Matthew Kimberley

This is the equivalent of just more than one book a month for a year.  Read, apply, and get better at your job.

• Cold Calling for Chickens
• Cold Calling Techniques That Really Work!
• Cold Calling: Cig (Complete Idiot’s Guides)
• Cold Calling for Cowards – How to Turn the Fear of Rejection Into Opportunities, Sales, and Money
• Cold Calling for Women: Opening Doors and Closing Sales
• Secrets Of Successful Telephone Selling
• Conquering Cold-Calling Fear Before and After the Sale
• Easy Step by Step Guide to Telemarketing, Cold Calling and Appointment Making:
  
• How to Win More Business Through the Telephone
• Selling by Telephone: From Cold Calling to Hot Profit
• Dead Guys Don’t Buy: A Winner’s Guide to Cold Calling Live Prospects Successfully
• 42 Rules of Cold Calling Executives: A Practical Guide
• The Telesales Pocketbook

Read and grow!

I’m sick. Whilst I’m well enough to lie down and mope about, the minute I start to think about anything too hard, it bites me in the bum. The number one choice of illness for the indolent, it would seem.

Sick-leave is normally a great excuse to catch up on reading, but this time I wasn’t up to my normal (dick?)heady intellectual standards, and I tucked into a handful of kids’ books I’ve been meaning to tackle for a while.

My mother-in-law, perhaps presciently, bought me a copy of Isabel Allende’s Kingdom of the Golden Dragon earlier in the year. It’s written for young teenagers, which is probably why I loved it. Straightforward storytelling, heroes, baddies, Yetis and the Himalayas.

But what I really got my teeth into, albeit belatedly, is Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy.

Three excellent books – the Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and Amber Spyglass – which met with no small amount of controversy when published.

Depending on who’s doing the reading, they’re either about a young girl who lives in a fantasy world, talking animals, magic doorways, witches, angels and snowy environments (so far so Narnia), or they’re about the role that organised religion plays in stifling free will, curiosity and accumulation of wisdom (ha! Narnia, take that!).

The books are both of these things. A cracking story, effortlessly written and absorbing, and simultaneously far-from-subtle essay on what the author perceives to be dangerous shortcomings in theism, which will be lost entirely on the younger reader.

When I was fifteen, my geography teacher used to read us Winnie the Pooh stories. He said they were so much better the older you get. My reckoning is that the His Dark Materials trilogy is the same, and should figure in your kids’ libraries, if only so that you can read it when they’re not.

Books increase your brain size. If you carry enough of them, they also increase your arm size. And strengthen your grip. Read these books and enjoy more efficient hands.

Just read and enjoyed Cityboy: Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile, by Geraint Anderson.

Which was a relief.

Anderson is a former city analyst, employed with a succession of large banks. This is his exposé of twelve years in the industry.

The first chapter sets the tone without promise, with a frequently-repeated formula you see in books that read like films (the mediocre Blaggers, about the timeshare industry and the excellent Wolf of Wall Street, by Jordan Belfort, plus any number of books about doing time in the Bangkok Hilton).

Specifically, a dramatic set-piece ends disastrously, before the reader is taken to the beginning of the story, eventually catching up with the initial set-piece a few chapters later, and is then taken to the zenith of the tale, (and the nadir of the individual’s experience) before redemption and recovery, living healthier and wiser, and writing a book about the whole thing.

As it is written, so it is in Cityboy. Loveable rogue becomes a monster and then falls back to earth. So far so formulaic.

But what’s wrong with formulas?

Anderson sets the bar higher with his comprehensive and damning assessment of the way the markets truly work. He chucks some great stories into the mix and and explains, in clear, idiotproof, English, what happens inside large banks, specifically who does what and how they do it.

For good measure, he chucks in a shedload of excess: strip-joints, sex parties, drug-taking, boozing and whoring. This is only a good thing, no?

Comparisons will be made with Liar’s Poker, the seminal exposé of what was happening on Wall Street in the eighties. And they should be made favourably. Whilst Anderson has fictionalised a large part of his book, he “keeps it real” enough to have a profound, and educating effect, summarising major financial events, vehicles and concepts throughout the book.

And the business lessons to be learnt?

Several, not least to not turn up to work with a head full of gak. But on top of that, Anderson’s strategy for becoming a number one city analyst was to make sure that his clients loved him. People buy from people they like.

And despite his shortcomings – which he doesn’t hide – Anderson and his book come across as eminently likeable.

Cityboy – Highly recommended.

Another masterclass in exceeding client expectations from Seth Godin, this time in the form of a free book and a letter printed on real paper (click the above pic to read in full).

I pre-ordered his latest book, Tribes, because I’ve enjoyed his previous books, and, well, because he asked me to. The carrot for pre-ordering was membership to Triiibes – a small online community of like-minded individuals. Book ordered, membership granted, me a happy customer.

Then last night, ten weeks later, the book arrived, not from Amazon, but from the publishing house, with the letter you see above.

“Here’s an advance copy of Tribes. An early copy, for you, before anyone else gets one. Please read it and keep it. And when the one you paid for comes, I hope you’ll give that one away. In two weeks or so, when it arrives from the bookseller, take that second copy and spread the word. If all you do is file it away, I’ve failed.”

Seth, thanks again, and consider this spreading the word.