"The Snowball Effect"

I've just finished reading The Snowball Effect" by Andy Bounds. I don't like this book. As Simon Cowell would say "I love this book"! In fact it's so good I've ordered copies for each and every one of my staff to read.

It's very readable and accessible without dumbing down some really important communication issues. Key chapters for me are those on presentations, effective meetings and increasing sales but it's stuffed full of gems so you'll pick up great ideas and tips wherever you go in the book. His work on Henry Ford's classic quote is simply superb ("If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have just said faster horses").
He explains this as follows "As long as the expert (Henry Ford) knows the beneficiary's (customer's) desired future (to go faster) then the expert can apply his skills to help achieve it.
In fact the expert is bound to know more about how they can help than the beneficiary ever can because they're the expert. This is one of the reasons Steve Jobs didn't believe in customer research, saying it was Apple's job to know what customers wanted before they did". (p205).

Told you it was good stuff didn't I?