Manners That Sell: Adding The Polish That Builds Profits should be required reading for high school and college students and for anyone already in business environment. Once upon a time, good manners were taught in school and at home, but that time has long since passed. This book provides perfect refresher course for those of us who were taught manners but no longer remember finer points of etiquette.

A common marketing mistake I see over and over is trying to sell a product as a multi-purpose solution. A product that can do many different tasks usually doesn’t do any one task better than competition. Herein lies part of problem. As consumers we typically experience one problem at a time and then shop for a single solution. Ask yourself as a buyer, do you specifically look for multi-purpose products or do you look for a specific solution? Your good steak knives can be used to prune a tree, open letters, and to cut fishing bait. But don’t you usually buy a separate pruner, letter opener, and fishing bait knife?

Exceptions to Rule There are a few exceptions to this rule. There is clock radio, boom box, Swiss Army Knife, and all-in-one printer, scanner, copier, and fax machine. If products are typically physically placed next to each other, there is possibility of combining them. For example, a clock and radio often sits next to each other on nightstand. By combining them together, it saves space, shares certain components to save costs, and adds extra feature of waking up to radio.