built to sell

There are 2 posts tagged built to sell (this is page 1 of 1).

Best of 111in2011

Yes, one of this content free summaries about previous read books – but I think it would be nice if you had a small reading lists with some great books.

Best of Marketing
Ice to the Eskimos

Probably to most creative marketing ideas I’ve ever read about. Jon Spoelstra has excellent writing skills, it’s so much fun to read this book even if you’re not into basketball. He’s probably what you think a marketing guy should be. Creative, uncommon and full of power. If you want to read about marketing that stands out of common marketing then this is the book for you!

The Referral Engine

Not as loud as Ice to the Eskimos but filled with love and thought about your customers. Show love to your customer and he will probably learn to love you. I think this book is ideal if you work in some sort of service industry where you have direct contact to your customers. But even if you build some product, you can learn a lot about how to please your customer and why pens as advertising gifts probably won’t work.

Best of Organization
The E-Myth

Probably one of the most important books if you got more than one employee. Micheal E. Gerber shows you how you can organize your company so that you don’t have to work in the company but you can work on the company. This book is so full of useful ideas and their implementations that you probably won’t be disappointed.

Built to Sell

One could say that Built To Sell is a unofficial sequel to The E-Myth. John Warrillow tells this excellent story in this book about a guy who has a advertising company and he wants to sell it. Like The E-Myth this book shows how to make yourself dispensable in your company – and so got more time for other important things. Awesome book, even if you never will sell your company.

Best of Entrepreneurship
Running Lean

The best book, I read, about customer development. Ash Maurya explains demonstrates colorful how to find markets, test your ideas and track your objectives. Furthermore, the book is neatly organized and quite short. If you want to start a company then Running Lean should be on your reading list.

Best of Management
Rework

A book for people how value quality over quantity. The guys from 37signals explain their business philosophy in Rework and it’s excellent. It’s a down to earth approach on running a business – work less, but better – stay simple – hire reasonably. A magnificent book for small and medium sized business owners or new entrepreneurs.

#80/111: Built To Sell

What is it about?

It took me fifteen years to build this service company, now I want to retire and spend more time with my kids. But how? Even if you aren’t going to sell your company immediately, John Warrillow will show you how to make your company sellable and your job as a CEO more comfortable. I will focus a bit more on service companies because for most products companies these things are obvious.

What can I learn?

Recurring revenue and a repeatable sales process: A main key to increase the value of your company is to create recurring revenue. It could be subscriptions, consumer goods or long-term contracts. This helps you to create a more consistent cash flow and less short-term liabilities. Furthermore, your sales process should be repeatable. Try to create a product which could be sold without (much) customization and hire at least two sales people. Why two? Because they love competition! In the book, the owner of a creative agency, created a simple five step process to sell and create logos.

Hire managers: If you created your product, you are probably going to scale your business a bit. Besides the two sales people, you may want to focus more on your product and hire more people how are awesome at creating your product. After some time you may increase your sales force and the amount of creators. Instead of managing them by yourself, hire/promote people to managers. Your goal is to sell this company or at least make you dispensable. 

Sell big: If you finally decided to sell your company, you should look for brokers which help your sell your company. Later when talking to the future owners you should emphasize on the possibilities your company offers. You created a great management team, a repeatable sales process and product and it could be scaled to the unlimited. Sell big and sell a superb vision of what could be.

Conclusion

Built To Sell is an awesome book! I love the story about the agency owner who wants to sell his company. It reminded me of the E-Myth but here’s the story is a bit deeper and more interesting. The second part of the book explains each principle again in detail. Awesome book and clear recommendation!