George B. McClellan and Civil War History: In the Shadow of Grant and Sherman

Book Description

Perhaps no other Union commanders reputation has been the subject of as much controversy as McClellans. He has emerged as the complex general who, though gifted with administrative and organizational skills, was unable and unwilling to fight with the splendid army he had created. In this book, Rowland presents a framework in which early Civil War command can be viewed without direct comparison to the final two years of the war. Only by understanding how very different was the context and nature of the war facing McClellan, as opposed to Grant and Sherman, can one discard the traditional good general-bad general approach to command performance.

Customer Reviews:

"Little Mac": a reassessment.......2006-04-05

I am in two minds about this book. On the one hand: history has not been kind to "Little Mac", and it was about time somebody stood up for McClellan. Mr. Rowland has picked up the gauntlet. Lately, it seems to me, one can detect a bit of a trend towards that end. Mr. Rowland and other authors have reexamined and reassessed the General's personality and actions. Mr. Ethan S. Rafuse's book on McClellan ("McClellan's War") is another example of a fresh look at McClellan.
To do so and fly in the face of the "communis opinio" (the widely held view) of McClellan is in itself commendable.

On the other hand: I don't think that there is much purpose to this excercise. As I see it, and I'm pretty sure in that many other ACW scholars, buffs and aficionados, share this point of view, no matter how fresh or objective one tries to look at George Brinton McClellan, one reaches the same conclusions again and again: that the General was a deeply flawed man, to say the least, vain and boastful, and yet (or perhaps even because of this) also extremely cautious, highly insecure and frankly, paranoid. I've read of people, in his own time already, not just smart-mouth Amazon book-reviewers like yours truly, referring to him as a crackpot. I even think it was Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Well, we know that Secretary Stanton was no great friend of McClellan and that he was quite stern in his opinions about the Generals he had to deal with, but in this case his ususally hot-headed judgement is not necessarily a wrong one.

Is it time for some revisionist history concerning McClellan? Is this necessary? Are the commonly held views of McClellan subject to debate, are these views thought to be untrue, unjust, unfair or even unhistorical by a growing number of ACW scholars, students and buffs? No, of course they are not. Because the general view of McClellan is born out of something "Little Mac" himself so conspicuously lacked: common sense.

Major General George Brinton McClellan had it all when he was called to Washington in 1861. He had a towering reputation (which was undeserved, after his successfull but minor campaign in Western Virginia, but the Union was elated to have a military success at last), he was hailed as the savior of the Union and he was given command of the Union's most important field army. The President and the cabinet trusted him, deferred to his judgement and put themselves at his disposition in stead of the other way round. He soon succeeded in ousting Winfield Scott, the venerable US Army Chief, and became General in Chief of all Union armies. McClellan, catapulted into this position of enormous power, then started to believe the adulation and the flattery of the people, the press and the politicians himself. He seemed to need it more and more, because as his influence and power increased, so did his insecurities, his doubts, his paranoia and his unbalance.
Well, we don't need to make to much of McClellan's flaws, after all, who of is isn't flawed in some, or even many, ways. Mr. Rowland correctly makes that point. McClellan wasn't more or less flawed than Grant and or Sherman. The thing is, however, that Grant and Sherman overcame their flaws, faced their demons and learned to function adequately if not superbly in command.
McClellan did not succeed in ridding himself of his fears or in learning to control them, nor in curbing his insecurities and his paranoid tendencies, and as such he was definitely not the right man to command the Army of the Potomac in the field.

Also there is cause to question his moral and indeed even his physical courage: McClellan stayed well away from the field of fight during any action. And there are more instances of behavior which justify this question mark against "Little Mac"'s honor of than the often cited episode of McClellan sailing away on a gunboat just after the beginning of the battle of Malvern Hill. An "unforgivable act of pusillanimity", as was said by some at the time, for which McClellan never offered an adequate explanation. Well, surely he was not prepared to get down to the level of his accusers and react to such slander, mr Rowland says. Yeah, right. That is the way in which people like McClellan usually respond to such considerations. I think, as do many others, that there remains a reasonable doubt as to McClellan's courage, based on his actions.

As to his judgment, well, let's name an aspect of this that puts a different light on the General's fitness for command. I'm talking of course of McClellan's tendency to systematically overestimate the number of enemy troops opposing him. He did this from day one in command and kept it up to right after Antietam, when he was finally relieved, in october 1862.

Why oh why did he do this? How did he come by those incredibly fantastic figures of hundreds of thousands of rebels opposing him and his poor little army? Was it all Pinkerton's fault? The great detective, after all, supplied the figures to McClellan. Pinkerton later said that he and his operatives had always given McClellan true numbers to the best of their knowledge. He also stated that they had not supplied McClellan with data which would support the exaggerated numbers of troops McClellan claimed Johnston and after him Lee had arrayed against him. In other words: McClellan took what Pinkerton gave him and then did some calculating of his own. He tailored the facts to fit his opinions and impressions, a professional hazard for a General, made all the more probable by McClellan's psychological make-up.
Whatever the psychological reasons; his inability to admit mistakes is one of the least attractive traits of McClellan's character.
After the war, indeed even during it, it became clear that Johnston and Lee had never commanded anything near the numbers of men that McClellan had claimed in his frantic cries for reinforcements and on which he had based his overcautious strategies.
After doing some maths it must have dawned on the people of the North that the war, which had gone on for four bloody years, could have ended in 1862. It could have ended with McClellan taking Richmond in june 1862 or with McClellan crushing Lee's badly outnumbered army at Antietam. In those days McClellan had acted too cautiously because he had convinced himself he was outnumbered. Even McClellan must have known, pretty soon after the war, that he had been tricked, by the rebels and by his own mind. But he never made any comment on the question!
He never apologized (well, that would have been impossible for a man like him) but neither did he ever explain his behavior. He never said on what he had he had based his now manifestly wrong actions in the Peninsula and Antietam campaigns!

What I even less understand, why weren't the people of the Union states furious with him for failing to win the war in 1862? He dawdled, faltered and failed and in doing so wasted the opportunities to end the war out of weakness, lack of resolve, moral cowardice and pig-headedness! He had Lee's battleplans in his possession just prior to Antietam, for Pete's sakes!! Why wasn't there more of an outcry against him? The war lasted two more years thanks to him! Why was he not dragged before congress or before a court-martial? In my view there was every reason to do so.

Now to the plus side. McClellan made the Army of the Potomac. He built it from the masses of raw volunteers that came to Washington in 1861. He trained these men, and selected their commanders, and he made some inspired choices in this regard (men like Gibbon, Hancock, and Hunt, for instance). He drilled the army, organized it and fed, clothed and housed it. He kept the army in good health an kept it supplied.
The fine performance of the men of the Army of the Potomac, especially that of the infantry and the gunners, owed a very great deal to the rigourous training programme to which McClellan subjected them. The General turned out to possess an enormous talent for organization and training. He honed the skills of the army and prepared it to an excellent degree for it's task. The credit for this is largely due to McClellan. Maybe this was part of the problem: McClellan built the army and knew it's strengths and it's weaknesses. After having made this huge army he was reluctant to commit it to action. They were all so green! There were so few regulars! He could not do what the French had done in 1793 when they fused the professional Royal Army with the new volunteer army, made up of inexperienced national guardsmen. They amalgamated the two types of soldiers in a new army: they put one regular army batallion in a demi-brigade with two batallions of volunteers. In this way the old sweats showed the rookies the ropes of soldiering and infused old-fashioned discipline while in turn the volunteers were an example and an inspiration of revolutionary elan to the old soldiers.
McClellan could not do this: there were only some 17.000 regular soldiers in the US Army in 1861. He felt he had to use his army very very carefully and cautiously, if he lost it, he would lose the war, and the Union with it. This realization, of which he convinced himself, eventually paralyzed him.

This is book that makes you think, and think again, on McClellan. Four stars for that!!!
I do not share Mr. Rowland's conclusions, though. In 1862 McClellan was not the best man for the job to command the Army of the Potomac.
It would have been for him and for his reputation had he continued in an organizing/facilitating capacity. Lincoln should have made him Chief of Staff in Washington, in fact, should have given "Little Mac" the job Henry Halleck got in 1862, or should have made him Quartermaster-General or even Secretary of War.
It would in all probability have meant that McClellan would have become the Lazare Carnot of the Union: "The Organizer of Victory" The man who supplied the tools that won the war for the Union. He could then have supervised the productions of arms and ammunition, the supplying of the army, it's transportation, the training of it's new recruits, and he would more than probably have done a great job. He was the born military organizer. He was not, alas, a great field commander. McClellan would have lived to great respect and glory and would not have died at 58, of a heart condition which probably stemmed from the stress of supreme command, and which after the war was aggravated by the constant stress of battling to keep his reputation intact. McClellan died a controversial figure, respected and yet partly tragic, partly ridiculous. But he had only himself to blame for this.

Disappointing in the Extreme.......2001-07-05

As an Amazon.com reviewer, I can see that I am going to be in the decided minority in my opinion on this book. Hopefully I can adequately point out my perceived problems with Mr. Rowland's work, and yet maintain the positives other reviewers have posted.

I have long been fascinated with George B. McClellan as not only a Civil War general, but as a Civil War personality as well. Here we have a man who should have been the one, single, Union military success - a man who had it all: brains, looks, youth, education, and family. And yet, there is no single Union general who managed to accomplish so little in over a year's time, with so much.

I hoped that Thomas J. Rowland's "George B. McClellan & Civil War History: In the Shadow of Grant and Sherman" would provide some insight into McClellan's flawed character that did not come forth from modern biographers such as Stephen Sears. Yet within Rowland's work, I was sorely disappointed.

Rowland sets forth to disprove Little Mac's critics by doing the one thing in Civil War writing that I abhor - rather than building up his subject, and letting McClellan's story stand on its own - he sets out to drag everyone else down. For some strange reason, there appears to be more and more of this going on in Civil War historiography of late, much to the detriment of our understanding of history.

Rowland sets out to outline the perceived problems with McClellan's personality and generalship, and rather than refute the contentions directly, often sets out to discredit others such as Grant, Sherman, and Edwin Stanton. If Rowland's guy cannot stand tall, then no one else will, as well. For example, we have on page 67 a typical statement of Rowland's: "The notion that McClellan was the butt of more embarrassing incidents than anyone else is greatly diminished by any extended review of the war's comical and tragic mistakes." And from there, rather than review Little Mac, Rowland sets out to review other participants on history's stage.

Rowland attempts to minimize McClellan's flaws by qualifying his admittance of such flaws throughout the book. Thus, we see Rowland admit, cautiously, that McClellan could be petty, vain, and vindictive "on occasion." In other places, his review of other historian's work is tinged with statements like "Unfortunately, that is not entirely true." The reader is left to try to ponder which portions are partially true, and partially not.

This book is not a comprehensive analysis of the life and times of General George B. McClellan, but a selected bibliography of truth and half-truth that uses only what the author wants the public to see about McClellan - and more importantly, anyone else held in higher esteem than the Young Napoleon that can be drawn down to the perceived level that history holds McClellan.

All in all, this was a very disappointing work. If you want to come to grips with the enigma that was McClellan, this book will leave you very short of your expectations.

George McClellan Revisited.......2001-06-22

The author, Thomas J. Rowland, develops his thesis that General George McClellan has been unfairly characterized by both contemporaries and historians. The first half of the book discusses the common criticisms of McClellan. In Chapter 2 the so called psychological profile on McClellan is reviewed stating that "Of all the reasons why McClellan may have been a gravely flawed commander, the exploitation of the psychological model is the most flawed itself...." He notes that both Grant and Sherman "....trailed a significant baggage of personality deficiencies into the Civil War" observing that "If anyone came close to experiencing a psychic episode during the Civil War it was Sherman in Kentucky."

In the chapter discussing McClellan's lesser faults, the author notes that both Grant and Sherman had similar faults, but they weren't judged by these faults nor should McClellan's strategic abilities be evaluated by his peccadilloes. Acknowledging that McClellan played a major role in his poor working relations with Lincoln, the author notes that "....the president was not frank about how military goals were to be shaped by the political dimensions of the rebellion." In addition, Stanton's dislike of McClellan did not help in the commander's poor relationship with the president. However, the author does not imply that McClellan was faultless noting "....his failure to delegate authority and his obstinate secrecy" Another fault was his unwillingness to take risks. The greatest question is whether he made the best use of the Army of the Potomac. Rowland concludes that "In any comparison with other Civil War commanders, particularly those to whom he is unfavorably compared, McClellan's personal shortcomings were not that remarkable."

Chapter 4's discussion of the early months of war provides valuable insight into the ultimate conduct of the war. The widely held Northern belief that most Southerners were not committed secessionists initially led to a limited war strategy. After the First Manassas McClellan recommended that to restore the Union in the shortest time, the North had to "crust the rebellion at one blow...." Rowland notes "McClellan's was....a well reasoned strategic proposal. His conservative views.... reflected....widespread appeal throughout the North at that time...." In support of this strategy, he launched the Peninsula Campaign which was undermined by Washington politics and lack of support. The book states

"....the half defeat on the Peninsula.... spelled the end of the conciliatory" strategy. For this campaign to succeed, joint operations were mandatory; and the author observes that in the early stages of the war, the inability of Federal armies to cooperate in joint operations contrasted sharply with the military situation Grant inherited in 1864.

The review of civilian leaders alarm regarding Washington's safety is noteworthy. Extraordinary concerns for the capital's safety contrasted with months of endless nagging McClellan to assume the offensive. However the troops needed for an offensive had to come from those providing the capital's defense. Both McClellan and Grant faced the problem of Washington's safety with McClellan trying to comply and Grant often giving only limited support. The book concludes "McClellan's Peninsula campaign, the first major Federal offensive in East, experienced problems uniquely its own, not the least....was the administration's failure to sustain plans they had.... agreed to support." During the first two war years, many Northerners believed the Confederates would be quickly defeated perhaps in one major campaign. When McClellan assumed command in 1861, he inherited an untrained and disorganized army. The author notes that McClellan implemented schools of instruction and all volunteers were given basic training directed by an experienced officer. In addition, he recognized the deficit in trained officers (several were political hacks) and arranged effective training. The book frequently notes, that the training and organizing of the army was a major contribution. Considering, the sheer folly of his predecessor's taking an unprepared army to defeat at the First Bull Run, McClellan's unwillingness to assume the offensive in 1861 with an untrained army was prudent and not excessive caution. Unfortunately, in 1862, politics and lack of support doomed his Peninsula campaign.

Rowland writes "....little attention is paid to the context in which McClellan dealt with the difficulties that faced the Federal army in the first fifteen months of the war. ....his early tenure deprived him of the advantage of leading mature and seasoned civilian soldiers, adapted to the demands of a new age of warfare...." As one historian noted, McClellan "suffered the frictions and frustrations of being first." The text notes that Sherman observed that Napoleon took three years to build an army and "....here it is expected in ninety days..." The author notes the irony that McClellan was relieved of command when "He had effectively divided Lee's army into widely separated halves, intending to drive between them. The celerity of those moves alarmed Lee...." This could have been a critical blow.

The text continues that McClellan might have been forgiven a multiple of failures had he kept his eye on the military objective, the destruction of the Army of Northern Virginia. However, McClellan's strategy to capture Richmond was not without merit as Richmond was a critical manufacturing, transportation and financial center. The Tredegar Iron Works alone justified the capture of Richmond. Richmond's fall during the first two war years would have been devastating to the Confederacy. Regarding Antietam, Rowland correctly notes that regardless of McClellan's shortcomings, Antietam was a Union victory. McClellan had stopped Lee from delivering a demoralizing blow on northern soil.

The book concludes, "McClellan's strategy, though reflective of the unrealistic war aims of the years 1861-62,was cogent, reasoned, and consistent with conventional military wisdom.... McClellan can scarcely be elevated to the ranks of the great captains of war, but he was hardly the worst that the conflict dragged into the center stage."

The book is somewhat repetitious and devotes too much space to comparing McClellan's faults with similar faults of Grant and Sherman. However, the book is worth reading for its discussion of Union military and political strategy during the first two years of the Civil War.

Were character flaws "peculiar to McClellan"?.......1999-04-17

Thomas J. Rowland set out to prove that, although George McClellan was not a great general, neither was he as bad as so many Civil War historians and writers have depicted him. I believe that he has succeeded. Having read Stephen Sears' classic biography on "Mac", I was certain that the definitive McClellan verdict was a fait accompli. How wrong I was! Historians T. Harry Williams, Kenneth P. Williams, and Bruce Catton were also cited for a less than even-handed assessment of McClellan. Still, one must add that Rowland did not maliciously criticize the intent of these historians. He merely pointed out that they needlessly made Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman--men who remain giants without anyone's help--larger than they should be, at McClellan's expense. After examining their records during the first two years of the war, each of these men showed less than a superlative level of performance, contrary to popular assumption. I think that Rowland's book is one of best buys I have ever made. A more superbly-written, well-argued, and illuminating book on George McClellan and his impact on the Civil War and its interpretation would be hard to find. It's great. Buy it!

Were character flaws "peculiar to McClellan"?.......1999-04-17

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Great insight on three significant generals

McClellan, Sherman, and Grant
T. Harry Williams
Manufacturer: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0929587707

Book Description

How the temperaments and moral courage of the three great Union generals affected their military leadership--explored with intelligence and wit by one of our most distinguished historians of the Civil War.

Customer Reviews:

Great insight on three significant generals.......2004-02-22

This short book is really three separate essays about three of the North's most controversial generals. They seem to be arranged in the author's estimation of them, with McClellan being the poorest general and Grant the best. The essays are insightful, and Williams argues some interesting points that differ from what most historians believe, especially in the case of Sherman and McClellan. Throughout it all, he seems to remain, for the most part, fair, neither condemning nor fully praising any of the three. I don't personally agree with his argument that the primary objective in war should be destroying the enemy's army, and thus would rank Sherman higher than Grant, but I do think he makes an interesting point. If this book was documented (that is, if Williams showed where he got his information), it would be a lot better, and a lot more scholarly, but as it stands it is nevertheless an interesting argument on three of the North's most important generals.

Life On The Circuit With Lincoln: With Sketches Of Generals Grant, Sherman And McClellan, Judge Davis, Leonard Swett And Other Contemporaries

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Life On The Circuit With Lincoln: With Sketches Of Generals Grant, Sherman And McClellan, Judge Davis, Leonard Swett And Other Contemporaries
Henry C. Whitney
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1432542931

Book Description

This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.

George B. McClellan and Civil War History: In the Shadow of Grant and Sherman.: An article from: Journal of Southern History

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George B. McClellan and Civil War History: In the Shadow of Grant and Sherman.: An article from: Journal of Southern History
Steven E. Woodworth
Manufacturer: Southern Historical Association
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B0008HDAAM
Release Date: 2005-07-28

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of Southern History, published by Southern Historical Association on August 1, 2000. The length of the article is 500 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: George B. McClellan and Civil War History: In the Shadow of Grant and Sherman.
Author: Steven E. Woodworth
Publication: Journal of Southern History (Refereed)
Date: August 1, 2000
Publisher: Southern Historical Association
Volume: 66 Issue: 3 Page: 648

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Amazon.com

The competition for customers today is fiercer than ever. With products and services only a mouse click away, customers have more choice than ever before, and the rules that govern customer loyalty have changed a great deal. While most CEOs will brag about how customer-centric their companies are, in reality many are at a loss for identifying and attracting a loyal and profitable customer base. In The One to One Fieldbook, authors Don Peppers, Martha Rogers, and Bob Dorf show how to implement a customer-relationship program based on one-to-one marketing, a notion they championed in their previous books, Enterprise One to One and One to One Future.

One-to-one marketing, write the authors, is "based on the simple idea of treating different customers differently." The book begins by outlining four steps for implementing a one-to-one marketing program, then delves into a variety of subjects, from building the infrastructure necessary to supporting a one-to-one enterprise to evaluating and managing channel partners. This is a useful and practical how-to guide, full of checklists and ideas for getting any company on track with one-to-one marketing. --Harry C. Edwards

Book Description

A practical guide to implementing the one-to-one marketing principles that Don Peppers and Martha Rogers have made famous throughout corporate America in their bestselling books The One to One Future and Enterprise One to One.

Every day, all around the world, managers worry about the declining loyalty of their customers. Customers are being wooed ever more feverishly by competitors offering better prices, better deals--a process that has dramatically accelerated with the growth of the Internet. As information about customers becomes more plentiful and detailed, and as customers themselves become more interactive with the companies they buy from, business success hinges increasingly on creating long-term, profitable, "one-to-one" customer relationships.

One-to-one marketing is nothing short of a revolution. Dell, Cisco, FedEx, Owens Corning, American Express, Amazon.com, Hewlett-Packard, and BellSouth, among others, have built their success on enhancing customer knowledge and interaction.

Yet managers and executives today find themselves wrestling with the issue of how to become a part of this revolution.

That's why one-to-one marketing pioneers Don Peppers, Martha Rogers, and Bob Dorf wrote this book.

The One to One Fieldbook is the first hands-on manual for implementing customer relationship management programs, featuring step-by-step guidance on how to initiate, evaluate, and upgrade one-to-one initiatives.

Among the topics covered in the book: how to determine whether you're ready to undertake a one-to-one program, how to evaluate what different customers are worth to your business, and how to customize your products or services. It includes chapters on gathering customer information, on how to measure results, on how to use the power of the World Wide Web--and much more. Each chapter features checklists of things to do, activities to enhance one-to-one skills, and questionnaires to evaluate your progress.

A complete toolkit for companies implementing customer relationship programs, The One to One Fieldbook will help you identify your best customers, keep them longer, and grow them bigger--so that you can compete more successfully in the Interactive Age.

Customer Reviews:

A radical approach to marketing- worth considering.......2006-03-04

The authors of this book advise their readers to throw out the book on mass marketing because customers today want to be treated like individuals. In order for a company to achieve this, the authors present a concept known as one-to-one marketing. This book is offered as the complete toolkit for implementing a one to one marketing program.

Some of the key steps in this program include:

· Identifying customers and collect as much information as possible
· Differentiate customer needs
· Interacting and customizing is critical, specifically to learn the needs of the most valuable customers.
· Change your infrastructure and be prepared to start small and expand gradually.
· Develop a marketing database because the more customer information available, the more employees will want access to that information.
· Marketing communications are important. A company must learn to build technology and personality into the company's call center.
· Automate the sales system.
· Factor channel partners into the company's one-to-one game plan.

This one-to-one marketing program can not be implemented alone. The authors foresee resistance to this program but offer some keen advice on how to deal with resistance and overcome obstacles. As the authors see it, success will take time as the one-to-one relationships build. They argue the time to build is now.

Highly Recommended!.......2002-09-11

All too often, the customer gets lost within the intricacies of customer relationship management. Don Peppers and Martha Rogers bring the customer back into the equation in this fieldbook designed to help companies implement their one-to-one marketing strategies. The book addresses the very questions that bring companies to CRM in the first place: How do I know who my best customers are? How can I customize my service for my best customers? How do I get my customers to stay loyal? For its clearheaded answers to these difficult questions, we from getAbstract recommend this book to all readers

How to Treat Different Customers Differently.......2002-09-07

What a fantastic book for every marketing professional to read. The authors have invested a lot of time and effort to make this book very informative and practical. It deals with the real business world and not some theoritical formula that works only in closed conditions. There are many examples of successes as well as failures of companies that have switched over to the 1 to 1 Marketing concept.
The book consists of 15 chapters to help one build the system of 1to1 marketing. The main highlights for me in this book were the following:
1.) Learning to treat different customers differently, separating them into three catagories
Most valuable Customer (MVC)
Most Growth Customer (MGC)
Below Zero (BZ)
and concentrating most of your companies effort and budget on the MVC and MGC clients.
2.)Gathering detailed information about the most profitable clients and maintaing a data bank to help all areas and product line to interact with the client on a profitable basis.
3.)Generating feed-back and interacting with the client based on the feed-back. Junking the typical model of customer help lines that do more damage than good for a company.
4.) Getting high-level management participating and to be prepared for the costs incurred when implementing the 1to1 marketing concept for the company.
One of my own important experiences is that management conceives the idea without asking the advice and input from the sales force. This can be disastrous for the 1to1 Marketing concept. Everybody and I mean everybody has to informed of why they are preforming a certain task and what effect it has on the entire company. Tell your employess what you are doing from the beginning, if you wish to avoid the pitfalls of internal conflicts and bickering.
At the end of each chapter there is a summary and a check list of items that should be done in order to implement the points discussed in the respective chapter. Don't forget... all companies are different and one will have to figure out which strategy to pursue for his or her industry.
This excllent book will definitely help your profits SKYROCKET to the moon. Do it before your competitor does.

Good for the Mom and Pop outfit - not Fortune 500.......2001-12-31

The entire "one-to-one" concept is only feasible for small companies. Peppers and Rogers Group gives examples of "florists sending reminders of your mother's birthday" and "dry cleaners keeping your extra buttons" and so forth to retain customers (and eventually charge more for their services, becuase the customer is "locked in"), but these concepts don't translate to Fortune 500 companies. Ford Motor Company (one of PRG's clients) recently laid off 5,000 executives. You know their CRM campaign was out the door along with rented plants and weekly bagel breakfasts...see how many companies PRG gloated about in the past (Kozmo.com, mykidsbenefit, Mobshop, etc. etc.) are out of business. Plus PRG laid off a bunch of people of their own recently. Peppers and Rogers Group is definitely a fair weather friend to these large firms...

Practical handbook for managing customer relationships.......2001-12-11

The authors call it a "book of lists" and that is how I use it - a valuable series of checklists for managing customer relationships better. Chapter two is called "Quickstart" and it has some compelling questions, example: find the customers who have complained about your product or service, more than once in the last year and babysit their orders, call them and check up on your progress". Just imagine that you were that customer and how much you'd appreciate that approach. For another book with some good checklists try Seth Godin's "Permission marketing"

Chapters 4, 5 and 6 cover differentiating customers by value, interacting with them and customising. The "Rules of Engagement with Customers" on page 98 are interesting. These chapters stongly send you in the direction of different treatment for different customers. For another book with some new examples of best practice, take a look at Cram's "Customers that Count"

Finally I recommend the section in chapter 11 on targeting sales force compensation and commission to retention of valuable customers. This is good practice in putting company strategies into effect. If this is of interest, also look at Burnett's "Handbook of Key Customer Relationship managment"

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The One to One Fieldbook: The Complete Toolkit for Implementing a 1To1 Marketing Program
Don; Rogers, Martha; Dorf, Bob Peppers
Manufacturer: Bantam Dell Pub Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NY87V2

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