products fail and 38 things you can do about it
• 6 secrets of sales contests that increase sales way, way beyond your expectations
• The business warrior’s worksheet—one of the simplest yet valuable tools in your arsenal of weapons
Chapter 11: Guerrilla Don Hendon’s 365 Winning Weapons: The 365 most powerful deal-making tactics picked by tens of thousands of executives who have attended my seminars in 36 nations on six continents are in this chapter. Both big dogs and guerrillas have used them to win big when they wheel and deal on the job—and also in personal situations such as getting out of a traffic ticket, selling your car, and sexual seduction. Here are the six groups of weapons:
• 31 preparation
• 121 assertive
• 92 defensive
• 16 submissive
• 24 cooperative
• 81 dirty tricks
Here are some of them:
• Don’t give away the store just to see the other guy smile
• Thinking small is really thinking big
• Show pain when I concede
• Divide and conquer
• Drool and choose
• The power of powerlessness
• Manipulate by body language
• Creative vagueness
• The two G-spots: greed and gullibility
Dr. Donald Hendon lives in Mesquite. He is a retired university professor of marketing, active consultant, speaker, trainer, and author of 8 books, including 365 Powerful Ways to Influence and the forthcoming Guerrilla Deal-Making. Deal-Making is now available for pre-purchase on Amazon.com. It contains the 100 most powerful tactics from 365 Powerful Ways—along with 400 countermeasures. Download Chapter 1, free of charge, at www.DonaldHendon.com. Play his free online Negotiation Poker game by going to www.DonaldHendon.com/NegotiationPoker. Apps will soon be available. Don’s column appears the first Saturday of each month at www.MesquiteLocalNews.com.