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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't Waste Your Time or Money, May 31, 2000
This book reinforces the worst stereotypes for consultants. The language is bombastic, e.g., "Small businesses are bounded by geographies." The author makes up such laws as "The Law of Focus," which he refers to several times, but which he never defines. Then there is the self-hedging "Law of Gradual Improvement," which says, "Incremental improvement to strategic elements may produce a quantum leap overall: '2+2=5' arithmetic." The author also gives us the "Power of N Principle = Size of Market x Success Probability."Mistakes are common; I particularly liked this one: The Cadillac Cimmaron "only imitated what the segment really wanted - low gas mileage and reliability." More troublesome, though, was the author's confused nomenclature. On page 6, the author constructs a table that includes the columns "Volume (Units)" and "Percent of of (sic) Volume." The data in the latter column, however, are actually percent of sales dollars, not percent of units sold. I futilely attempted to sort out the meaning of several paragraphs on page 33, including this one: ".... a final step, rank your top customer types using these same decision criteria to determine your final three customer segments." The first problem was that "these same decision criteria" referred to, seemingly, nothing. The second problem was the author had previously used "customer type" and "customer segment" interchangeably, including on that very same page. The book actually covers the topics you would expect, but there are too many errors and too much baloney.
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