All about Them: Grow Your Business by Focusing on Others

by Bruce Turkel, Bob Burg (Foreword)

The best companies and most successful salespeople live by a three-word mantra—"all about them"—because when they relentlessly focus their brand on their customers instead of themselves, their businesses flourish. All about Them shows readers how to use this simple but extremely powerful influencing technique. Bruce Turkel, who has advised some of the world's greatest companies, including American Express and Bacardi, lays the groundwork by relating his personal journey of discovery to the "All about Them" principle. He goes on to explore our technology-driven, hyper- connected culture; the power of storytelling (and story- selling ); brand authenticity and transparency; and more.

Genres: Business

312 pages, Hardcover

Published September 6, 2016

Reviews

[Anna P (whatIreallyRead) · Rating 2 out of 5]

See the book title? Yeah, so that's basically all the author has to say. This should have been an article tops, but definitely not a book.

WHAT I LIKED:

1) it was entertaining and easy to read because the author makes most of his points by telling various stories;

2) it contained some interesting stories/cases/trivia, such as:

Volkswagen knowingly and maliciously installed software in its “smart diesel” cars designed to provide false emissions readings to government testers around the world. Estimates are that Volkswagen’s diesel engines pollute at levels forty times greater than US government regulations allow

3) the author cited his sources in the "notes" section. I always appreciate that in non-fiction books.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:

1) the author finally gets to his point at 74%, everything before that is a set-up. And the actual info is not all that useful or valuable and takes only a few pages;

2) for the whole book, he keeps saying stuff like "All About Them strategy", "All About Them brand", "All About Them relationship", "All About Them language" etc., but he never actually defines any of this stuff, you're sort of supposed to figure it out intuitively. WHY? Can you be specific with your terminology dude?

3) most of this book is filler. Like, he spends several chapters talking about the fact that internet is important and has impacted our lives in numerous ways. Ahem. This was written in 2016, not 1999. Do you really need to prove that point and spend 20% of the book in that? Or another 20% of the book on the fact that branding matters? I'm already reading a book about branding, so I know it matters! UGH, get to the point!!!

4) It was repetitive. Dude, I got it the first time you said "function is simply cost-of-entry", "good brand makes people feel good, a great brand makes them feel good about themselves". You don't need to keep repeating it 2394 times throughout the book and support it with 3293 different stories! I get it!

5) For a reason that is beyond me, the author decided to go into a whole chapter talking about generations. It was unnecessary, completely out of place, and what he said was really dumb. See for yourself:

Put simply, our parents’ generation is known for the wars they fought; our generation is known for the things we bought. [...] Somehow Rosie the Riveter’s “We can do it” has morphed to a multigenerational “We can buy it.” [...] Commercialism use the things they own, from flip-flops to ironic T-shirts, and the things they display—tattoos and piercings—to establish their place in their own tribes of crunchies, hipsters, geeks, and more.

Um, first off, humans have always used things and clothes that are on display to impress others. Animals do that too. It really has nothing to do with consumerism.

Second of all, that generation comment is bullshit. Our parent's generation didn't have a choice on whether or not to fight in a war. And our generation is not to be blamed for consumerism. Stuff is just so much cheaper and easier to produce now. There simply wasn't the possibility of manufacturing all this at any previous time in human history. But the author puts it in a way that suggests every generation had a choice between heroism and consumerism and we were the ones who chose the new iPhone.

6) everything he says is generic and vague. He doesn't really offer much usable reproducible tools or approaches.

All in all it wasn't bad, rather entertaining really, but unoriginal and hardly useful. Not what I look for in non-fiction. Would not recommend.

[Zack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not very coherent. Moves all over the place and rarely hits a point squarely on the head. However, the points it does hit are usually good.

[Kate Nash · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great business/branding read. A brand is nothing without its clients and Turkel does a fantastic job highlighting how making others feel important is key to influence through different lessons/anecdotes. Easy to understand and apply to both business and personal life.

[Drew · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ok, I didn't actually finish it. I was half way through the book and had no idea what it was about (other than reading the title obviously). Rambling stories not going anywhere. Moving on to something else...

[Єлізавета Максименко · Rating 4 out of 5]

Видавництво Моноліт-bizz .
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Це той момент, коли книга приходить до тебе в найпотрібніший час. Саме зараз я проходжу курс інстаграм просування, тому усі «фішечки» під час читання намотувала собі на вус😅
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Чули істину: покупець завжди правий?
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Так от це не так далеко від правди. Точніше, можливо, покупець і зовсім некомпетентний, але ти, як продавець, повинен обіграти все так, щоб клієнт вірив у свою значущість. І отримав лише позитивні емоції від співпраці.
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Звучить дивно? Трохи є🤷‍♀️ Але саме такий принцип роботи діє зараз у маркетингу. І саме такий принцип роботи описує у своїй книзі автор.
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Знаєте, яким був лозунг Обами на президентських виборах? Проста фраза з трьох слів, які визначили його президентство: «Так, ми можемо» (до речі, нічого не нагадує?😉). І знаєте, чому ця фраза спрацювала? Гасло «Так, ми можемо» казало потенційним виборцям, що разом вони зможуть зробити щось велике. Воно не зазначало, що конкретно буде зроблено, АЛЕ залучало людей. А не була сконцентрована на особі кандидата. Психологічні тригери впливу, блін🤷‍♀️
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Майже усі маркетингові моделі зараз будуються навколо інтересів споживача. А в «епоху прозорості», коли відгук поширюється в соц мережах з шаленною швидкістю, просто необхідно, щоб кожен клієнт почував себе важливим та почутим.
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Теперішнє «миттєве покоління» не хоче чекати, воно хоче отримувати все «тут і зараз». Тому дуже важливо вміти успішно обслуговувати людей при шалених темпах, поєднуючи при цьому швидкість з якістю.
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Як це зробити? Читайте книгу! Там є підказки. А ще там купа цікавих реальних прикладів брендів, розбір маркетингових «гачків», на які ми, як споживачі, «клюємо»😀 Ну і автобіографічна складова у вигляді випадків з життя самого автора.
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Мені, як економісту за освітою та починаючому маркетологу, було надзвичайно цікаво! Відмітила для себе корисні поради. Тішусь, що зараз стільки доступної інформації! Просто бери, впроваджуй у свій бізнес і будь успішним!
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Але не забувай: це усе про них, усе про клієнтів. 😉 Догоди їм і ти на коні!
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#книжковафея #книжковафея_читає

[George Velez · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent book that clearly displays the importance of understanding the meaning of branding, and how to make to most of it by understanding your customers and truly making it all about them. Your customers make your business and branding is the way to guide them down your path. Make that road feel like home!

[Christina Goodwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I agree with the other reviewers that the point could have been made in less words. However the writing was good and the stories were interesting, so I learned other interesting tidbits that weren’t necessarily backing up the point for the book.

[Zhuravkova Olga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Сподобалось про приклади успішних компаній, про історії як було і як стало зараз .
Не сподобалось, що мало корисної інформації, яку можна було б застосувати на практиці.
Ну і трохи занудна, не вистачає їй динаміки.🙃

[Mason · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredibly in-depth viewpoint on how to brand yourself and your business. Loved it!

[Scottie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not complete.
WARNING: this author's claim-to-"fame" is as a Fox News correspondent. Therefore, decide carefully whether this book is worth your time.

This book is disjointed and uninteresting. The book starts with a detailed description of a self-proclaimed branding expert who is ironically out of touch with the thoughts and desires of other humans (the irony is apparent to the reader, but lost on the author...). As if to prove his ineptitude, the author obnoxiously gives faux-wisdom and advice to the reader about branding skills, strategies, procedures, and theory - despite having zero ethos. The result is a tone-deaf droning of an individual who clearly lacks even the basic understanding of business, marketing, or really anything. To make things worse, the book very quickly transitions into political rants, which only confirm that the author really lacks empathy or even basic understanding about others' desires and actions. The author's beliefs are transparent through the "facts" that he reports while attempting to analyze the results of previous elections. (A word of warning: You will encounter racism and classism in this section, and it will not be cleverly or skillfully obscured. If this kind of thing bothers you (it should), consider not reading this book, or at least do yourself the courtesy of stopping here).

0/10 would not even recommend to masochistic readers, not even worth reading as an exercise in understanding new/different/opposite perspectives.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a pretty good read, especially for people in advertising or marketing. I also suspect that author Bruce Turkel must have been influenced by McCann; after all, this book had "3Cs" (we have 5) and talked a lot about discovering your brand's "authentic truth" (we hunt for Truths).

More telling, though, was how he dived into brands playing "meaningful roles" - again, something that my organisation finds for our clients. It was like reading a brand book written by... the agency. Haha.

Note: This was from my 2018 reading list, and the words are from my thoughts back then. Minor grammatical edits may have been applied.

[Jerzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good quick read.

[Nathan Holm · Rating 4 out of 5]

An easy to read and engaging book about a topic so many people and businesses ignore,or do not follow through on creating and executing; Brand creation. It would be easy to dismiss this book as staying too superficial or not going deeper. However, that would be the same mistake too many of us make in thinking we got brand creation figured out.

I found this book to cause me to see with fresh eyes the importance of thinking 'outside to in' to be able to move to a 'consumer centric focus'.

[Vivian Ooi · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of the worst book that I have ever read. I stopped half way as I have no idea what it was about apart from the introduction.