Latest Book Review of It's Not About You

Another great book by Bob Burg and John David Mann. Bob Burg was the author of Go Giver and Go Givers Sell More. Two of my most favorite reads. This latest release is is my most favorite of them all. I have to quote from page 85;

"You can lead only as far as you grow. And you will grow only as far as you let yourself"

"I write to find out what I think."

"I think we live to find out who we are"

"Character is what happens when life scratches itself onto your soul"

"Words are the footprints of God"

All of these great quotes come from 2 back to back pages.

You will have to go buy the book to get the whole value and I highly recommend buying this one!

The bonus morning in Greenville SC

It was up early to go to BMW driving school. To be honest, I was expecting lots of classroom and little in the car. It ended up with no classroom and all car.

Never have I been handed the keys to a $50,000 car on a track and told to give them the best track time. It is a bit scary when you approach the first corner at 60 MPH and have no idea how this car is going to grip the road.

What a great day. Driving 11 different types of BMW's. From convertibles to SUV's and everything else in between. Best part is that the least amount of horse power was 338. They were all fast and fun.

Check it all out here!

Last day at conference

Ended with a great day. It started with a former Blue Angel pilot. He told specific stories of flying in Top Gun, going to Russia during the cold war and shaking down an aircraft. (Sounds like it would end with a sack for me)

Then I had many meetings with a couple of VP's of the company and more. Lots of good information. Ended the day with a good dinner and a concert from the Bare Naked Ladies. Not exactly my type of music, however I can appreciate good musicians.

It is all in the presentation (Again)

As I had a chance to sit in on many breakouts, it continues to amaze me that many of the manufacturers pay people lots of $'s and yet they have some of the worst presentations. An example is when I sat in a breakout having to do with security (Think firewalls). There were three different manufacturers (Competitors) which is different, usually each manufacturer has their own breakout. This was good, I figured that they would point out their differences. I was wrong. Each of the three got up and basically did the same presentation. Security is important, we are the best, we are here for you and you can make money.

Well people, after listening to all three, I could not tell you one thing that was different other than each company had different graphics designers (Their slides looked different but said the same thing.

You would think the last presenter of three would get up and ditch their canned presentation and give their product differences. Hey, even if it was tech speak, at least it was different!

If I was going to make one of these presentations, I would do the following;

1. Start with the differentiators.
2. Provide specific success stories with VAR's
3. Show how existing VAR's have made and continue making money with my product
4. Have one of those VAR's give a testamonial.
5. Quick and to the point
6. Specific follow up items for those who are interested. Have people in the room to capture information, sign dealers up then, make business happen.
7. Make this all informational and entertaining!
8. Do not continue speaking if you have said everything you have. Just end.

The Synnex annual conference

Was in Greenville South Carolina which was a beautiful town. It is around 600 thousand people with nice trees, water and mountains. One of the features of the town is BMW's manufacturing plant (More later this week on that). I had a chance to catch up with many vendors, manufacturers and such. Clearly the cloud is still on every one's mind with mostly a lack of what to do about it. There is starting to be some offerings from many areas on different cloud solutions. We will have to see what shakes out.

Indy Car series closes the season with a shock

When driving a car over 200 Mph every one knows there are risks. Dan Wheldon paid the ultimate price.

As a fan of the series and Wheldon you lose sight of the dangers of racing. Next year Indy releases a new, safer car.