Small business owners beware the competitor that has read--and practiced--what Dale Carnegie preached seventy years ago in his innovative work, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Whats this book doing here? Arent we talking about marketing? Absolutely. And since marketing deals with people, what better book to examine than one that helps a Chief Marketer excel in her people skills.

This is a great time to re-evaluate your personal skills as a business professional. Being a powerful Chief Marketer is so much more than creating that penetrating insight into the market. Usually, it involves listening to and working with people all year long.

Dale Carnegies book is often overlooked. It is rarely offered as a core coursework in any college or university, but its lessons are infinitely important to a person in business. This is a book that can easily be read in a couple of weeks. It is best read with a highlighter and a pen to scratch out margin-notes as you go along. We found many little aha moments over ten years ago when we first read this work.

Returning to its pages we find that it is still quite resonant, even a decade after first reading. And maybe that is why it is still relevant, some seventy plus years after it was first published. Human nature, after all, hasnt changed a bit.

Of course the technology changes, and so we ofttimes tend to get bogged down in the latest tactical tech advantages that are now at our fingertips. Tech changes are constant--just look at how the internet is still allowing us to find new ways to contact our clients. The holiday season is the season of new tech-toys coming to market, each promising an improvement over last years model. But tech changes are sometimes dangerous. We can fall under the spell that the latest tech tool will finally be a marketing cure-all. The beauty of anchoring oneself with a solid grounding in the basics of human communication is that we can better understand how to best use the new technology to better meet our customers needs.

And Carnegie was a master at passing on to us how to communicate effectively with other people. Instead of teaching us to become a better speaker, which one might think would be the best thing for a salesperson or marketer to do, Carnegie stressed the importance of being a better listener. You will notice that successful companies, at their core, are very good at listening to what their customers are telling them. 2005 marked the 50th anniversary of the passing of Dale Carnegie. That his landmark book is still being produced is a testament to his vision as a person who had vast insight into human nature. It is as relevant as ever for any of us who want to learn how to successfully communicate with our fellows.

Remember: Brand (who you are) + Package (your Face to the Customer) + People (customers and employees) = Marketing Success.

2006 Marketing Hawks