Use What Youve Got: and Other Business Lessons I Learned from My Mom by Barbara Corcoran and Bruce Littlefield, Portfolio, February 2003, 250 Pages, $24.95 Hardcover, ISBN 1591840023

What makes a good business book? It really isnt that hard. An authors goal should be two-fold: teach the reader something new (or at least revisit something worth revisiting) and make it enjoyable. Ta da! A very simple recipe for success. Of course, one persons gourmet dinner is another persons Old Country Buffet. But sometimes the choice is simple, and if youre in sales or just enjoy reading business success stories, I suggest ordering Use What Youve Got as your first course.

Barbara Corcoran is the founder of The Corcoran Group, a substantial real estate company in NYC. Now why would we peons west of the Hudson River care about what the doyen of NYC real estate has to say? Simple: because she has interesting stores to tell and many weighty points to make, all presented with flair and humor. She structures the book based on twenty-five how-tos, or Moms Lessons for getting ahead in business. Your jaw will drop at #1: If you dont have big breasts, wear ribbons in your pig tails. I mean, how much more universal can a subject be? (Okay, men, get creative here). Seriously though, underlying this very descriptive statement, Corcoran is instructing us how and why we should focus on the positive, a key aspect of success.

The layout of the chapters is also fun and the content enlightening. Corcoran begins each with a chronological story around the growth of her business, fleshing out a challenge she faced during the conception, birth, growth or maturity phases of her company. She then reflects back on her childhood, to a time when her mother (also featuring appearances by her nine brothers and sisters and her father) solved a similar, albeit familial, problem. This memory serves as a solution template that she then applies to her current situation. These applications are often funny and heartwarming, but always right on the money. She ends each chapter with a recap, often bullet-pointing the action steps you need to take to accomplish these lessons.

In case you think this sounds like a book with more fluff than foundation, a section that is well worth the cover charge is grafted to the end of the book. Titled, Bonus Manual: What I Wish Every Salesperson Knew, this section includes the warning: If you dont want to make a million dollars in sales, dont read this and contains down-to-earth, nitty-gritty advice for succeeding in sales. As with gourmet dining, presentation is important, but the quality of the ingredients is essential. I rate Use What Youve Got a 5-star success.

Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story by Jerry Weissman, Financial Times Prentice Hall, 304 Pages, $24.95 Hardcover, ISBN 0130464139

With all the focus put on high-tech communication gadgets and complex strategic techniques, its easy to forget about the fundamental basics of communication. This book, by Jerry Weissman, the presentation coach for the CISCO IPO and others, brings us back to focus on what is really important: communicating ideas clearly and effectively. He shows how to do this in successful presentations time and time again.

Weissman starts off with the common mistakes people make (the Five Cardinal Sins), and then gives an example of a power presentation. He says that a lot of the problem in presentations is that the speaker doesnt have a focused, cohesive presentation. Weissman urges readers to get the story straight, be sure of what you want to say, and the rest will more easily fall in place. When you dont have a clear agenda, your supporting points get blurred, too. So, as a speaker, you need to focus, and then persuade your audience to come around to your point. Weissman stresses the importance of knowing your audience and being an audience advocate. If you are going to try to pitch something, you should put yourself in your audiences shoes in order to …connect with the[ir] feelings, desires, wishes, fears, and passions. Keeping those things in mind will make it easier for you to focus on what you need to tell them to get them to act in the direction you want them to.

There are also many things to avoid in your presentation. Mainly things that make the audiences understanding more difficult, like dumping tons of data on them (numbers do not speak for themselves), showing cluttered slides, using vague text in visuals, etc. It seems pretty common sense, but Weissman stresses how such things are distractions and do not help your communication. There are several chapters on the visual part of a presentation and how to make it attractive, clear, and ultimately effective.

Each chapter is full of real-world examples that help you see Weissmans theories in action. At the end of the book, he includes an appendix which outlines the major concepts of the book. This part will prove to be extremely useful as a reminder/checklist for yourself as you prepare your next presentationwhether its a small informal meeting with your employees about the organizations progress and future, or a long series of presentations on your IPO road show.

Bringing Out The Best in Others!: 3 Keys for Business Leaders, Educators, Coaches and Parents by Thomas K. Connellan, Bard Books, 190 Pages, $19.95 Hardcover, February 2003, ISBN 188516758X

This is a book that really gets to an issue that anybody in a leadership position needs to deal with: motivating an unmotivated employee/child/student. The author discovered the three keys that are common in 21 of the first 23 astronauts, 45 percent of the female world leaders between 1960 and 1999, 55 percent of the Supreme Court justices, 2/3 of the people listed in Whos Who and over half of the U.S. presidents. They are all first-borns. As the author states when it came to the differences between first-borns and the rest of the children in a family, there were three factors that stood above the rest. First-borns get more positive expectations, more responsibility, and more feedback. Expectations, responsibilities, and feedback are the three keys focused on in this book.

Tom Connellan is also the author of Inside the Magic Kingdom, which sold very well for us. Like that book, this new one is written in the form of a novel. In the book, a trainer has in his class a sales manager with under-performing sales people, a father with an under-performing daughter, a teacher trying to get the best out of his class, and an owner of a company trying to get a couple more points in his companies productivity. Its a very effective way of showing how the three key principles can be applied in the situations of different people.

Good business books almost always support part of the way you have always felt in your gut. But what makes a REALLY good business book is its ability to make you look at a familiar situation in a different way. This little treasure does just that.