“Sales Management that works – how to sell in a world that never stops changing” is a book by the Harvard Business School lecturer, Frank V. Cespedes.  In it he takes a modern look at sales and sales leadership covering the subject areas; People, Process, Pricing, Partners and Productivity.

Most sales books take a “it is so, because I say so” approach to the way they are written and you end up reading an opinion and not fact.  Frank takes a different approach which is, here is the research / data, this is the conclusion, based on data and here is a real-life case study to back this up.

Great advice around, recruiting sales people, training sales people, sales models, compensation and incentives, pricing and building a channel / partner model.

Highly recommended.  

You can play when your work is done ….

Humans have a natural instinct to play, many of us remember when as children we played, even as adults we probably remember our time out of work more than our time in it

In this book, Gary Ware argues that we can be more productive, more creative, more collaborative, and foster a deeper connection with our colleagues through play

Maybe it’s time to shift our perspective away from the belief that play is the opposite of productivity, after all, storytelling is now accepted as a way to communicate, surely it would be better if we played at work?

Gary talks about seeing your work as a proving ground into a playground, and in the book, you learn exercises and activities to facilitate with your team that will prime them to do their best work

You can also get more on the book with Gary and my conversation on my #TimTalk podcast, link here

If you are in marketing, then you should read this book.  Nancy brings together 25 principles which you can use in your marketing to help create desire in your prospects and customers.

For example, what does it mean that people make decisions both emotionally and rationally?  What on earth is loss aversion and the endowment effect? How can you create urgency? Reciprocity, etc

The book is easy to read and Nancy backs up the principles with data and case studies to really bring the points alive.  This is now one of my “must read” recommendations to people who are in marketing. 

Yet another book on digital transformation?

The books on digital transformation I've read, tend to fall into two camps, the book that tells you that you need to digitally transform and a definition of digital transformation

Or books, that describe different components of digital transformation, such as virtual reality artificial intelligence augmented reality digital twins etc

So why is this book different? 

In this book by Michael Gale and Chris Aarons actually give a practical to approach to what digital transformation is all about

Better than that, they also have figured out that digital transformation is not a new cloud computing system, but digital transformation is about your people

How as a business are you going to give digital literacy to your employees and how are you going to strip out cost and gain efficiencies from the benefits that digital gives us?

The best book on digital transformation I've read for a long time

As a person who wants to be the “best person” I can be I recently read Simon Alexander Ong’s book “energize” which is a great book to understand simple strategies to be the most energetic you can and to use that energy wisely.  Working smarter, not faster.

This book “Atomic habits” by James Clear is a perfect book end to Simon’s book offering straight forward advice on creating “good” habits, and getting rid of “bad” habits. This dovetails nicely into Simon’s book.

In terms of good habits, you need to “make it obvious”, “make it attractive”, “make it easy”, “make it satisfying”. And in terms of “bad habits”, the strategy for getting rid of them is “make it invisible”, make it “unattractive”, “make it difficult” and “make it unsatisfying”.  Highly recommend and I’m sure it’s one of those books I’m going to read several times. 

Tom Stanfill for one, isn't a "flat earth" sales author who lives in the past, but recognises that the "modern buyer" exists and works in companies right across the world, which leads to

The $56 million question:

"How do we pro-actively contact the modern buyer and sell them something?"

In this book, Tom, walks us through a number of concepts, not based on myths, machoism and the way the world worked 30 years ago but based on common sense, psychology and the way the world works today

In converting the unresponsive prospect, Tom discusses

- Why traditional selling doesn’t work

- How to “drop the rope”

- Why you need to “reset your compass

- Why you need to understand RAS (reticular activating system)

- Why you need to “take the trip”

- Why you need to “set the stage”

If you are in sales or just starting out in sales and want to understand how to sell in the modern world, this is for you.

In her book “Now What – A survivor’s guide for thriving through mergers and acquisitions” Jennifer Fondrevay talks about the fact that M&A happen, you can be going along nicely in your career and then you get hit with the change and upheaval that M&A provides. So what will you do?

She then shares the 8 stages of grief that people go through from denial to acceptance and the stages in between

She then explains the post M&A characters you will come across

1.    The former rock star

2.    The great unifier

3.    The know it-all

4.    The know nothing

5.    The black widow

6.    The missing-in-action

7.    The specialist

8.    The opportunist

9.    The ostrich

10.    The dominatrix

By understanding this, you are more likely going to, not only survive, but thrive.

Want to start a culture of innovation in your business, this is a great place to start.

Dan, explains the business case why you need a culture of innovation and then takes you on a journey as to how you can build out one, for example,

1.    The importance of having a culture of innovation

2.    Why in some cases you need to re-think your business model

3.    How you create a culture of creativity

4.    Why a growth mindset is key

5.    Why having leadership support is critical

The book is easy to read and not bogged down in jargon. 

"Fusion" by Denise Lee Yohn is a gem of a book.  Denise has spotted the need in business to have a great brand and have a great culture, but that isn’t new.  What Denise as spotted in this digital age is that we need to fuse brand and culture, hence the name of the book Fusion.

Denise has also spotted a number of other modern attributes, that so many businesses seem to forget.

Today in business, we can all spot a BS mission statement from a mile off, employees today also want to have a higher purpose.  Your customers too can spot BS a mile away, business today all market by saying “buy my product because we are great”, and of course as consumers we just ignore it.

To have an authentic brand, you have to let your employees free to be empowered and authentic on social media.  Not sending out brochures and brochureware.

Denise makes some great suggestions and pointers for business in how to regain their place as a trusted, employee and customer centric brand.

Dan Hill understands how the world has shifted with the advent of the internet, mobile and social media.  How, the fact we are all empowered with a mobile phone as buyers, job hunters and investors we can go on-line and check businesses out and we can make decisions all without other people or companies knowing we are doing it.

In this book, we walk through what has changed, how that impacts brands, why that has meant a decline in the old ways of work such as advertising, email marketing, cold calling etc. Plus, how we can go about winning strategies by understanding customer experience, understanding how work and culture has changed and the impact of social media.

The chapter has a little quiz to test your understanding.

The book also has a QR code which gives you access to 9 hours of audio files to listen to.

Those were the ten books I now want to highlight my books...

This is the second edition of the runaway bestseller "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers".  The original book was written in 2015 and published in 2016, but so much has changed, that I've created a second edition.

So what's different?  I've fully updated the text, I've added an additional 30%, I've also ask practitioners from companies that are using social and digital practically.  This is no future state, social is impacting you right now and your business must be reacting now to this change.

There is a forward by Mark Schaefer, with contributions from Cyberhawk, Telstra, Ringcentral Namos Consulting, Mercer, Ericsson, etc, etc.

The book is designed to be highly practical as as a CEO said of the first edition, "it's the first time I've been able to connect use of social media with revenue creation".

The first edition had 187 pages, this second edition has 306 pages. 

In my second book "Smarketing - How to achieve competitive advantage through blended sales and marketing", we walk you through how to merge and or get sales and marketing to work together.

If I was writing it today, we would probably call it RevOps (Revenue operations) as it meets the same objective of RevOps, which is to have a single revenue creation strategy, objectives and tactics.