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Inside Apple. How America’s most advanced- and secretive – company really works. Adam Lashinsky. 2012. ISBN 9781455512171. (e-book).  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 long time Fortune reporter ( a magazine that Steve Jobs often favored with information over others). You will learn more about the inner workings, strengths and above all the culture of Apple.  As a journalist, Lashinsky writes clear concise copy making the book a good read.   He succeeds in helping pull back the veil in this company.  Highly recommended.

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The Now Revolution. 7 Shifts to make your business faster, smarter, and more social. Jay Baer & Amber Naslund.  2011. ISBN 9780470923276.  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:

• The transition from 50 to 100 employees has big impacts on holding onto the company culture
• If your company is not already “social” in its culture you will have a reduced chance of success in the social media space.
• There are quickly changing requirements for the talent you need in your company, what worked before will not work now in your hiring process.
• You need an army to use social media – starting with a heavy emphasis on customer service, and empowering many many employees to contribute to your social media initiatives.
• You need to use a new telephone to listen for buyer, customer, competitor  and employee “keywords” .
• How you respond to this challenge and how you measure results requires some serious analysis – its not  something you hand off to an intern.

Very cool use of QR/ tagging codes in the book, making it more interactive.  Check it out at nowrevolutionbook.com. As ever, some of the Microsoft stuff does not play nice with Android, ie when they send you to a document and not a webpage.

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The End of Business as Usual. Brian Solis.  2012. ISBN 9781118171561.   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 to do some work as well.  The book is full of aha moments, and my Kindle highlights are legion.  This is the book for you if you are a current practicing marketer and or academic.  I especially appreciated that Brian was able to skillfully weave the entire marketing skill set into all aspects of the company.   If you want to learn and earn in this space, you will need to read this book.  Full disclosure- I bought this book and it is on all my Kindles.   Check out his terrific blog http://www.briansolis.com/

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The Management Mythbuster. David A.J. Axson. 2010. ISBN 9780470463628. 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 Isolating Management Stupidity.   Those of us with a bit of grey hair have lived through many of these myths and the mistakes.  In our practise we often meet companies that are growing at what looks like very decent numbers. How ever when you compare these numbers with the superior gains competitors are able to post you realize that the company is losing ground and not is unaware of it. This delusion is way too prevalent in High tech companies.  Thus we a look at  compensation metrics which reward outperforming the competitors in all types of markets and conditions.  This is one key to helping  prevent overpaying senior executives.   The book should be on every business school reading list as well as that of  all shareholders.  Execs of all types would do well to read this book.   A great read.

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Zero-Time Selling. 10 Essential steps to accelerate every company’s sales. Andy Paul. 2012. ISBN 9781614480501. 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 that negatively impact technology sales.

Why change?  Here is his comment on the buyer’s life today.

“Customer firms are no different from any other business.  Most productivity gains are due to people being pushed to work harder , to increase their output within the same number of hours.   If buyers are stretched thin like everyone else, then it stands to reason that one good avenue for creating value for the customer through the selling process is to reduce the time he needs to spend assembling the information required to make a fully informed decision.”

As a salesperson, do you deserve to be in front of the buyer? Have you done your homework on his industry and his needs plus do you have the product knowledge to answer the most important of their questions immediately?

To make Zero-Time work ( and this is not a quick fix ) sales managers need to be able to measure that:

• 100% of leads are being followed up
• lead follow up time is meeting your set time goals (30 minutes? )
• the salesperson is answering the buyers needs/questions without extra follow-ups?
• weekly reviews with ea salesperson show that:

they are tossing the losers from their pipeline and

selling  the proper solution to the people that need it. (Often this is the researcher/user, not the payer who is  waiting for the users approval/research results.)

This book is recommended to sales people and their managers who want to step up their game in response to the changing selling situations.  One cautionary note to sales managers.  The Sales Lead Black Hole research indicated that the more seasoned/mature salesperson can be expected to react negatively to extra manager attention to lead follow-up. See below. (full post)

We also find that as sales reps become more experienced, they are less likely to:

1. pursue marketing-generated leads,
2. respond positively to managerial tracking of marketing lead follow-up, or
3. respond positively to greater marketing-generated lead volume.

Thus implementing a change to your program means more than a Jean Luc Picard “Make it So” .

You will need to think this through and work together with your star performers first.

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Value-Based Pricing. Harry MacDivitt & Mike Wilkinson.2012. ISBN 9780071761680.  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 is succinct, clear and bang on the money.  Second this is the first pricing book that really identifies how many objections that sale can find with changing the pricing strategy  as well as the huge obstacle that sales is to implementation.  Then they do show you how to capture customer value in order to extract the price you deserve. The case studies at the end of the book are a bonus for those serious about implementing value based pricing. This is a must have reference for sales and marketing organizations as well as CEO’s.  Plus with both authors from the UK, they do not waste a word- it is all clear and valuable.

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The No Asshole Rule. Building a civilized workplace and surviving one that isn’t. Robert J. Sutton. 2007. ISBN 9780759518018. This is so funny and true that it hurt to read it.  I could have used this a few times in my work life – one of the reasons I went into consulting was gaining the ability to chose who I work with – never regretted it.   Guy Kawasaki posted an online survey to self diagnose how much of an asshole you are .  This book is required reading if you work in a tech company.  Well written, clear prose that makes your day better!

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The Trophy Kids Grow Up. How the millennial generation is shaking up the workplace. Ron Alsop. 2008. ISBN 9780470229545.  One can read this book two ways. First to rail against the millennials who

• job hop
• seem entitled
• are not willing to wait to climb the corporate ladder
• want it all, quickly
• are unafraid to challenge the bosses
• seek a meritocracy
• bring along helicopter parents
• seem to need endless feedback
• require detailed checklists of explicit work directions
• prejudge a company from what its website says
• a lack of manners and suitable etiquette

Or you could hail them for

• a much better sense of real altruism than any generation so far to date.
• seekers of  work life balance
• a desire to get the work done, in any location and then do what they want
• reducing the need for huge offices and cube farms
• working for much of the time without supervision and not just nine to five.
• showing how intrinsic motivation is a growing influence on modern productivity ( See Driven by Dan Pink)
• helping break us all free of the reward punishment management model ( which Dan Ariely shows is counter productive today)
• using any and all technologies at a whirlwind adoption rate.

I think I will hail them for their pressure on HR and recruiting systems. I will recognize that having four generations in the workplace now calls for some pretty serious negotiation and mediation skills. But our culture is evolving and will not stop.  This is a clearly written book, based on what is really happening in the workplace as we have all seen it. If you have to hire people today, you need to read this book.

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The Art of Managing Professional Services. Insights from leaders of the world’s top firms. Maureen Broderick. 2011. ISBN 9780137042524. A snapshot of what the big service firms are doing complied from an extensive survey . It  describes best practice as detailed through numerous case studies.  And it confirms that these companies are:

• still slow to change,
• focused on the short term, and
• still totally clueless about marketing

None of the above will change. If you were expecting some priceless insights  or new practice models you will be disappointed.  A compilation of best practice is by nature not innovative.   This book does not displace the great work done by David Maister, it goes to show that these companies are not even implementing his ideas.

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Building Business Value. How to command a premium price for your midsized company. Martin O”Neill.2009. ISBN 978098205056905.  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 determine the value of your company. Very telling advice was , ” If you drive to increasing company value, you can exit at any time”.  Any business owner will benefit from going through this book and answering the questions the author asks.  We see too many companies who would be rockets if they just asked themselves a few simple questions.  Well written, good notes and through bibliography make this a long term reference book for the business owner. I especially liked his way for describing what good was , then pointing out how to measure how good your company was, the major ways that people fail and how to prevent that.

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