In What Clients Love, marketing maven Harry Beckwith offers valuable lessons about capturing and keeping clients. (As Beckwith puts it, "Competence gets firms into the game that relationships win.") Using snappy examples from Absolut Vodka, Kinko’s, Starbucks, and Ian Schrager’s boutique hotels, he organizes his advice by describing four significant social trends that shape client needs and loyalty. Beckwith’s strategies for coping with information overload focus on getting to the point--using a shorter sell and fewer superlatives. He makes a clever and convincing case for giving both testimonials and blurbs the death penalty. He details the decline of client trust with a plan to eliminate cold calls, dress for success, and a spot-on critique of PowerPoint ("Lincoln had no slides at Gettysburg.") Other chapters explore the limits of the Internet and offer nongimmicky ideas about creating a brand, including 20 questions for choosing a name for your business.

Beckwith’s advice is fresh, funny, and strategic. He is a master of anecdote and metaphor whose examples range from television’s Sex and the City to nihilistic philosopher Nietzsche. Yet the book’s clarity is sometimes undermined by its too clever formatting. It's best to enjoy its wisdom one chapter at a time, over coffee. Consider it the caffeine in your cup.

The title of this book is a little misleading. It is not helping you learn how to think like an entrepreneur. In fact, the book teaches you how to more accurately make assessments that entrepreneurs have to make. If you do that, your entrepreneurial success should be higher.

I like books about avoiding thought patterns that delay or derail progress, and thoroughly enjoyed this one. In many ways, the book parallels the outstanding book about personal decision-making, Smart Choices, that I strongly recommend you read as well.

Why, then, did I rate the book at four stars rather than five? Basically, the book didn't quite get the editing it deserved. There are some minor misspellings of the sort that should have been caught. More seriously, the book indulges in unnecessary vulgar language in a few places. If those things don't bother you, see this as a five star book. It certainly is in every other way.

Some of the subjects include how to overcome risk aversion, how to lay off risk, picking the type of business to go into, establishing a business model that has the best chance of success, and how to have the business match your personality and preferences. These are subjects I feel are important for any entrepreneur, and are often not covered by business books. I was especially impressed by the focus on ethics and high moral tone of the advice.

This book will have value both for people who are thinking about becoming entrepreneurs and those who are already running small businesses. Since the book often focuses on computer consulting and computer-based training, those who are in those fields will find the book to be especially valuable.

As a test of the value of the book's content, I applied the concepts to my own management consulting firm and found that the analyses were accurate and useful. So you can add management consulting as another business type for which this book is good.

One of the things I liked about the book is that it realistically encourages people to think about entrepreneurship. Even if you decide that having your own business is not for you, this book will give you a better basis for feeling confident about that decision.

If you do decide you want to buy or start a business, I suggest you share this book with your spouse and a person who already has a business in the same area. Then discuss your ideas with each of them in terms of the concepts in the book. Their feedback will help you form a more realistic view of your ideas.

Growing is designed to give students a comprehensive introduction to business ownership and management from the start-up phase through growth and harvest. Decidedly entrepreneurial in focus, this book departs from the traditional small business management text by incorporating themes and principles appropriate to managing small companies in a dynamic, global environment.

"The senior management of a rapidly growing entrepreneurial company must simultaneously cope with its endless day-to-day problems and keep an eye on its future direction..."

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