An engaging, funny tale about salesmanship and much more.
A time-travel fantasy novel about the philosophical core of an auto dealership.
In their involving, terrifically readable debut, Vee and Miller present the story of Mark Dunham, a struggling young car salesman who’s in an extremely protracted slump at Langford Auto Sales. Lately, he’s even had to wear a promotional gorilla suit to bring in business. The costume was the idea of his raspy old colleague Earl Cochrane, who’s “been here since the Stone Age” and thinks he’s “God’s gift to car sales.” Disoriented by the boiling-hot get-up, Mark stumbles down a hatch into the dealership’s dark storm cellar, where, bruised and confused, he discovers a film canister labeled “The Last Up,” apparently left down there by Henry “Hank” Langford, the business’s long-dead founder. Mark is on thin ice with his wife, Charlotte, while his boss, Alan Langford, Hank’s son, has spoken to him about his nonexistent sales record, so he figures that he has nothing to lose by playing the old film. But in the process of doing so, he finds himself transported back in time to the heyday of Langford Auto, back in the 1950s, when the business was under the control of Hank himself. The old master quickly takes Mark under his wing and initiates him into the finer arts of salesmanship. The resulting narrative, by rights, ought to be a hokey, niche-market parable. But instead, it’s utterly captivating from start to finish, easily and smartly broadening its scope far beyond the specifics of selling to the nature of human interaction itself: “There’s only one way to show people that you really care, kid—and it’s not to kiss their behinds,” Hank instructs him in one conversation. “It’s not to give them prizes or cut your prices either. It’s to be interested in them—to ask questions and be genuinely interested in the answers.” The relationship that develops between Mark and the Falstaffian Hank is thoroughly charming, and the insights that Mark gains allow Vee and Miller to subtly coach any prospective salespeople who might be reading. However, the novel will also appeal beyond those ranks to a more general readership.
An engaging, funny tale about salesmanship and much more.Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9854782-3-0
Page Count: 209
Publisher: Atlas Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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