DIRECT FROM DELL: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry (Collins Business Essentials) - Softcover

Dell, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060845724 ISBN 13: 9780060845728

Publisher: Business, 2005

Synopsis

At nineteen, Michael Dell started his company as a freshman at the University of Texas with $1,000 and has since built an industry powerhouse. As Dell journeys through his childhood adventures, ups and downs, and mistakes made along the way, he reflects on invaluable lessons learned.

Michael Dell's revolutionary insight has allowed him to persevere against all odds, and Direct from Dell contains valuable information for any business leader. His strategies will show you effective ways to grow your business and will help you save time on costly mistakes by following his direct model for success.

About this title

About the Authors

Michael Dell is the chairman of the board of directors of Dell Inc., the world's largest computer-systems company. In 1992, he became the youngest CEO ever to earn a ranking on the Fortune 500. Mr. Dell serves on the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, the executive committee of the International Business Council, and is a member of the U.S. Business Council. He also serves on the U.S. President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and the governing board of the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India.

Michael Dell is Chairman and CEO of Dell Computer Corporation. Catherine Fredman collaborated with Andrew Grove, Chairman of Intel, on his best-selling book, Only the Paranoid Survive.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Direct from Dell

Strategies that Revolutionized an IndustryBy Michael Dell

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2005 Michael Dell
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060845724

Chapter One

The Birth of Being Direct

I first experienced the power -- and the rewards -- of being direct when I was twelve years old. The father of my best friend in Houston was a pretty avid stamp collector, so naturally my friend and I wanted to get into stamp collecting, too. To fund my interest in stamps, I got a job as a water boy in a Chinese restaurant two blocks from my house. I started reading stamp journals just for fun, and soon began noticing that prices were rising. Before long, my interest in stamps began to shift from the joy of collecting to the idea that there was something here that my mother, a stockbroker, would have termed "a commercial opportunity."

In our household, you couldn't help being aware of commercial opportunities. The discussions at our dinner table in the 1970s were about what the chairman of the Federal Reserve was doing and how it affected the economy and the inflation rate; the oil crisis; which companies to invest in, and which stocks to sell and buy. The economy in Houston was booming at the time, and the market for collectibles was quite active. It was obvious to me from what I'd read and heard that the value of stamps was increasing, and being a fairly resourceful kid, I saw this as an opportunity.

My friend and I had already bought stamps at an auction, and since I knew even then that people rarely did something for nothing, I assumed that the auctioneers were making a decent fee. Rather than pay them to buy the stamps, I thought it would be fun to create my own auction. Then I could learn even more about stamps and collect a commission in the process.

I was about to embark upon one of my very first business ventures.

First, I got a bunch of people in the neighborhood to consign their stamps to me. Then I advertised "Dell's Stamps" in Linn's Stamp Journal, the trade journal of the day. And then I typed, with one finger, a twelve-page catalog (I didn't yet know how to type, nor did I have a computer) and mailed it out.

Much to my surprise, I made $2,000. And I learned an early, powerful lesson about the rewards of eliminating the middleman. I also learned that if you've got a good idea, it pays to do something about it.

Seeing the Pattern

A few years later, I saw the chance to seize an even greater opportunity. When I was sixteen, I got a summer job selling newspaper subscriptions to The Houston Post. At the time, the newspaper gave its salespeople a list of new phone numbers issued by the telephone company and told us to cold call them. It struck me as a pretty random way of approaching new business.

I soon noticed a pattern, however, based on the feedback I was getting from potential customers during these conversations. There were two kinds of people who almost always bought subscriptions to the Post: people who had just married and people who had just moved into new houses or apartments. With this in mind, I wondered, "How could you find all the people who are getting mortgages or getting married?"

After asking around, I discovered that when a couple wanted to get married, they had to go to the county courthouse and get a marriage license. They also had to provide the address to which the license would be sent. In the state of Texas, that information is public. So I hired a couple of my high school buddies and we canvassed the courthouses in the sixteen counties surrounding the Houston area, collecting the names and addresses of the newly (or soon-to-be-newly) married.

Then I found out that certain companies compiled lists of people who had applied for mortgages. These lists were ranked by the size of the mortgage. You could easily identify the people with the largest mortgages and go after those high-potential customers first.* I targeted these people, creating a personalized letter and offering them a subscription to the newspaper.

By this time, summer was over and it was time to go back to high school. As important as school was, I found that it could be very disruptive to a steady income. I had worked hard to create a lucrative system and didn't want to just throw it away, so I handled the bulk of the work during the week after school, and I did the follow-up work on Saturday mornings. The subscriptions came in by the thousands.

One day, my history and economics teacher assigned us a project for which we had to file our tax returns. Based on what I had made selling newspaper subscriptions, my income was about $18,000 that year. At first, my teacher corrected me, assuming I had missed the decimal place. When she realized I hadn't, she became even more dismayed.

To her surprise, I had made more money that year than she had.

Continues...

Excerpted from Direct from Dellby Michael Dell Copyright © 2005 by Michael Dell. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Business
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060845724
• ISBN 13: 9780060845728
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272