Made in America. An informal history of the english language in the United States. Bill Bryson. 1994/2001. ISBN 0380713810.  A funny yet very insightful book as only Bryson can  write it. Well researched with copious annotations this is book for historians, writers,  political scientists and students of all ages.  I learned so much from this book such as

• The Pilgims were incredibly stupid  and unprepared for their settling of America
• American angst over public sex, visual and written owes much to the Puritan influence
• Current ideas about political correctness are seriously flawed.
• Many Americanisms came from England – but the Brits could no longer recognize them.
• America is an incredibly funny and diverse place.

Have ago if you can find this book (Its on Amazon) , it is well worth the read.

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Insight Selling. Surprising Research on what sales winners do differently. Mike Schultz & John Doerr. 2014 . From the experts at RAIN Selling comes a book that is timely, current and essential. It is the result of asking a simple question. “In a world were some sellers are successful and many are not, what do the successful ones do better? ” The genius lay in who the questions were directed to?  Not sellers but the buyers. Not surprisingly, the answers can differ from many of the “sales books” previously written by successful sales people .  This puts  Shultz and Doerr againin the forefront of effective sales thinking and training. Reading this immediately after Jill Konrath‘s “Agile Selling ‘ and Linda Richardson’s “Changing the Sales Conversation” made this a perfect trifecta of innovative sales books.  Its simple – Sales leader sell insight  into the buyers business. The sales conversation and the sales person are often the deal maker , not the product.  Buyers appreciate salespeople who:

1. Educate me with new ideas and perspectives
2. Collaborate with me
3. Persuade me we would achieve results
4. Listened to me
5. Understood my needs
6. Helped me avoid potential pitfalls
7. Crafted a compelling solution
8. Depicted purchasing process accurately
9. Connected with me personally
10. Overall value from company is superior to other options.

This is a book for sales leaders and high performing sales people to buy read and take to heart.  No pages are wasted so this makes a good coast to coast air flight read

The New Rules of Lead Generation. Proven strategies to maximize marketing roi. David T. Scott. 2013. ISBN 9780814432617.  The author is certainly very experienced in this role and topic.   His point of view is measurement and so he gives a great baseline education for applying measurement to the suite of marketing tools available.   He says this book is for companies that have whole teams to execute on sales and marketing and I tend to agree.  Most small companies  are really resource constrained.   That said, his first five chapters are some of the best setup for any marketing team I have found so far. He brings a refreshing and pragmatic view to how sales and marketing should work together.   He has a little something for everyone on these chapters and the ideas work.  In his ending chapters he talks about some good tools, however this is the only flaw in the book as time is not kind to this type of example as some of the tools discussed are no longer available.  I enjoyed how he differentiates between the high value  marketing generated leads and lesser value sales generated leads.  Good cross country air flight read – Easy to read style as well.

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Million Dollar Launch. How to kick start a successful consulting practice in 90 days.Alan Weiss. 2014. ISBN 9780071826341,. Years ago Alan wrote Million Dollar Consulting , which along with David Maister‘s books really helped me in launching our consulting practise.   This book is the result of years of consulting and seminars after the success of his first book. I found it delightful as always and chock full of pragmatic immediately useful advice. Even though I had reread Million Dollar Consulting 4th edition in 2009,  this book gave me a few more ideas in going forward.  If you are self- employed – this book is required reading.

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Highly Recommended. Harnessing the power of word of mouth and social media to build your brand and your business. Paul M. Rand. 2014. ISBN 9780071816212.  I first read Paul’s work when he came out talking about Word of Mouth marketing and his message was clear and powerful.  This book takes it to another level . He has now worked with so many companies on this that the examples just fill the pages on how to do this well. He covers the field from marketing, selling, customer service and HR  This book will make a believer of the most obdurate Luddite.  Should be part of  the C -Suite reading.

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The Art of Social Selling. Finding and Engaging Customers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Other Social Networks.Shannon Belew. 2014. ISBN 9780814433324. A superb book from Amacom. It is really hard to write a book like this that can stay current. The author is good at this and has an easy writing style. I always learn a few now things and methods. She stays pretty true that social selling is another tool to add to a salespersons kit. She has lots of data already that shows that high performers will do even more business using social media and they are already there.  As well she makes a good case for marketing and sales to talk about and agree on t buyer process and buyer persona.   A good resource for sales pros and leaders. Failure to grab this tool set , likely will be part of why your company remains or becomes an also ran.

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Neuro-Sell. How neuroscience can power your sales success. Simon Hazeldine. 2014. ISBN 9780749469214.  At first glance this book may appear to be another take on Selling Styles Theory . However take another look as it is much more than that. In one volume written specifically for sales teams you find a concise description and application of today’s relevant research on the brain and how to be brain friendly in your approach. . It would not take much to apply this material to marketing as well. I read this in a rapid time as it seemed to be replaying what we have been finding in the marketplace for the last few years. Some of what he says seems self evident and some seems common sense and some so new you will read the sections twice.  I do not see how any sales person today could ignore this book, unless he/she wishes to be an also ran in the market.  Buy it, read it, apply it and do it again.  Great for a cross country flight and my compliments to the easy reading brain friendly style!

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Maximize Your Social. A one-stop guide to building a social media strategy for marketing and business success. Neil Schaffer. 2013. ISBN 9781118651186. I have been following Neil’s writings since the early days of social media and he never disappoints.  I am calling this the state of the art book on social media . Its practical and thorough, with a good strategic focus. He takes you deep into how to make the best use of the tools and then how to organize yourself and your company on getting the work done well.Its a book for the beginner through to the polished professional – you will all get something valuable from it. At Rocket Builders we advocate a unified voice to all your communication traditional through to social. Neil has a very clear explanation on how to do that.  He surprised me with his chapter on G+, its the 2nd largest social network , but it goes way beyond that with its implications on SEO.  I spent an hour re-jigging my corporate and  personal g+ sites and I am just getting going, following his ideas.  As well he makes a compelling argument about expanding our use of YouTube,   it is the second largest search engine.  y eyes were opened wrto Instagram since the no of mobile content consumers continues to grow rapidly. Several of his points are echoing what was said in the Connected book.  This is a valuable book for any business person, plus it is a pleasure to read it.

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The 9 1/2 Principles of Innovative Service. Chip R.Bell. 2013.ISBN 9781608102471. I am a Chip Bell fan. He has written definitive books on customer service  (19 I believe).  This is part of his Simple Truths series. These books are designed to be give away items  at corporate events, to pass onto  employees to reinforce concepts and so on. So they are short snappy glossy books in a rugged hardcover.  That said they are not lightweight books as the simple truths are often the hardest to stick with.  Time and operationally tested this series is well worth your investment in time (a small amount)  and dollars ( high value). www.simpletruths.com is best source for the book

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An example of a social network diagram. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Connected. The surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives. Christakis & Fowler.2009. ISBN 9780316036146. I picked this up as I was interested in any theories of social networks and how they relate to the surge on social networking sites. This is definitely not another book about Facebook and content marketing. The two Harvard professors and practice leaders have written a very insightful and useful book.  They build with a basis on history and genetics and how groups / networks have formed, the “normal ” sizes , including the role of religion in all societies ( very interesting given if you are not religious at all).  They explore the impact on connectedness and paring on life, health , longevity and so on. ( Hint stay married as long as possible – and when you are again single get into lots of healthy groups) .   Then when you add in the new social networks you see how they still follow the existing limits to close friends, most friends , and so on.  They explain how to every communication innovation such as telegraph, telephone, internet and now Social networks expand the limits to connectivity , allowing for more interaction , but not necessarily adding more people to the groups – you become able to interact more often.  You may find interesting that the rule of three degrees of separation remains true, that the weak ties we have are often the most useful for job seeking, and the growing intersection of political science, genetics, sociology and economics. Cap this off with two authors who can write clearly and simply and you will enjoy this book. It is good for the cross country flight and back again.

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