Maybe my mother was wrong?
But she couldn’t be! I mean she always said that everyone liked me!
Have I been living under the false premise of a mother’s biased and blinded love?
Oh well . . . at least the Easter bunny is still real . . . right?
Okay, so what is this all about?
As you already know, Kelly Barner and I teamed-up to write what we believed was a good (alright great) book.
All of the early reviews were solid, with genuinely positive feedback from everyone who had read our book.
Then, on March 4th, the following review appeared on our Amazon page.
You will have to click on the image to zoom in to read it in full, but basically the reader wrote; I do not recommend this book at all. Seems to go on and on about something that they could have covered in a single chapter. Missed opportunity to highlight Coupa positively and instead only focuses on negative aspects based on women’s profiles at the company.
While Kelly was a little concerned with receiving our first negative review – remember she is the nice one – I, on the other hand, loved it. Okay, she loves it a little bit too, but is more reserved than I am.
What is important to remember is that we were never seeking consensus from readers. We wanted to stimulate meaningful debate, and yes, stir things up a little.
While we will leave the infomercial type coverage to the Gartners and similarly inclined bloggers i.e. our missed opportunity to highlight Coupa positively, it is the reference to the women’s profiles that is most interesting to us. By the way, the offending text appeared on page 18 of the book – now you can jump to that page right off the bat.
So why is this so interesting?
Because despite reading the remaining 283 pages, this section left such an impression on the reader so as to warrant its inclusion in the review. This is exactly what we were going for.
We of course immediately shared this review on Twitter, prompting another reader to Tweet the following comments:
By the way Bertrand – who does like our book – sent us the Seth Godin purple cow picture that I featured in today’s post. Thank you, Bertrand!
All this being said, similar to the sentiment that there is no such think as bad publicity, I also believe that all reviews – good or not so good – are great, because it means our writing prompted someone to take the time to honestly express their feelings.
In the meantime, and for the sake of ensuring that you can indeed tell a book by its cover, we have submitted the following new cover design to our publisher. Based on the reviewer’s comments, we feel that it might best align with their perception of what our book is about.
PS . . . we have also added a new hashtag for the book #procurementromance
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Procurement Insights 
Buyers Meeting Point (@BuyersMeetPoint)
March 7, 2016
You know, the funny thing about that feedback is that I never expected everyone to like Procurement at a Crossroads. No rational person writing a book with Jon Hansen would hold onto that illusion for long. But given the amount effort that went into writing a book that Jon and I ardently believe gives people a reason to think about the current position and future trajectory of procurement, I expected deeper objections.
And poor Coupa – that I don’t believe had anything to do with this – why drag them into this? With all of the controversial ideas we’ve included in the book, the main reason this person gave us one star is because we missed an opportunity to wax poetic about Coupa? We’ll be sure to include a sonnet in our next book. If you don’t believe that there are edgy sections of the book, just ask Jon about how he narrowly escaped that lynch mob at the eVA Procurement conference last fall….
No to be denied some legitimate objections, here are a few conversation starters…
“These two upstarts/whippersnappers/jokers (your choice) don’t show proper respect or deference to the traditional ‘powers that be’ within the field of procurement.”
“How dare you suggest that to be successful in procurement we need to learn to SELL?!?!? That is as disgusting as today’s special in the office cafeteria.”
“Who included the corny joke about the pigs and the chickens and their relative commitment to breakfast? Speaking of which, does anyone want to go for pancakes?”
Discuss… please. And if you want to bring forward your objections, you know where to find us. We’re not afraid of healthy debate.
piblogger
March 7, 2016
All excellent points Kelly . . . but let’s not forget about the suggestively clad women of Coupa. We do after all have a new cover – which I happen to like better than the original.
Also, let’s not forget the 38 comments that were generated by the post upon which this apparently contentious part of the chapter was based.
I also like your waxing poetic reference. Although – and we may never know the real truth here – I am not entirely convinced that Coupa was totally unaware of the review. I mean, is this person simply a Coupa groupie? We talked about countless companies in the book, why did they single out Coupa?
piblogger
April 29, 2016
Here is an interesting after note . . . the person who made the comment criticizing the book’s lack of positive coverage on Coupa took it down . . . it’s gone! Why?
elsie
June 28, 2017
The new cover design speaks volumes!