Jeff, how did you come up with the idea for writing The KPI Book?
Answer from Jeff Smith:
I’m asked this question so many times by other people who want to write books and people who I call ”success seekers”, people who want to do well with a business idea. Well, here’s the answer…
In the years 1999 and 2000, I was delivering the “Dealer Principal and Leadership programme” for Porsche and contained within the training manuals that I had written was a glossary of terms.
The glossary was a single sheet of A4 paper with a table containing some value KPI together with the industry benchmarks and simple explanations of what each KPI means.
Well, after running three programmes each Dealer Principal had three single-page glossaries to help them to retain and recall the information covered. At this stage I thought no more of it, but then something happened…
I was asked to conduct some consultancy work at one of the Porsche Centres and as I was sitting in the Dealer Principal’s office I noticed that the three glossaries from my training manual were framed in a prominent position on his wall. Naturally, I was intrigued by this so I asked the Dealer Principal why he had them on his wall. He said:
“I wouldn’t be without them, they’re a fantastic reference because I can’t remember them all. When I get my management accounts, I just look at my glossaries and the answers are there.”
I was delighted that someone had put my work to good use and I left his office with a smile of satisfaction on my face. Then it happened again, I found out that other Dealer Principals had done exactly the same thing with their glossary of terms.
I spoke with the Training Manager of Porsche to see if he was aware of what had happened and he said,
“Yes, I’m fully aware. In fact I want you to write up a special Porsche edition of all of our KPI terms so that we can circulate them to the dealers, everyone love them.”
“Hang on a minute” I thought, “what’s going on here?”
If it’s good for Porsche, then it must be good for other people too, so I asked a few people about the idea of a complete reference rather than a glossary.
The response was favourable, not great, but nevertheless I decided to write a few pages and put it to the test.
I wrote the book in draft form, printed it onto A5 paper, bound it in a crude folder and showed it to a few people; now the response was great and The KPI Book was born.
At that stage, there was no structure to the pages, just me writing about KPI, I had to make it easier to understand. On the seventh attempt at writing the book I finally came up with the idea of writing one KPI per page so the book had uniformity and consistency; this is what was lacking from the other six versions that I’d written.
After going back to the drawing board for the seventh time, I wrote The KPI Book and the rest, as they say, is history.
My first customer for the book was Porsche and Andy Goss, Managing Director of Porsche GB, purchased sufficient copies to supply all of the Porsche Centres. From that point on, the book established itself without any advertising whatsoever and the first 1,000 copies sold within 60 days.
From having the initial idea and making the decision to write the book through to publication, the whole project took me 362 days to complete.
How can I be so precise? It’s easy. On the day that I decided to write the book, April 1st 2000, I first wrote down my goals for the project and in my goal I included the publication date, which was 1 year from now, March 31st 2001. The project was complete 3 days ahead of schedule.
The interesting thing for me about this book is that I did not decide to write it for a commercial venture, in other words, I didn’t write as a means of making money. People laugh at me when I say this, but it’s true.
I wrote The KPI Book because it was a way for me to give something back to the Motor Industry. I have earned a very good living but the road to success has been a tough one. In my mind, this was my way of helping other people who would be travelling the same path as I did.
As a Dealer Principal, there’s no one to help you; everyone assumes that you know everything that you need to know. As a Line Manger, you can’t always find the right training courses to suit your career path. I wrote The KPI Book with a single objective:
“To help people to develop themselves and to make their career easier than my own has been and to give the ability to get the answers when you need them.”
As of today, The KPI Book has been incredibly successful and is directly responsible for generating revenues of more than £2,000,000 around the world and for that I feel honoured and extremely humble.
My personal dream is that my contributions to the Motor Industry are valued and deemed as useful.
© Copyright Insight Training & Development Ltd 2008
You have our permission to provide a link to this page, but you are not allowed to copy it.