Business leaders admire Warren Buffett by a wide margin in Speakeasy Trust Survey.
Risk,” says Warren Buffett, “comes from not knowing what you are doing.” When it comes to making deals, Buffett knows exactly what he is doing. As a dealmaker he has built his company, Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK), into an empire that includes Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, GEICO, Fruit of the Loom, See’s Candies, NetJets, and dozens and dozens of other companies.
Amazingly, Buffett often wins deals by beating out higher-bidding competitors.
Highly successful dealmakers themselves, Tom Searcy and Henry DeVries have been studying Buffett’s unique approach for many years.
Now they reveal the secrets of the Oracle of Omaha in a new book “How to Close A Deal Like Warren Buffett – Lessons from the World’s Greatest Dealmaker” published by McGraw-Hill (www.closelikebuffett.com ISBN 978-0-07-180165-2, Hardback, $22).
Here is a sampling of the 101 top deal-making tips from Buffett included in the book:
| 1. | Choose quality deals. “It’s far better to own a portion of the Hope diamond than 100 percent of a rhinestone.” | |
| 2. | Don’t adopt sloppy deal-making habits. “Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” | |
| 3. | Think for yourself. “My idea of a group decision is to look in the mirror.” | |
| 4. | Remember the top two deal-making rules. “Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No. 1.” | |
| 5. | Avoid risky deals. “We’ve done better by avoiding dragons rather than by slaying them.” | |
| 6. | Be honest in your deal making. “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” | |
| 7. | Opportunity attracts money. “Money will always flow toward opportunity, and there is an abundance of that in America.” | |
| 8. | Deal making is no-called strike game. “You don’t have to swing at everything — you can wait for your pitch.” | |
| 9. | Never confuse deal price and value. “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” | |
| 10. | Don’t do deals just to do deals. “We don’t get paid for activity, just for being right.” | |
In his review of the book, Jeffrey Gitomer, author of “The Little Red Book of Selling,” wrote: “Getting the wisdom and thinking behind Warren Buffett’s deals will help you gain insight into the art and science of making your deals.” More reviews are available at www.closelikebuffett.com
Searcy, founder of the consulting firm Hunt Big Sales (www.HuntBigSales.com ), is a nationally recognized author, speaker, and expert in key account sales. Searcy is also the author of “RFPs Suck! How to Master the RFP System Once and for All to Win Big Business” and the co-author of “Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company.”
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Tags: book, Close a Deal Like Warren Buffett, Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett deal-making maxims
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