Gap Selling. Getting the customer to yes. Jim Keenan. 2018.  ISBN 9781732891012.  Quite a useful read. The author makes a strong point that the sales discovery should be over one half of the sales process.  He feels that sales process problems could be reduced if discovery did a better job of extracting present status, desired future status and the gap between.  This book details what salespeople and managers can do to improve their sales process. This approach is very aligned with present ideas on value selling and managing as coaching.  Lots of  case studies and real world examples greatly help your learning.  Good use of your time.

Podcast Prospecting. The ultimate guide to winning high-ticket clients with a podcast. Steve Gordon. 2020. ISBN 978-0-9904941-2-6.

Quick but valuable read. The author has been successful in driving leads to his service business with podcasts. If you are thinking about this method, are already using podcasts the book provides some very useful ideas and methods. Very much a practitioners book; it is clear, concise and right to the point.  Wish there were more authors like this .

On Leopard Rock. A life of adventures . Wilbur Smith. 2018. ISBN 9781499861280.  You can get lost in a Wilbur Smith adventure.  Full of swagger, adventure, lusty men and women, political intrigues and wildlife with the backdrop of Africa always there.  I have read my way through the The Courteney Series (16), The Ballantyne Series (5), The Egyptian Series ( 6), Hector Cross (3),  and his standalones (11). So it makes sense to read this, his autobiography. An early editor told him write what you know. Over 50 years, Smith writes what he and  his several generations of family have lived through and done growing up from early African colonization , the Boer War,  WW1 and 2,  Ian Smiths’s Rhodesia, Apartheid and Mandala, and now present day Africa.  He does painstaking research on all his stories and weaves in great backstories and histories.  He loves books and what they do for his readers.  And he has been wildly successful , yet he still continues to write.  This is very enjoyable and gives you even more background into his stories.

run_frictionless. Free a founder from a sales role. Antony Coundouris. 2018.  A concise road map and workbook on how to build a sales system that allows a founder to step away from daily driving sales. Using four quadrants to lay out the building blocks with many examples and a  full case study the author takes you through all the work and stages needed to be followed.   The quadrants are

• Who we serve
• What we serve
• Who we are
• How we serve

Under each are many statements of work to be done, how to do it and why you do it.

This is a useful book for any startup founder or those who are still driving all the sales after many years.

There is a better  way.