“The Janus Principle: Focusing Your Company on Selling to Small Business,”
By Joann Mills Laing & Don Mazzella;
New York, New York; 2009; 164 pages; $14.95.

This is very much a “how-to” book on finding, marketing, and successfully selling to small businesses who want to buy your products, services, or both.
Sell to small business? Aren’t those the people who have almost no cash, a very low credit rating number, and hanging on to their business with by their fingernails. No, it’s the people who are finding ways to hang on, and even achieve some growth, while companies who are “too big to fail” are being bailed out by the government.
As usual, however, there are more than a few small businesses innovating opportunities while larger firms are “right-sizing” people and “temporarily” closing facilities so they’ll have the cash to ride out the troubled times. Co-authors Laing and Mazzella point out that even though a larger percentage of small businesses—compared to large businesses—may have trouble surviving, the sheer number and flexibility of small businesses make them a good marketplace to target.
While it’s true that some small businesses (and entire industry segments) will totally disappear, if economic history of financial downturns has taught us anything, it’s that surviving small business, especially in new market segments, will come back stronger than anyone expected. One example is the “green” marketplace for energy sustainability.
The book’s authors begin with the concept of Janus, the two-headed (actually two-faced) Roman god, always portrayed as always looking out and looking in. As Laing and Mazzella explain:
“A marketer is like that Janus—looking outward to sell and inward to marshalling the company’s resources to product the product or service.”
They go on to state:
“In short, the Janus Principale helps marketers to successfully bridge the gap between their company and the targeted marketplace.”
Starting with an early chapter titled “The What,” the authors point out that products and services must be specifically tailored to fit smaller clients. Simply providing a cut-down version of a larger offering created for big corporations seldom generates profitable results in the long run. The most common results are too many bugs in the products or services offered. The entire IT industry, both software and hardware, runs into that problem at least once a year.
The book is broadly organized to answer several key questions:
“The Why, The Who, The What, The When and The How.” This is basic, and is often expressed as: what are you selling; who are you selling it to; how much are you selling it for; where are you selling it; how are you selling it; what customer needs does your product satisfy; and what value do you add to your sale. The answers to these questions are the philosophical foundation of your business because they are so basic. Collectively, they add up to step one in the small business or any other market segment. In the book they account for a bit less than a third of the book’s content.
The book’s real value truly begins on page 45. From that point onward the book looks at the tools, techniques, and tactics to use with the small business market segment. Some are time-tested, such as direct mail and billboards. Others are computer-based and still being tested and analyzed. These include social networks, business blogs, and search engine optimization.
The co-authors have a level-headed approach, and if there’s a flaw in the book, it may be trying to do too much and paint the ideas presented in the final two-thirds of the book with too broad a brush. After all, there are hundreds of books and courses on each of the topics presented. Many of them go into far more detail than this book.
Overall, “The Janus Principle” offers a worthwhile primer on selling to small business during the early 21st Century. It manages to do so clearly, offering a banquet of ideas for the price of a moderately priced lunch.

— Henry Holtzman

Here are the current top 10 bestselling books for business. The list is compiled based on information received from retail bookstores throughout the U.S.A.

1. “How to Smell a Rat: The Five Signs of Financial Fraud,” by Ken Fisher (John Wiley & Sons…$24.95) (2)*
When an investment seems too good to be true, it usually is.
2. “Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System - and Themselves”
(Penguin Group…$32.95)**
Does the size of a failing company dictate government rescue?
3. “In FED We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic,” by David Wessel (Crown Publishing…$17.54) (1)
What happened in “the Fed” during 2008 and 2009.
4. “Outliers: The Story of Success,” by Malcolm Gladwell (Little,Brown & Co…$27.99) (3)
Why the cause of success can be linked to where you were born.
5. “SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance,” by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner (HarperCollins…$29.99)**
The author of “Freakonomics” strikes again.
6. “Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity,” by Michael Lewis (W.W. Norton & Co…$27.95) (4)
How underpricing financial risks led to economic catastrophe.
7. “The Secret of Shelter Island: Money and What Matters,” by Alexander Green (Wiley & Sons…$26.95) (5)
A road map to a rich life with or without lots of money.
8. “The Sellout: How Three Decades of Wall Street Greed and Government Mismanagement Destroyed the Global Financial System,” by Charles Gasparino (HarperCollins…$27.99)**
How greed and incompetence brought the financial system down.
9. “The Madoff Chronicles: Inside the Secret World of Bernie and Ruth,” by Brian Ross (Hyperion…$19.99) (8)
How Bernard Madoff made the original Ponzi scheme look small.
10. “Suze Orman's 2009 Action Plan,” by Suze Orman (Spiegel & Grau…$9.99) (9)
Suze offers her classic advice for survival in tough times.

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*(1) -- Indicates a book's previous position on the list.
** -- Indicates a book's first appearance on the list.