'Seeing Is Believing'A picture is worth a thousand words, which is why we'll be replacing this column with a series of detailed illustrations starting in our next issue.
While you can't tape a picture of yourself to your chair and expect it to run your company, you can use visual and graphic elements to share information more effectively, train and motivate staff, and boost productivity. Seeing Is Believing lays out a complete "visual management" program that goes far beyond just "prettying up the office" to significantly improving your business.
Price: $29.95.
Amacom
www.amacombooks.org
(800) 714-6395
Why sales is hard
Here's why no one likes to sell: To do it, you have to become a salesman - and everyone hates salesmen. Personal loathing aside, though, your business depends on it, so you'd better get started. To help, Dearborn has released two books with valuable advice. The first, Selling Against the Goal, outlines more effective, focused ways to generate leads and follow through on them. Its strategies, formulas for calculating closing ratios, tips for marketing, and more should help bring the days of cold-sweat cold-calling to an end.
Selling Against the Goal is complemented by Selling to Big Companies, which offers specific advice on, well, selling to big companies. At big companies it's easier for sales targets to hide from the salespeople they hate, so cracking this market can be hard. Author Jill Konrath describes the strategies that she developed during her own sales career to help break into big accounts.
Price: Goal - $22.95; Big Companies - $15.95.
Dearborn Trade Publishing
www.dearborntrade.com
(800) 245-BOOK
Keep 'em in the dark?
There are two approaches to financial advice: Keep your clients ignorant and dependent on you, or explain everything to them so they can't sue you. If you follow the latter, All About Asset Allocation might be a good book to give out to clients. In it, CFA Richard A. Ferri describes why having investments distributed across classes is more important than what choices are made in each class, and then offers comprehensive guidelines for selecting the right mix of asset classes for an individual's needs and comfort level. And before you give it to clients, you can brush up your own knowledge of the subject.
Price: $18.95.
McGraw-Hill
www.books.mcgraw-hill.com
Katrina legislation
The speed of the congressional response to Hurricane Katrina and the other natural disasters that hit the Gulf States last year was matched only by the speed with which CCH put out books explaining that response (which was not matched by our relatively sedate pace in bringing them to your attention). CCH's Law, Explanation and Analysis of the Hurricane Tax Relief Acts of 2005 explains in detail the myriad tax relief and incentive measures that Congress created to help businesses and individuals in the devastated area, while its Conference Report of the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005 covers that act in detail, and should be particularly helpful until final regulations are issued about areas where the amended Tax Code is unclear.
Price: Hurricane Tax Relief - $45; Conference Report - $17.50.
CCH
http://onlinestore.cch.com
(800) 248-3248
'The PPLI Solution'
At no point in his fabled discussion of why the rich are different from you and me did F. Scott Fitzgerald mention private placement life insurance. But then, he only wrote books about the rich - he didn't offer them financial advice.
If you do, knowledge of PPLI can give you another valuable option for your high-net-worth clients. The PPLI Solution brings together leading practitioners to lay out the details of the best practices in this new and interesting addition to tax, trust and estate planning.
Price: $75.
Bloomberg Press
www.bloomberg.com/books
(800) 869-1231
