His mantra…
- Reward high pressure service not high pressure sales.
- Teach guilt free selling.
- Be an example of a servant leader. This book conducts a survey of the strategies the author terms “POS” (Positively Outrageous Selling) and its impact on business growth, profitability and personal success. The author sees the book as a “buddy in a binding.” His writing assumes the voice of a friend to the reader. He avoids the usual standards of business theory and profitability. Instead he tries to provide a workbook, or rather a handbook, for successful operations. The treatment of the material takes on a “Do this next” or “insert tab A into slot B” voice. The author began his business experiences in the restaurant world (a chicken franchise in Texas!). Now, unless you have a gourmet set up, one restaurant is about like another. There are only so many ways you can cook a steak. So, to be successful, the restaurateur must make a connection with his patrons either by amazing service or sheer force of personality. Gross has blended the two. The layout of the book is very sequential in one sense. For example, “Step 1 is…part A of step 1 is… section i of part A of step 1 is…,” and so on. All in all, it is a fair overview of marketing through service. But, it is a little high energy to read much of at one sitting. There is a lot of use of all CAPITALS, bold font, underlining and tons of exclamation points! These tend to distract me from the content itself. I did particularly enjoy the “Wows and Bloopers” section at the end of the book. There are some very interesting turnaround stories from some pretty big business and Gross does a lot of namedropping. In summary, if you like reading bits of things that you can pull out and use; this is a good choice for you. On the other hand, if you like to read a whole book to understand the continuity of the message this tome will make you a little batty. Reg Adkins writes on behavior and the human experience at (elementaltruths.blogspot.com).
