Stop Paddling & Start Rocking the Boat: Business Lessons from the School of Hard Knocks

by Lou Pritchett

Book Overview

In 1987, Lou Pritchett, the vice president of sales at Procter & Gamble, had a radical idea. He phoned Sam Walton and invited the visionary chairman of Wal-Mart on a two-day canoe trip. There on the South Fork River in Arkansas, Lou made Sam and offer no profit-minded person could refuse: the chance to forge a partnership between the two colossal firms. This now legendary trip marks the culmination of a lifetime devoted to building customer relationships...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0595445012
• ISBN13: 9780595445011
• Release Date: April 2007
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Uncommonly Good Common Sense

Lou Pritchett's down-home common sense approach to business is uncomplicated, fun to digest & quite relevent. I loved this book. Lou's success with Proctor & Gamble is a well documented chapter of corporate America; that former bastion of excellence & profitability. Corporate America could use more Lou Pritchetts these days. His style of leadership & motivation is needed as a wake up call to the vast majority of smug & pompous head-honchos running their organizations into the ground; thanks to their failures, we've become a Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy (another great book)---an ill-advised way of running this country. This is a man of great common sense, courage and vision. He's still getting notoriety in 2009, from his wonderfully compelling "open letter" to President Obama. The theme of the letter---"You scare me"---is right on the money. ObamaNation's scaring a lot of concerned Americans about the glaring lack of leadership coming from the White House. As Mr Pritchett suggests, it's time America woke up to what's going on around us & take action. Lou is indeed a man of great accomplishment to admire & his wonderfully written book is now among my favorites.

Practical advice from the guy who invented partnering

Today, everyone in business throws around the term "partnering" when discussing business relationships. Lou Pritchett was one of the first to break the traditional, often adversarial approach of selling to the customer...This book is filled with insight and anecdotes that will help any business person seeking to drive costs out of the business and work more closely with customers and suppliers. Any student of modern supply chain management knows that building trust between all parties in the chain is the key element to success and the one that many companies find the most difficult implement. Lou will tell you that this is not rocket science. However it does take courage and hard work to keep rocking the boat and change the old way of doing business.

Take it from the "old soap salesman"

Lou offers great insight and wisdom in the art of "human engineering" - training managers to become true leaders. Being part of the greatest generation, Lou captures a slice of American salesmanship that makes this country great today. While some of the stories may seem dated, anyone that has customers or business associates can learn from the pages of this book regardless of industry, timeframe or position. I have ordered copies of this book for employees from entry-level to CEO. All have come back to say thanks and have forwarded it on for someone else to read!