The Durni Dozen


Book Description

The Durni Dozen is a comprehensive guide to effective sales strategies. Robin Durni’s twelve steps toward becoming successful in sales outline a process beginning with preparation, understanding your client, and knowing the true value and purpose of your product. Durni’s approach to sales is more about building a relationship with new and existing clients than just moving a product. And building relationships means building trust, learning to listen, and finding the right questions to unlock the real reasons customers use the products they do. These probing questions and the resulting dialogue are what create the opportunity for and openness to your sales pitch. Durni presents a long-game philosophy that anticipates the evolution of both the client’s needs and the products available, as well as a sales relationship that will endure. Durni shares insightful stories of his 50 years in medical equipment sales to illustrate his twelve steps to advancing a sale and retaining a customer. From active listening to reading body language and finally to debriefing and following-up on initial sales meetings, the Durni Dozen offers tips on every aspect of the sales call with a focus on getting it right, being efficient, and valuing the client’s time and expertise. Even if you think you know how to sell, the Durni Dozen offers a strategy and inspiration to keep learning and perfecting your craft.




The Book of Small


Book Description

The Book of Small by Emily Carr is a captivating memoir that takes readers on a journey through the author's childhood and her deep connection with the natural world. Carr's vivid descriptions and evocative storytelling transport us to the rugged landscapes of British Columbia, where she finds solace and inspiration in the wilderness. The Book of Small is not only a personal account of Carr's experiences but also a reflection on the power of art and nature to shape our lives. With its lyrical prose and intimate revelations, Carr's memoir invites readers to discover the beauty and wonder that exist within and around us.




Unprofitable Schooling


Book Description

Most economies advance by simultaneously decreasing costs and increasing quality. Unfortunately, when it comes to higher education, this has been turned on its head. Costs keep rising while quality declines. How has this happened? What can be done? This exceptional volume looks at the issues facing higher education from the perspective of both economics and history. Each chapter explores how the lessons learned from market competition in other sectors of the economy can be applied to higher education in order to bring about innovation, improved quality, and lower costs. The opening section offers a history of for-profit education before the Morrill Act—the federal legislation that funded land-grant universities; reviews the Act’s impact; and concludes with an exploration of federal student aid and how it prevents new funding options from entering the market. Section two examines higher education as it stands today—what is driving up college prices; tenure; administrative bloat; and university governance. And, the concluding third section shows how robust competition in higher education can be energized, and takes a deep look at for-profit vs. non-profit institutions. Unprofitable Schooling provides a sober and informative assessment of the state of higher education, critically covering historical assumptions, increasing government involvement, reflexive aversion to profit, and other, maybe unexpected, conclusions.




Petromania


Book Description

The spike in the oil price to almost $150 per barrel in summer 2008 was the last great excess of the crazed noughties bull markets, staged even as stock markets crumbled worldwide. Contrary to entrenched establishment opinion still embraced by many, 'Petromania' proves this oil price blowout was a classic speculative bubble, but driven primarily by new modes of financial speculation. Demolishing widespread, oft-repeated but incorrect arguments that such trade in paper barrels cannot move oil prices, 'Petromania' details how this financialisation of the oil markets meshed with other trends to create a moment that saw investment banks and hedge funds collectively wield more power over the price of black gold than OPEC or any multinational oil company. It also shows how regulatory blindness to the 'dark matter' of modern finance caused so many to confuse fantasy with reality for so long. 'Petromania' matters not just because fortunes were won and lost in oil's dizzying ascent and crash, but because this bubble spelled misery for ordinary people worldwide, destabilised developing world governments, and delayed interest rate cuts desperately needed to address the ongoing global recession. 'Petromania' matters because while all eyes are on the crippled banking system, we risk ignoring valuable lessons about twenty-first century markets from this other great boom-and-bust - even as the forces that blew the bubble are once again at work. And 'Petromania', this tale of black gold, dark matter and paper barrels, is written by one of the few commentators who correctly called the bubble before it burst.




Make No Small Plans


Book Description

From the founders of the acclaimed Summit event series and community comes the story of their unconventional journey to business success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. “If you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, Make No Small Plans shows how the Summit team did it.”—Ray Dalio, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order In 2008, with no event production experience and two college degrees between the four of them, Elliott Bisnow, Brett Leve, Jeff Rosenthal, and Jeremy Schwartz became business partners and set out to build a global events company. With passion and tenacity, they began cold calling as many inspiring company founders as they could and tried to convince them to attend their first event. In the beginning, only nineteen people said yes. Since then, they have grown Summit into a global community with events all over the world, hosting luminaries including Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Shonda Rhimes, Brené Brown, Kendrick Lamar, and Al Gore. In 2013, the Summit founders—with help from their behind-the-scenes co-founder and partner Ryan Begelman—acquired Powder Mountain, the largest ski resort in the United States, with a dream of building a mountaintop town of the future. In Make No Small Plans, they reveal the triumphs, mistakes, and cornerstone lessons from their journey, which began during the Great Recession and continues today. Alongside teachings from some of the most inspiring entrepreneurs of our time, the authors offer takeaways such as: • No idea should go unspoken. • Reputations are earned by the drop and lost by the bucket. • The road to success is always under construction. • Become a favor economy millionaire. Entertaining and empowering, Make No Small Plans shows that anyone can think big and—with a thirst for knowledge, a talented team, and a little humility—accomplish the impossible.




Leadership, Leaders and Leading


Book Description

Why with hundreds and hundreds of books on leadership to choose from, why another one?” The answer is simple. Given the importance of leadership and leaders in organizations there will always be efforts to try to improve our understanding on how we can improve the leadership process. Leadership, Leaders and Leading focuses on the age old reality that successful organizations will continue to need effective leaders at all levels. The book is based on the premise that effective leaders need to be able to establish a shared vision and accompanying strategy that other members of the organization strongly believe in and are willing to help execute. The book argues that we can continue to learn from traditional and contemporary theories and myths about effective leadership & leaders and how they can successfully lead an increasingly diverse and demanding workforce, consumers and the broader society. The book discusses foundational leadership skills like motivation, communication, building leader-follower relationships, groups and teams, developing others, conflict, negotiation and organizational politics along with highlighting the important role leaders should play in the areas of human resource management, ethics, crisis and reputation management, sustainability/sustainable development, and cybersecurity. Each chapter offers the opportunity for the reader to increase their understanding of leadership, leaders and leading in an increasingly dynamic world of work. This book is written for those who are interested in the continued effort and dialogue on what effective leadership, leaders and leading should entail in the coming years.




Managing Challenging Clients


Book Description

Do you need to deliver an effective service to challenging and unreasonable internal or external clients? Do you worry that you'll lose business or take a reputational hit if you don't do so well enough? This book introduces a valuable set of tools through which to build, maintain and manage your client-facing relationships.




Making Your Partnership Work


Book Description

Making Your Partnership Work is a practical guide for church and mission partnerships. Drawing on 30 years of experience, Daniel Rickett shows how effective mission partnerships are a blend of vision, relationship, and results.




I Do Not Like That Name


Book Description

Herb and Sophie send away for an elephant, but when he arrives, they struggle to find a name that he will like and that suits him.




No Man's Land


Book Description

What does it mean to be a man in a world where women are almost as likely as men to shoulder the responsibilities of supporting a family? Why do some men still choose to be traditional breadwinners while others flee the responsibilities of parenthood altogether, and still others become infinitely more involved in family life than earlier generations of men? Here's a look at how men are coping with the gender revolution.