While recovering from major surgery in 2003, Andrew Ballard of Mill Creek started writing a book “to keep my brain fresh.”
Ballard is a marketer and business consultant, and the book was outlined from a program he had developed over the years to help small businesses succeed.
It wasn’t long before Ballard was feeling better, and he set the book aside to rebuild his consulting business. But he got the writing itch again last summer and the result was published and launched Dec. 6.
It’s a good book.
The title is basically the point that Ballard has tried to make in his consulting work and in the classes he’s taught at the community colleges in Edmonds and Everett: “Your Opinion Doesn’t Matter, It’s Your Customer’s Opinion that Counts.”
Ballard said that title covers what he believes is the most important idea in the book. “You’ll never get to your full potential until you listen to your customers,” he said.
He said that in working with small business owners, he met quite a few who were extremely knowledgeable about their subject and their products and were convinced that they knew best about what their customers needed.
“It’s absolutely not true,” Ballard said.
The book’s chapters follow an eight-step plan that he provides in his consulting business. Basically, it helps business people develop their mission, determine what they’re good at, find out what their customers need or want, study the competition to know its weaknesses, set their own niche, develop successful promotions and fine-tune the results.
Ballard adds exercises to each chapter so you wind up with a pretty good business plan when you’re done.
He said he developed the book for people who can’t afford to pay him to provide hands-on help. And he said he took his own medicine by developing a group of readers to comment on his manuscript and explain how he could improve it so that readers get what they want.
“I followed the process in the book to improve the book,” he said.
The book, by MarketingAtlas Publishing, is available on Amazon.com and should be available at regular book outlets in March. Ballard says he’s had some success with sales already in academic and corporate circles.
I read the book in one sitting and found a lot of helpful advice.
Its message to let consumers tell you what they want is a good one. Consumers don’t always know exactly what they want, but the book helps you extract that information from them.
I asked Ballard for advice for people who don’t have time for even his book, which at 135 pages is a very quick read.
“Understand what you’re good at, understand your target audience and what they care about most (their buying triggers) and understand your competitive landscape (competitors’ weaknesses),” he said.
That’s a great summary for business success.
I recommend the book to people starting a business and to people who don’t think their existing business is doing as well as it should. Good business people don’t have to be told to listen to their customers, but Ballard’s book goes well beyond that with information on how to form test groups and to determine what it is that makes people buy.
Mike Benbow: 425-339-3459; benbow@heraldnet.com.
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