Author: Michael Hageloh

Publisher: Post Hill Press

ISBN: 9781642931709

Every so often I pick up a business book focusing on sales' techniques that has a unique approach such as Michael Hageloh's Live From Cupertino: How Apple Used Words, Music, and Performance to Built the World's Best Sales Machine

For a good part of his youth, Hageloh was a musician who played every kind of gig imaginable. In 1988 he noticed a classified ad in The Wall Street Journal from Apple Computer Inc indicating that they were searching for a Systems Engineer who knew a beta product called Pro Tools and could talk about computers. Apple hired Hageloh, and he ended up as being the tech support for two account executives in Higher Education. 

In Live From Cupertino Hageloh shows how, as a salesperson for Apple, he transferred and adapted his skills and education as a musician to sales. And from 1988 to 2010, he generated nearly one billion dollars in revenue for Apple. 

For most of his employment years, he was part of the company's Higher Education sales, the section of the company's business that kept it alive during its darkest years. His job was the convince colleges and universities all over the country that Apple products would take their students into the twenty-first century. 

As mentioned in the opening pages of the book, the principal focus of the book is to share Apple's sales story that has never been revealed before. It is to walk the readers behind the scenes of the company and show how they were able to resuscitate itself from near-death into the successful business enterprise it is today. In one word, as Hageloh states, “it was music.”

He further points out that it was the employees who were musicians that enabled the iPod and iTunes to keep the company afloat when they were facing bankruptcy. They were musicians, performers, composers, producers, creative rebels, and entertainers. Hageloh quotes Umair Haque from the Harvard Business Review, who stated that the company was “more like a band.” It is the love and passion for music that was the driving force of the sales' team because, as Hageloh states, it was more like the team was performing live.

The two hundred and sixty- nine-page book is loaded with insightful stories recounted in a straightforward style. It is not a handbook on how a successful company has earned millions of dollars but rather a revealing look at how music had been incorporated into its culture. Each chapter reflects the musical properties that have made Apple sales so extraordinary. These include rehearsal, storytelling, listening, words, rhythm, improvisation, soul, orchestration, and magic. Within each chapter, Hageloh explains in clear and uncomplicated language how each of these aspects of musical expressions came to fruition in Apple's sales and cultures. Also, he deconstructs these elements in a way that readers can understand how to find music in their own sales process and or organizational culture. 

The story and success of Hageloh's experience with Apple are inspirational and educational and demonstrates how the adaptation of the principles of music can provide the fuel that powers business sales.