Guy Kawasaki Enchantment book

Review: “Enchantment” by Guy Kawasaki

Gee RanasinhaBusiness

Spend any time on the web looking into business, marketing, leadership or sales and ten will get you five that you’ll run into Guy Kawasaki.

Guy Kawasaki portraitMost people associate Guy with his time as Chief Evangelist at Apple. However, Guy’s time there was more than 20 years ago, when Apple was a very different company to the behemoth that it is today.

Nowadays, Guy’s involved in a variety of projects such as founding a venture capital fund and the Alltop content aggregation site. In between all of that Guy speaks at various events, blogs and writes books. It’s a wonder how the man finds time to sleep.

Today, most industries – and many companies – have become commoditized in the minds of their clientele. To build mindshare – and market share – organizations need to find honest and genuine ways to delight, seduce, to enchant their customer base to gain recognition, reputation and (above all) TRUST.

This is the premise of Guy’s latest book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions, a preview copy of which I received not so long ago. Previous books from Guy include APE and The Art Of The Start.

The premise of the book is a ‘how-to’ guide on increasing your company’s influence on new and existing customers by being “enchanting.” There are many ways to enchant – the quality of your product or service, the level of your customer service, the ways that you choose to communicate your business value differentiation.

Going through the book, I experienced the odd touch of déjà vu. There were certain parts that reminded me of the seminal work by Robert Caldini Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. However, for me Enchantment scores over Caldini due to the approachable and pragmatic tone that Guy adopts throughout much of the book. There are numerous easy-to-digest tips and pointers on how to align your business to better resonate with your customer. Everything from dress codes, to how to smile (!) to the use of social media channels gets a look in.

But at the end of the day, Guy’s book is about passion. About how and where to ignite change within your organization (or even, dare I say it, within your life) to generate delight in the minds of your customers. It’s about finding ways for you, your partners and your staff to communicate the “why” of your business, not the ‘how.”

Recommended reading.

P.S. A short story. As I mentioned, I only received my preview copy of Enchantment quite recently, even though the book has been out for a couple of months. The reason? Since Guy’s team had my French address, they decided to send me a French copy of the book (probably because they thought it would enchant me). While I could certainly have read the book in French, it would have taken me much longer to get through it – plus I would rather read Guy’s original words as opposed to someone’s French translation of them. Within a couple of days of mentioning this to Guy, I had an English copy of the book in my hands.

I’d say that Guy’s certainly practicing what he’s preaching.