Technology and Business Book Reviews

Running Lean

Part of the LEAN series which started with The Lean Start-up. This is the workbook for the The Lean Start-up and more. Lean development rose out of the AGILE camp and remains a major POV for the...

Absolutely spot on book. I have lived through just about everything Eric talks about in this book. Especially when he comes to companies that fail. I wish I had this book fifteen years ago. However...

The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership

The two authors are very experienced in the Toyota Way and how it applies to American workers. The effectiveness of Toyota’s responses to whatever comes its way is amazing – and the...

The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty

Another terrific book. His studies about what and why people do what they do are really good. This one is has strong examples that we will all recognize. For any of us, dishonesty is a slippery slope...

Contextual Pricing

New, exciting , easy to read and useful. This is a resource for anyone working with pricing in any industry. I have been working with value pricing for a year now and was wondering about a...

Pricing Strategies

Written as a business school textbook, this is a very useful reference book for all. The dive is deep but the author takes good care of you as he guides you through quite a comprehensive look at all...

How to Use Google+ Business Pages

A short concise why and how to set up Google+ business pages. The strongest part of this free Kindle ebook is the checklist at the end. It is comprehensive and works. An easy and very short (20 minute...

Building a Winning Sales Force - Powerful Strategies for Driving High Performance

I confess I missed this book and the others put out by ZS Associates. The website is a good resource, but they do not blog so their online profile is low to invisible. Too bad because the work...

High-Profit Selling

This a core book for your sales library on selling value and not discounting on price. But that’s not all this book is, it is chock full of great sales strategies and the tactics to pull...

Inside Apple

Unlike the recent Steve Jobs bio, this is a fact filled book on the company and the players (as well as Steve Jobs) that should be on every Apple shareholder and traders reading list. The author is a...

How to Say It

This is a desktop book that every salesman and sales manager needs to have. It is extremely clear, concise and well written. Each chapter is a treasure trove of useful nuggets. He covers the bases:...

What Great Salespeople Do

Michael Bosworth, the writer of Customer Centric Selling and Solution Selling, has written a game changing book for sales training. His ideas changed when after decades of sales training (SPSS,...

The Now Revolution

This book has been sitting waiting for me to get to it and I am glad I finally did. It is a mix of an analysis of what the world is like now plus some serious do it now tips. Some key takeaways...

Sell Now - Adaptive Strategies for Today’s Marketplace

This is a free Kindle book available from Amazon. I liked it. It covers the basics for sales efficiency as well as giving young and old reps something to work with. This is a quick but very useful...

The End of Business as Usual

This is the epitome of a very current marketing academic book that is eminently practical. This does not make it an easy read because Brian is concise and direct in his analysis and expects the reader...

The Management Mythbuster

How can such an absolutely true book be so funny? From the Introduction with such titles as Strategic Plans are of Little Use in Times of great Uncertainty and Volatility through to the end with...

Zero-Time Selling

This short (168 pp) tightly written book punches way above its weight class. The 10 steps are simple, obvious and elegant. It relates very well to changes we are seeing in the marketplace, changes...

Pricing and Profitability Management

I chatted to Michael Simonetto a few months back while doing pricing strategy research. He sent along this recent Deloitte‘s publication and I am very glad he did. My research was already...

Value-Added Selling

This is the complete sales book for anyone who wants to break out of the zero sum game of selling on price. Great point in the book - when asked, a majority of B2B customers see that 25% of the value...

Value-based Pricing

This is one of the best texts on this topic I have run up against so far. First, the descriptions of pricing and how it is arrived at are succinct, clear and bang on the money. Second, this is the...

Accelerate the sale

This is the right stuff for selling. Well organized, very readable, with good sidebars from in the field. This is a short pithy collection of best practices in sales at every stage of your development...

Social Media Analytics

This is not a trivial book. It cuts right through the hype and shows the marketing professional how to extract metrics to demonstrate the usefulness of social media. It is chock full of current tools...

The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success

This is a true how to do book, with enough why attached that the reader can understand the power of this tool. A comment I picked up on was: ignoring LinkedIn now is like 10 years ago ignoring email....

Zarella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness

This is a short but useful compendium of 'stuff that works’ for driving online engagement using social media. It was a free Kindle book, sponsored by Hubspot and Mailchimp. For inbound marketers...

Becoming an Exceptional Executive Coach

A book for those concerned with leadership and management change. This is important as the largest weakness in companies is execution. The book uses numerous examples to explain concepts, plus...

Building Business Value

As part of my ongoing pricing research I was lead to this book. It does exactly what it says it does. In a well thought out style the author leads you through the internal and external drivers that...

Social Media Sales Revolution

Brand spanking new from McGraw Hill and very current. I am researching resources for a Social Media for Sales course we are presenting this fall. This one is a good fit. The author has a great line at...

How to Sell at Margins Higher Than Your Competitors

This is a small but detailed book and one I recommend to any sales manager charged with getting margins up. A bonus with the book is a complete addenda that lists all the ways professional buyers will...

Killing Giants

The author has put down 33 first hand stories (E.g. Vibram barefoot runners, Dunking Donuts taste test, Jetblue) organized under ten different strategies. This is a book that should be in hands of...

Why China Will Never Rule The World

Troy contacted me to look at his book. He warned me that it was controversial and Amazon would publish it in Sept. I enjoy a good travelogue like this one. He is a Canadian history teacher who taught...

Strengths Based Selling

A follow-up to Discover Your Sales Strengths. This book contains more detail on applying your strengths to various sales opportunities as well as guides for sales management. Again it it is...

Pricing with Confidence

This is a book for the practitioner, whether it is CEO, CFO, VP Sales/marketing. They do a very good job with strategy: 1. set pricing and offerings 2. establish list prices and base agenda...

Pricing for Profit

This is a very useful book and it may have been the basis for quotes I have found in other later books. It is an easy to read combination of strategy and tactics with good examples. Core to his...

Six Steps to Creating a Profit

I picked this book up for my research on pricing. It seemed to be aligned with that topic. However this is not totally the case. What the book is is a small handbook on getting...

How to Market to People Not Like You

Right out of the gate Kelly makes a statement I really know is true all about the reduced power of demographic marketing. She goes on: The difference between a 30 yr old unmarried career gal and a 30...

Launch

Wow. So much packed into a reasonable read. 1. How Stelzner built and drove to incredible success two completely different web businesses. White papers (http://www.stelzner.com/copy-HowTo-whitepapers...

Wired and Dangerous

Bell & Patterson have written several great books on customer service. This one does not disappoint. They have brought their core beliefs right up to date with the Internet customer. The customer...

Conversations for Change

A profound book. It is one not to rush through but to savour. I would read a bit, think about a life experience that it brought to mind, analyze lessons learned (or not), and then read some more. As a...

Voice of the Customer Marketing

This is a good complement to companies who wish to use buyers’ language and buyer behaviors to drive their own growth in content marketing. Roman is very experienced in Voice Of the Customer ...

Clout

A very powerful and immediately useful book for those of us recognizing the impact of content marketing. Jones not only gives you what you need to do, but also an in-depth discussion (and application)...

No BS Price Strategy

These two are pure American salesmen. Nobody does it better. There are four authors of the book and they tag team from chapter to chapter adding a different point of view, which makes the overall...

Slow Down Sell Faster

I like Amacom, they put out great business books. This is a completely revised/updated edition of Getting Into Your Customer's Head (1996) which was a good book already. Today’s focus of...

Consultative Selling - 8th Ed

I first read Mack Hanan many years ago and have used his approach ever since. I was delighted to receive his latest book from Amacom. As part of my ongoing research into value pricing I was interested...

What the Dog Saw and other adventures

I have finally read all of Gladwell’s books and I remain a fan. These are a far-reaching collection of New Yorker articles written as ever in his quixotic style. I was reading the one that...

The Micro-Script Rules

With our current push into Content Marketing (i.e. inbound marketing) this book is a terrific resource. No matter if its writing the killer tweet, top notch Google summary, headline or tagline;...

Rethinking the Sales Cycle

This book has been out awhile, but it is light years ahead of any sales book on the market today. The treatise is, buyers have aken full control of the buying cycle through becoming much more aware of...

Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers

The authors are Sr employees at Forrester, and Bernoff wrote Groundswell, which I liked. if you are looking for one book that does show you how B2B companies are successfully implementing social media...

Drive

A fitting successor to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow and Good Business, this is a useful book for those of us trying to optimize our efforts and productivity. Lots of challenges to popular myths on...

Selling to the New Elite - Discover the secret to winning over your wealthiest prospects

The authors have been surveying the buying habits of the affluent over the last five years (10 000 interviews and counting). That would be enough to purchase this book, but these is more, much more....

The Dragonfly Effect - Quick effective and powerful ways to use social media to drive social change

This book is small but punches well above its weight class. If you want to do something that really matters, here is a tool that will help make it happen. A great line, ” Do not worry about not...

Rainmaking Conversations - Influence, persuade and sell in any situation

The authors are the principals of the RAIN group which publishes sales research and RAIN Today a highly respected sales blog/newsletter. I am voting this the best sales book of the year so far....

The Truth About Leads

This is a treasure of a book. Absolutely agree with every word. e.g.: Executive and C-Level management owns responsibility for providing high level market, message, and media strategic direction, and...

The 1% Solution

A business fable that really talks tough and tells the truth on personal improvement. Short, concise and clearly written this is a very useful book. By committing to 1% improvements in many aspects of...

Shift!

I received a review copy of this book as a pdf. I have a lot of trouble reading anything like a pdf. When I read like to make notes, flip back and forth, reread etc. All becomes harder. So this book...

Achieve Sales Excellence

(Thanks to David Moulton for passing this book onto me.) Not since Neil Rakham did his in-depth interviews/research that resulted in SPIN Selling, has there been a comparable professional study done...

How to Sell Anything to Anyone Anytime

This is a little book , very easy to read, jam packed with sales power. It is targeted at one to one sales people, especially in the small business market, however this is good foundation book...

The Price of Everything

I am burning through every resource on pricing I can find. The author is a New York Times journalist – and I do so love to read books by journalists. They can write clearly, succinctly and well!...

Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead

This is more than a story about the Grateful Dead from two Deadheads. It really does draw lessons from the Dead that are very applicable to today. David Meerman Scott really knows today's marketing ...

UnMarketing

This is a very useful book for anyone looking to pump up their business though using the social networks. Stratten is one of those folks who has done the work and made a conscious effort to help...

Free

I have had this book a while and, really kick myself for not reading it sooner. It is outstanding. Anderson is able to debunk all the chestnuts out there around free as well as spend the...

Turbulent Times Leadership for Sales Managers - How the very best boost sales

I have several books for sales managers. This one will now be on the top of my list. The author brings you the real stuff that works. Along the lines of the one minute manager, but a lot more,...

Social Nation - Harness social media to attract customers, motivate employees, grow business

The author is CEO of Mzinga which manages 2 billion conversations a month. There are so many books on this subject out there that ... how does one chose? This book is written for business people...

speak human - Outmarket the big guys by getting personal

A Vancouver marketing firm SmashLAB was started by Eric and his partner Eric Shelkie. This book is a compendium of lessons learned (perhaps ordeals by fire) working in the industry. What results is a...

Content Rules

Book 2 in the New Rules of Social Media Series, this book answers the question, ”So how do I make that good content I keep hearing about?” It does a good job because of the real examples...

Selling to Anyone Over the Phone

This is very up to date and includes some very useful tactics that I have not seen in a selling-on-the-phone book before. The chapter on using the new tools is good because it reinforces what to do...

Sell Yourself First

I am a fan of Freese’s work and his approach – because it works. This book offers a bit if everything to the reader. A good review of Question Based Selling, good strong examples and...

MicroMarketing - Get big Results by Thinking and Acting Small

This is more of a guidebook to making sure what you do in marketing is in sync with the way things work today. Mass no longer matters, it is better to to be everything right, to the right someone,...

Take the Cold out of Cold Calling - Web Search Secrets

This is a got-to-buy book. Readers of my reviews may have realized that I am not a fan of ”Cold Calling ” as practiced by too many companies. In order to call effectively I encourage and...

Snap Selling

I recently did a short list for someone new to selling which has generated quite a bit of comments, traffic and a few meetings. Now I am being asked for whats next? So next up is Snap...

Facebook Marketing - Designing your next marketing campaign

The second edition of a very valuable book that encompasses all the changes to Facebook to date. I found his chapter on setting up Pages to be very valuable. He goes into great detail showing you how...

Mojo - How to get it, how to keep it, how to get it back if you lose it

Thank you MaryEllen for recommending this author. Famous as the coaches coach, Goldsmith certainly deserves the title. I found this little book to be chock full of extremely useful immediately...

The New Polymath - Profiles in compound-technology innovations

You can imagine that on my desk I have several (today 21) books to choose from to read. I was really peeved when I picked up Vinnie's book, when it first arrived, for a quick scan. I could not put it...

People Buy You - The real secret to what matters most in business

The person behind SalesGravy.com and Sales Guy audio and video on selling, Blount knows what he is talking about. As he was looking at current thinking on sales he realized that many long held...

Leadership Secrets of Hillary Clinton

If you have not read much about Hillary Clinton’s life this book will give you some idea of how she got to where she is today. It is mostly full of the author’s take on leadership and life...

Accelerating Out of the Great Recession - How to win in a slow-growth economy

This is a very important book. The two authors are from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). I am a fan of BCGs research and this book does not disappoint. They look at the Great Depression, Japan's...

Rework

These are the two chaps of 37 signals who started Basecamp and a host of other tools. They were also early advocates of Ruby on Rails. A breathless book that runs through the gamut of pragmatic...

The Design of Design - Essays from a computer scientist

The author of the Mythical Man-Month, the Father of the IBM 360 hardware and software, Brooks is a giant. He has put together a series of essays that give any designer serious insights into the...

Top Dog Recession - Busting Sales Secrets - experts show you proven ways to sell more in tough times

This is Volume II and it carries on with the high quality ideas of Volume I. Johnson has done an outstanding job of getting these seasoned sales experts to write short, immediately useful sales tips....

Making Things Happen - Overcoming obstacles between vision and reality

In our daily work we meet very creative people. And. like the author found, many of these have trouble getting things started and completed. The book contains methods and approaches to help creative...

Smart Calling - Eliminate the fear, failure and rejection from cold calling

Art has been doing this for a long time and I credit his materials with helping me be a much better sales person over the years. His stuff is timeless. Some of you may know that as I read a book, I...

The Zero Turnover Sales Force - How to maximize revenue by keeping your sales team intact

This is the best sales management book ever. It is also a tremendous guide for anyone on the sales field, old dogs through to the bright newbies. In one well written, easily read volume reside the...

Lemonade Stand Simple - Accelerate your small business growth

This is a Sales Gravy Press book – so it will deliver on what it promises. This is sales reduced to the simplest essence you could ever find. It has good examples, good explanations and is an...

The 1 % Windfall - How successful companies use price to profit and grow

Rafi is the guru on pricing as he has been consulting on it for over 20 years. His previous book , The Art of Pricing, was a good book, but this one goes much further into the topic with great...

Managing IT as a business - A survival guide for CEOs

A colleague ( Vicki Price Wright) gifted me this excellent book. It is a PWC publication and reflects the high standards of PWC consulting. Chuck full of short pithy case studies. This provides a very...

Putting the Public Back in Public Relations - Social media is reinventing the aging business of PR

The two authors have served their time as PR pros and have written a very definitive book on how to meld PR with the social media to create much stronger customer/reader conversation. From mentions of...

Seizing The White Space - Business model innovation for growth and renewal

The author is co-founder with Clay Christensen of Innosight. This book is distilled from many years of applying the Innovators Dilemma. For that alone it is an important book. However, the author has...

The New Rules of Marketing and PR - Second Ed.

How to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly. I reviewed the first edition in June 2007, and really found it ground breaking. The second...

The Leadership Code - Five rules to lead by

The three authors know their stuff and for such a small book from Harvard Business press they pack the good stuff in. I appreciated their focus on execution and how to translate the five rules right...

Flip The Funnel - How to use existing customers to gain new ones

This is a game changing book for marketing. Jaffe is a prolific writer, blogger and customer care advocate. This thoroughly researched book illustrates the winning metrics that tell us we spend way...

Leadership The Barack Obama Way - Make Change Happen

This is a thoroughly researched book. If you, like me, wondered how Obama seemed to sweep his way to the top so quickly, you will want to read this book. Dr. Leanne has looked at Obama’s history,...

The Imposter - How a Juvenile Criminal Succeeded in Business and Life

A personal diary, a business opportunity, a life guide , this book could be some of each of these and more. A very personal book that I could not put down and thus read in one sitting. I am sure we...

Switch - How to change things when change is hard

The best selling authors of Made to Stick have another winning book. I am going through several books on change at the moment and this one is so far the best. A couple of early insights set the tone:...

SWAT - Systems working all together

A very good book on using systems thinking. This is a great application of many of the most useful parts of lean and six sigma thinking. I enjoyed how the author has boiled this down to a simple...

Surviving Dreaded Conversations - Talk through any difficult situation at work

Another very useful book from McGraw Hill. Boy do I wish I had this book by my desk many times in my career. Her opening paragraphs/exercises on how to confront your own ego and recognize its impact...

Selling to the C-suite

This is the next read in your growth as a super sales person titled listen to the words of the client. The authors did exhaustive interviews with executives as to what they wanted from a vendor, what...

Perspectives on Marketing - Get both sides of the story

This is a companion to Perspectives on Sales . I like theses books as they give the client side and the sell side ( in this case an agency side) to the common. I think you will read this book and...

eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale

Differentiate yourself with attraction marketing. Create contagious content. Drive qualified leads to sales. In the B2B complex sale, marketers are increasingly being pressured to deliver...

Managers Guide to Marketing, Advertising and Publicity

Callen explains: ■The 14 principles of marketing communications strategy ■Common marketing mistakes to avoid ■Techniques for creating powerful marketing messages ■The many choices for delivering your...