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Sales Blazers. 8 Goal-shattering strategies from the world’s top sales leaders. Mark Cook. 2008 ISBN 9780071546843.  A good book for leaders like the VP and Director of Sales position , or any sales trainers.  I really enjoyed the style and viewpoint of this writer.  He has selected eight behaviors to focus on and they are very workable. I have bumped into several of them across different sales books:

1. Start with a clean bill of health
2. Spark a performance pursuit
3. Get the express pass
4. Play your depth chart
5. Activate expectations
6. Coach like a professional
7. Offer RSVP feedback
8. Heighten reward potency

With his background at Covey Institute, the author finds positive ways to help you get the most of out your team.  Since he is a sales person himself, he understands the power of story and  personal human anecdote. I got my copy at www.thecustomercollective.com

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“Don’t break their soul.”  I was told this today by Ian Slebie, one of the top sales guys/trainers  I like to  hang out with from time to time.  Sure business is not great right now and you are under pressure to make the numbers with your team.  But beating on the team is just adding to the bad news assailing all of them from the media.  “Its no ones faults.”  Sales is an even tougher gig in tough times, because you need to be confident and strong to take the steady rejection that is just part of the turf.  During tough times, you need your superiors to be rooting for you and not against you.   This is a time to show your leadership skills in stepping  up and taking the hit for the team , while protecting them from any internal negativism in your shop.  As a sales leader, your job is to be positive,  to  and strategize. You  make efforts to assist your team to climb out of any slumps, while you make life even harder for your competitors.  Your great customer service and even greater customer experience efforts will pay off.

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Predictably Irrational. The hidden factors that shape our decisions. Dan Ariely. 2008. ISBN 9780061353239. What a delightful book! If you have ever suspected that you are not always making the most logical decisions, This book provides resounding evidence that you are in very large company. I was astounded at what I learned in the 12 content chapters. If you are a student of pricing, decision making and human behavior this is the book for you. Unlike the anecdotal stories in Freakonnomics, and their ilk, this book has based real research and has science behind it. It makes the content that much more useful to all of us. The utility of the information in here for marketing is very high. The surprise of all this is that the book is very easy to read. A very good 4 hour airplane book.

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The First Five Pages. A writer’s guide to staying out of the rejection pile. Noah Lukeman. 2000. 9780684857435.  I picked this up as potentially a resource for us in editing compelling emails and white papers.  There is some very good info on that buried in this book. However, if you want to write for profit and publication, this is a terrific little all round resource. I admire books like this ( Strunk and White, Zinsser and Co) that are able to quickly, simply and so easily get to the heart of what could be a complex subject like editing/rewriting.  To me, it is the mark of true masters to make the difficult easy to understand. Lukeman is an agent who has also been an editor- he knows the business and lays out the goods. The book is organized from the easiest to fix to the most complex. You become sympathetic to the underpaid editors being crushed by piles of unread manuscripts.  Telling stat.  Only 11 books out of 50 000 published a year sell a million copies. I am now off to slay a few adverbs/adjectives.

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The Lemonade Stand on the Corner. . Victor Benoun.  This little book was fun to read. The author, himself very successful in a few businesses, has been able to boil the concepts into some simple and easy to digest steps.  For any small business owner there are pearls here, even when you have been going for some time.  I learned to start to appreciate the daily accomplishments that we could tend to take for granted, e.g. the unsolicited referral, the callback from a customer of long ago,  the dedication of those around you.  A pragmatic useful book that goes beyond “just starting a business”.  Great line in the book, “Selling is a one-time experience, marketing is the ongoing cultivation of a relationship to satisfy the customers needs on an ongoing basis”.  If you see it on the airport newsstand, its worth a read.

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Hot Flat and Crowded. How we need a green revolution and how it can renew America.  Thomas L. Freidman. 2008. ISBN 139780374166854.  This is the book you want your significant other to get you for Christmas.  His The World is Flat book did not point out that much new information as we seem to have known what he “discovered”.  This book is well written and flows easily from point to point.  His arguments (and there are more of them in this one) are good, logical and of course make way more sense than the politicians who would need to enact them.  If you, like me, do not suspect that “100 Easy Ways to Fight Global Warming at Home” will really solve the problems we are facing, then you will find this an insightful book.  It is free of the environmental hysteria, charts and graphs – just plain old useful rhetoric and analytical thought. Very good gift for your Gen Y children.

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