Sell More Faster. The ultimate sales playbook for startups. Amos Schwartzfarb. 2019. ISBN 9781119597834.   A concise yet insightful books for the startup world.  The author has carried the bag in sales in companies from startup to growth and been successful at it.  Each chapter has good meat in it that any startup CEO should read and implement with care. I particularly enjoyed how to select the first sales hire  and then grow your sales force including a thoughtful no nonsense examination of compensation models.  After sales support ot reduce churn and to realize the growth of along term book of business was clearly laid out.

Traversing the Traction Gap. Bruce Cleveland. 2019. ISBN 9781635765748.  With a forward and collaboration with Geoffrey Moore this promises to be a very important book in the tech sector. The author and his group Wildcat Ventures has analyzed the getting to and through the Chasm in more detail  than ever before.  In our gotomarket practice we have seen the truths that Cleveland puts forward in many iterations in too many companies. A startup and young company should have this book handy through the several years and rough times that they need to weather.  Much of the necessary hard stuff can be planned for and mitigated if you follow what this book has to say.  It goes beyond MVCategory, through MVProduct to MVrevenue, to category lead then traction and scaling. The insights on the right team at all stages  is worth the price of the book.  This may become the tech book of the year.

Pocket Mentor. The entrepreneurs’s guide to building a lasting business from scratch. Mark Nureddine 2018.  ISBN 9781943386307.  A very pragmatic, straight forward approach to mentoring that would work with many entrepreneurs.  The case studies and examples are real world. His language is concise and easy to understand.  His products were tangible and hands on so the examples her may need to be finessed for technology plays.  I appreciate the author’s can do attitude to pretty well everything. His advice to entrepreneurs is plain enough that no one would misunderstand how hard it will be to start and run a successful business. Quite a useful summary of pricing here as well.

Hacking Marketing. Agile practices to make marketing smarter, faster, and more innovative.  Scott Brinker.  2016. ISBN 9781119183174.   The author makes a terrific analysis of how today’s digital marketing has evolved and the need for marketers to develop and maintain new skills.   The application of agile tools and techniques to all aspects of marketing just makes so much sense. The author does an excellent job in showing how this is as much a management  tool as a software tool. Highly recommended for any and all marketers and schools of marketing.

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The Lean CEO. Leading the Way to World-Class Excellence. Jacob Stoller.   2015. ISBN 9780071833073.  This is the missing  book that puts together the plethora of lean successes across industries , public sector and geographies.  You will learn not only where Lean came from ( Deming and much more) , but how successful it has been in some many sectors and why it has not been more widely adopted in N America.  For tech companies after the Lean Startup you must  become the lean grownup to survive and grow. This book will help point the way.  Clearly written with  lots of examples makes this an engrossing book. Well worth anyone’s time to sit down and read it.

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Scrum. The art of doing twice the work in half the time. Jeff Sutherland. 2014. ISBN 978038534645.  The author was the co creator of SCRUM.  He has had a fascinating career and a major impact on how software projects are managed today.  This book is one pat about SCRUM and another part about how it can be applied (and is applied) to any team based endeavor. It is clear, concise and fascinating.  I read it in one sitting, so it is a good four plane ride book.  A very good book for leaders who want to make productive changes in their organization.

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The One Week Marketing Plan. The  Set It & Forget It Approach For Quickly Growing Your Business.  Mark Satterfield. 2014. ISBN 9781939529787.  The book is exactly as the title says.  This is a very updated compilation of successful direct marketing approaches that are tested and effective in the world of content marketing.  It can be just this simple ,especially for a start- up that sees so much that needs to be done. By following this book you will have a rudimentary program up and running that will give you feedback on much of your marketing content.   Now its never this easy, as many of us are incapable of creating the type of effective copy needed for this to really work. But by following these ideas you will have much better idea of what will work and an appreciation of those who can write compelling copy.  Easy to read and very well laid out. So its a good resource.

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New Product Blueprinting. The handbook for B2B organic growth. Dan Adams.2008. ISBN 9780980112344. I was looking for this book for quite some time as it was referenced as the new bible for product development to take over from stage-gate methods (Cooper). I finally found the whole name/author in What Customers Want. This is a very valuable book as it will save product and services companies a lot of money and wasted effort. As the author says, manufacturers can produce a six sigma product routinely, yet R&D departments still have 3 out of 4 products fail in the marketplace – with the funds expended wasted. Using Product Blueprinting a company will find out early where there is a market need before the product is developed. And yes using this method, Apple would have still developed the Ipod. The major difference in this process is the increased amount of effort and time done at the front end in market research , innovative discovery interviews and so on, with the seventh stage being a business case. This book fits with Agile so well. If reading this book prevents your company from going off on a product build based on the statements of a few sales guys it is well worth the read. The easy reading style, with great illustrations really brings the topic to life. A must buy for the B2B product manager/CEO

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Rocket Surgery Made Easy. The do-it-yourself guide to finding and fixing usability problems. Steve Krug. 2010. ISBN 97803216572999. Another Lean Management recommendation. Krug wrote Don’t make Me think – which I totally enjoyed and agree with.  True to the author’s intent, this is a very usable book.  He has six maxims (which you will find in the book). His writing style is delightful – tongue in cheek, self deprecating and above all clear and simple.  Check out his sample usability test at www.rocketsurgerymadeeasy.com and watch the Demo Test file.  It is very revealing as to why you will want to read this book.  Is he onto something – well yes. In our practice we are daily being sent to complex, hard to understand what the company does,  completely lacking on customer value company webpages.  Most of the problems would be solve if they followed Krug’s easy to use suggestions.  All I can think is usability is just not done. Everyone who has a webpage should read this book.

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Running Lean. Iterate from plan A to a plan that works. Ash Maurya.2012. ISBN 9781449305178.  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 technology development sector.  My interest comes from experience with companies that start into AGILE but, fail to implement it in their management structure/style.  This LEAN series is a good way to start on changing how to manage companies who are innovators.  A very few folks are writing about adopting AGILE techniques in sales and marketing , but it will come.   A few key bullets for me from this very clear and well written book.

• Build only the Minimum Value Product – always testing customer response.
• Look for Minimum Marketing Features (what customers value – and you would write up)
• Use Kanban charts ( from The Toyota Way ) to organize and constrain workflow
• Done = validated with learning from customers
• Measure product marketing fit all the time.

On Freemium (he is not a fan) :

• Delays learning about what price buyers will pay
• Low or no conversion – give away too much
• Lengthens validation cycle
• Shift focus to wrong metric – signups vs retention
• Low signal to noise ration – what is important feedback
• Free users are not free – account for free users as a marketing expense

Mailchimp started with a paid version and after much time backed into a free one. Users should easily outgrow a free plan.  This is LinkedIn’s issue. IMHO.  Buy this book and The Lean Startup.

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