Summer may be winding down, but I encourage you to take advantage of the quiet days you may have left and check out, or re-read, some of these great books. The following resources have helped grow me in my professional journey, and have afforded me the opportunity to garner some nuggets of wisdom and insight on critical topics and disciplines. We should never be too busy to read — it is how passion is reignited and new ideas are born. The books below are beneficial for all positions, from coordinator to president.
Selling 101 is an exerpt from “Ziglar on Selling” and provides a concise snapshot of the fundamentals of selling. Moreover, it’s about selling with integrity by putting your customer’s interests above your own in order to achieve a true win/win. If you are new to sales or a seasoned pro, pause for a moment in your daily chase to revisit the tenets of selling and selling well.
2) Differentiate or Die (Jack Trout)
This book highlights the importance of “differentiation” not only in marketing messaging, but through the entire sales cycle. This is one of my favorite business books because Trout lays out why it is pointless to go-to-market with a product or service hoping the buyer will uncover its greatness. More importantly, marketing and sales is not only about effectively communicating to your target buying audiences what your product or service can do, but why it is different and why that matters to them.
3) The Goal (Eliyahu M. Goldratt)
It’s truly not a business book, but a novel. When I was leading solutions marketing at i2 back in the late 1990s, this was “orientation reading” for every employee. Jonah helps Alex fight to save his plant and the jobs of hundreds of his co-workers by embracing the underlying principles of the Theory of Constraints (TOC). More than a supply chain book, this is a fast-paced, must-read for managers across all industries about how to balance the most important factors in the pursuit of operational excellence.
Which book(s) would you add to the list?