The Phone Book by Zarro and Blum

Title: The Phone Book: Breakthrough Neurolinguistic Phone Skills for Profit and Enlightenment
Author: Richard A. Zarro and Peter Blum
Format: book
Source: http://www.soundsforhealing.com/Products.html#phonebook or Amazon (link below)
Price: varies
Rating: Excellent



When I requested that author Peter Blum send a copy of his 1989 classic The Phone Book for review, he graciously agreed, but added a caveat, which I will paraphrase: The book was written 22 years ago, with an intent "to counterbalance the overly wordy, academic, and intellectualized works that were out at that time explaining NLP." The author, looking back at it, explains that some parts strike him as childish and possibly condescending, and he adds, a bit apologetically, that he hopes he has learned some humility since then.

Well, primed as I was to read a book I wouldn't like, I have to say that I detected none of that condescension or arrogance. It just goes to show that even a long-time NLPer like Blum is still his own worst critic, drawing up a map that is far more dire than the actual territory. There's a lesson in that for all of us, I think.

Anyway, on to the review:

Cleverly titled, The Phone Book is written in the form of a novel, wisely employing the Ericksonian technique of encapsulating information in a narrative format. Our hero, Bob O'Ryan, is a former liberal arts major turned struggling salesman who simply detests cold calling and virtually any other use of the telephone. By a stroke of luck, Bob meets John Deltone, a highly capable salesman and communication expert who takes Bob under his wing, helping him re-discover the magic of the telephone.

Admittedly, it's not the Great American Novel, but it is engaging enough to avoid the trap of being dry and academic. More importantly, it cuts to the quick, briefly but effectively teaching a number of basic NLP concepts: reframing, the meta model, submodalities, and anchoring peak performance, to name a few. One particularly good part of the book describes the three primary representational systems in catchy terms: the eye-phoner, the ear-phoner, and the feel-phoner. Each one even comes with a caricature, for the visual learners—um, I mean, eye-phoners—in the readership.

During a visit with an extremely Ericksonian hypnotist, the main character even learns to look at the phone as a metaphor for our spiritual connection to the Divine, thus tying sales and spirituality together in a neat package. (As an aside, I want to thank the authors for helping re-frame hypnosis in the public eye.)

Of course, one problem with presenting information in a narrative format is that it can be difficult to review, but the authors cleverly took that into account: Protagonist Bob O'Ryan keeps a set of "phone notes" that are conveniently shared at the end of each chapter. I find that placing the book near my toilet for a quick glance through a few phone notes is a great way to internalize the information.

(By the way, readers should know that mentioning that I keep a book in my bathroom is possibly the highest praise I can give it.)

Is there anything to complain about in The Phone Book? Perhaps it's a bit dated, considering how much communication technology, the book's central metaphor, has changed over the last 22 years. That said, the basic ideas still apply even with today's technology. I found myself using them to great effect in a business email just yesterday.

While The Phone Book may not contain much that is new to someone thoroughly steeped in NLP, it is definitely a work I would recommend to anyone new to the subject, and especially anyone going into sales. In fact, I did recommend it to my nephew for just that purpose.

Many thanks to my online friend Michael Ellner for recommending The Phone Book to me.