Customer Reviews

Recession Storming: Thriving In Downturns Through Superior Marketing, Pricing And Product Strategies

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(0)
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I found this book extremely helpful for my business. Rupert Hart must have spent a long time researching all of the companies: lots of proven ideas.
Its easy to read format made it a quick read.
I found the following 3 strategies the most useful:
1) How to get more sales from my customers by convincing them to upgrade
2) How to figure out which products customers value so that I can hold the price on those items
3)How to come up with new products with recurring revenue to give a stable cash-flow
I liked the conversational style and the short paragraphs. It's easy to dissect useful information.

Rupert Hart tells the reader how to thrive in a recession by summarizing straightforward, no-nonsense, practical steps. He is a master of summarization and the précis - condensing typical content for Business Strategy 101 and Marketing 101 courses into 127 pages. He gives five areas of focus (a) Business environment, (b) Existing customers, (c) Pricing, (d) New products, (e) New markets, concluding with a chapter on integrating ideas from these sections.

Each section is peppered with case studies, taken from Rupert's experience and classic business literature. Some of them may seem dated, describing companies that no longer exist, like People's Express, or that have merged, like Ciba-Geigy. Since when was John Young, CEO of HP? At least John Chambers, also quoted, is still CEO of Cisco. However, business is business and Rupert races through the essentials with keen metaphors, e.g. not having enough market share is like trying to take water from a stream with your fingers spread out.

In the Business Environment section I particularly liked the section on managing company politics, e.g. "People on the board with no experience will make decisions for you." Too often, company cultures are politically correct and common-sense observations, addressed by Rupert, are missed because of the company's state-of-denial.

In the Existing Customers section, Rupert gets under the skin of how a customer feels. He tells the reader how the customer will be motivated and what to do about it.

The Pricing section, is full of reminders as to what to do when setting prices. If the sales people are negotiating away margins, then this book has ammunition to push back at them.

In the New Products section, I particularly liked the part about substituting products for services and vice versa. Sometimes a company is narrow-minded, or it wants to keep its valuation high, so sticks with a product, when moving to a service would keep the cash flowing.

A pragmatic approach to New Markets is suggested. Its too easy to leap at the next big segment, but Rupert cautions you to look carefully. He cites the travel market for retired boomers, large but with too many players. Instead he suggests selling insurance for adventure holidays, a related segment that is more easily targeted.

The detailed table of contents makes this an easy reference book to have on the shelf when a crisis occurs. A bibliography is given, as the book draws heavily on classic business writings. I'd have liked specific references throughout the book, but maybe that would have impeded the fast pace of the writing. So you may want to check out the reading list, that includes Peter Drucker's 1993 classic, Innovation and Entrepreneurship - Rupert cites the later 2006 edition. In fact, the book can be viewed as a historical review of business cases and strategies.

Anyone thinking of going to business school, can read this book and get an idea of key business topics. Current MBA students can use it for revision. In fact, you'll read this book quicker if you are familiar with academic business terms. If you haven't been to business school and want to know what you are missing, it could be useful to whip through the book.

For marketing managers and product managers, there are a bunch of ideas that will help you make your case when confronted with opposition from colleagues.

Consultants can use this book as the basis for a series of workshops based on the five sections.

Board members and CEOs of small businesses, might use the book as a memory jogger or idea generator.

Rupert is the pilot and whether you are ship's captain or deckhand it is up to you to think which of the ideas, case studies or quotations is relevant for your situation. I'd like to see a subsequent volume more applicable to Web 2.0 companies with more recent case studies and quotations, although the iPhone does get a mention.

When Cisco reported a sales slowdown in January 2008 during a quarterly telephone call, CEO John Chambers was quick to point out (a) that Cisco understood how to deal with showdown and (b) history showed that Cisco came out of the slowdown having gained market share and capitalization share from their competitors as result. Chambers may not look forward to a recession (belt-tightening isn't fun) but he knows what to do and how to benefit from it.

Recession Storming is a very valuable little handbook. If unlike Chambers you aren't prepared for slowdown (or more importantly, don't understand how to ultimately benefit from it) this book a great beginning point. Even if the basic idea isn't new to you you'll surely find some helpful topics and ideas to add to your recession toolkit.

This book not only does an outstanding job of explaining to laypersons the economic principles by which any successful business must be governed but it gives a nuts and bolts blueprint for the managers and owners of any small business to keep their businesses afloat in the troubled waters of 2008. Mr. Hart uses ingenious examples and metaphors to make his book understandable, instructive and highly enjoyable. If users apply even a small fraction of the dozens of helpful suggestions that are set forth in this little jewell they can expect a rapid and dramatic improvement in the sucess of their enterprises.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I read it a bit jaded, having read plenty of "how to invest in recession books" which can be summed up as, "wait until the bottom, then buy" advice, completely useless and impractical. In addition to requiring 20/20 hindsight to work, they completely lack mentioning the frustration and despair one encounters in a recession.

Mr. Harts book, in contrast, addresses real business problems not as a Pollyannaesque "opportunity" but a far more realistic "Yes, recessions suck. Here is what you can do to get through it."

If you are a billionaire, a vulture capitalist, who somehow had the foresight to put all of your money in gold a year ago and are relishing the thought of picking up some cheap depressed business, this is not the book for you. But if you are a small business owner, facing, longer account receivable times, financial panic and irrationality of your vendors, much more difficult business prospecting, et cetera. like I am now, you will find this book extremely useful and actionable.

If you follow just one suggestion, move up your receivables a day or two, squeeze out another sale from an existing customer you wouldn't have gotten otherwise, this book pays for itself really fast...

Scott Cochran
President
Scott River Company LLC

This book was a quick read - 5 hours. I have a degree in Economics and I found it wonderfully easy to ready and understand. I love the practical ideas for how to not only survive a recession but thrive. I work in Real Estate and in today's market I found the book to be direct, with real world solutions to current economic trends. I have passed this book out to my co-workers and highly recommend reading it. It is well worth your time and money.

Kathleen Richards, RMP, MBA
Property Mgr., Broker-Assoc., Owner

This is the most practical marketing book I've seen to date. Covers basics that most marketing texts miss and marketers often forget. In this era of confusing web sites I was especially gratified by the author's discussion about making it easy for customers to buy on the website. And I very much enjoyed the integration of marketing principles and classical economics. Mr. Hart's writing style keeps your interest and makes the material very easy to comprehend. This book belongs in both the Marketing 101 curriculum as well as on marketers' reading lists.

I have a Degree in Landscape Architecture from U.C. Berkeley and have owned and operated a Landscape Design & Build Company for over 30 years. I would rather read Playboy than read a book on economics. However I found "Recession Storming" not only to be insightful but easy to read. This is not a dry book, but is written in a refreshing manner, dealing with common sense solutions to the everyday problems that affect a business during hard times. Business was very slow for me, before I read this book. But I now look at business opportunities in a different light. I found the case histories to be very inspiring. It made me realize that big companies suffer during hard times just as mine does. The chapters that were most useful were (1) making your product one that clients will pay a premium for, (2) marketing your business to these clients, and (3) marketing to existing clients with new products and services. In fact, I contacted old clients and sold over a $ 100,000.00 in contracts. I would recommend this book to anyone running a business regardless of its size.

As I write this in early 2010 there are signs that the United States might be coming out of the recession. Unfortunately there are just as many signs that indicate we are on the verge of even greater economic difficulties. Those of us in business need to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. How do we do that? This book, Recession Storming: Thriving In Downturns Through Superior Marketing, Pricing And Product Strategies is as good a guidebook as any.

What I liked about the book is that it counsels an offensive as opposed to a defensive strategy. Yes, we are in a downturn and yes, business and profits are down and yes, we need to cut costs and eliminate unnecessary expenses. At the same time this can't be all that we do. We can take advantage of this recession to streamline, refocus and recharge our business. For those of us who have to actually produce to get paid there is a wealth of tips, techniques and tactics we can use to not only survive, but to thrive in this environment while positioning ourselves for the eventual recovery.

Downturns, as the book points out, occur on a regular basis. Downturns also share certain characteristics that, once we understand them, we can use to help guide us through the recovery and downturn. In tough times the status quo isn't enough. We need to introduce new products, enter into new markets, take care of our existing customers by "WOWing them" and take a focused and informed look at our pricing. The book covers all these areas in detail.

There are five books I recommend everyone read who wants to use this depressed economy as an opportunity rather than a crisis, this is one of them. The others are How To Sell When Nobody's Buying: (And How to Sell Even More When They Are), The Sticking Point Solution: 9 Ways to Move Your Business from Stagnation to Stunning Growth InTough Economic Times,The 168 Hour Week: Living Life Your Way 24-7and Atlas Shrugged. Carrying out the advice and philosophy outlines in these books will help all of us emerge from this recession with stronger businesses.

As a Harvard MBA with several start-ups under my belt in good times and bad, I found this book quite refreshing. While most business books take 200 pages to present what should be an article, this one contains kernels of wisdom in nearly each paragraph, and packs a wallop in a short, tight read. It is like a refresher course in strategic marketing, from the macro-economic terrain to tactical maneuvers.

I highly recommend this book to those in large and small corporations who seek more effective ways to weather the current storm.