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bookcategory: Resources

Spencer Rascoff & Stan Humphries

Enter Zillow, the nation’s #1 real estate website and mobile app. Thanks to its treasure trove of proprietary data and army of statisticians and data scientists, led by chief economist Stan Humphries, Zillow has been able to spot the trends and truths of today’s housing market while acknowledging that a home is more than an economic asset. In ZILLOW TALK, Humphries and CEO Spencer Rascoff explain the science behind where and how we live now and reveal practical, data-driven insights about buying, selling, renting and financing real estate. Read this book to find out why:

-It’s better to remodel your bathroom than your kitchen

-Putting the word “cute” in your listing could cost you thousands of dollars

-You shouldn’t buy the worst house in the best neighborhood

-You should never list your house for $444,000

-You shouldn’t list your house for sale before March Madness or after the Masters

Densely packed with entertaining anecdotes and invaluable how-to advice, ZILLOW TALK is poised to be the real estate almanac for the next generation.

Linda J. Popky

Marketing today is out of control. With all the new marketing techniques accessible to the masses, it’s becoming harder and harder to stand out from the crowd. The result is more and more messages, hitting us more often in new and more intrusive ways. For customers, it’s a lot of noise.

Through her work with a wide range of organizations from small companies to professional service providers to Fortune 500 companies, Linda Popky has developed Dynamic Market Leverage™, an approach to help cut through the clutter, stand out, and effectively build business.

Marketing Above the Noise takes a contrarian approach by not focusing on social media, digital marketing, or other new tactics, and instead helping organizations understand:

  • -The critical upfront work needed to really understand customers, markets and unmet needs
  • -The value of consistent, focused messaging
  • -Why empowering employees to effectively represent the brand is so critical
  • -How to thrive in an age of user-generated content and customer driven marketing

Why it’s key not to confuse selling with installing

The book introduces the Dynamic Market Leverage Model, which measures marketing clout by looking at eight core marketing disciplines and five additional Leverage Factors that can help an organization focus on key aspects of their marketing function that will provide the most significant return on their marketing investment.

Today’s businesses need to stop trying to keep pace with the latest and greatest marketing tactics and instead focus on developing those long term strategies that build customer loyalty and convince prospects to buy. Yes, businesses need to be aware of and integrate new media and new approaches, but they need to do it in a way that makes sense for the business. They need to maintain a clear focus above the din of the roaring crowd—above the marketing fray.

Most organizations don’t have the luxury of being able to start from a clean slate to develop new marketing strategies. They have existing customers, existing channels and relationships, existing ways of doing business. With limited resources, they’re not able to integrate every new tactic as it appears and they’re not sure how to prioritize all of these options.

What’s needed is a timeless framework—a way of looking at marketing as tied to both business growth and the building and nurturing of ongoing customer engagement. It’s time to move the focus from social media and evangelists, sales and marketing alignment, and the latest hot cloud-based marketing tools, to what really counts: convincing customers to trust you with their business—not just once, but time and time again.

Milo Shapiro

You CAN master the skill of public speaking! Laugh your way through Milo’s clever, tip-loaded “Top 10 Lists”. Conquer any fears as you excel in this important tool for success.

Public speaking coach Milo Shapiro blends core speaking fundamentals, lessons learned from his own years as a professional motivational speaker since 2002, and relevant exercises from the world of improvisation to make his speeches, coaching, and books more fun than the norm.

With chapters like…

  • – Ten Great Ways to Blow It In Your First Ten Seconds
  • – Ten Neat Things To Talk About If You WANT To Alienate Your Audience
  • – Ten Healing Ways to Deal With The FEAR and Reduce the STRESS
  • – Ten Cool Tricks to Ease The Torture of Memorization

…this book is a fun read, but full of valuable ideas for anyone who needs to be in front of groups for speeches, sales, teaching, and more.
Whether you’re a novice speaker or a seasoned one who just wants to up his/her game a little more, Milo’s recommendations will take you to the next level within a read that won’t have you dozing off.

Bob Dailey

Whether you manage a department of three employees, or an international organization with thousands of employees, one thing impacts your success more than anything else: Your Mental Approach It’s all in your head…the rest is detail! The way we approach our life, the attitude we bring every day, and our continuous focus on serving others are the keys to becoming a valued and trusted leader. Realizing that it’s not about you, concentrating solely on creating an environment where others can succeed is all that matters. Your success only happens when you help others and your organization achieve their success. Maybe you’ve never considered your mental approach to being a trusted leader. Perfect. Leadership Starts (and Ends) in Your Head by Bob Dailey will help you find and unleash the right mental approach … that thing that differentiates so-so managers from great leaders. Don’t have a ton of time? That’s okay. You can finish this book in about an hour. But, you’ll want to savor its bite-sized chapters one-at-a-time. This book will help you embrace the mental side of leadership … where true leaders spend most of their time.

Jeff Nischwitz

Unmask is a road map for navigating your own personal journey as a leader in your business, career, relationships and life, and a must-read for any leaders seeking to enhance their influence. Jeff Nischwitz’s focus on what it means to be an authentic leader and, more important, what it takes to get there will help anyone grow in leadership, influence and impact. Jeff’s new concept of integrated leadership goes so far beyond traditional leadership strategies and tactics and introduces what he calls livingship—a new way of living, thinking and leading in every part of your life. It is this commitment to an entire life lived awake, aware and on purpose that unleashes the leaders our businesses and our world so desperately need.

Jeff Nischwitz is a forerunner of this change. In the words of leadership thought leader Tommy Spaulding, author of the New York Times bestseller It’s Not Just Who You Know, “It is so refreshing knowing the author of Unmask actually LIVES the message of this important book. Jeff Nischwitz not only introduces the world to Livingship, but he puts us all on a journey to living, leading and loving differently.”

Jeff’s transformational book is based on the truth that there is only one you and that same person is the leader of your business, your career and your life. As a result, your professional and personal leadership will be most determined by who you choose to be as a person, how committed you are to that choice and how accountable you are to that commitment. Leadership is about influence and impactful leaders are passionately committed to living lives of integrity and authenticity in order to unleash their true leaders. As C-Suite TV host, bestselling author and sometime cowboy Jeffrey Hayzlett said, “Unmask: Let Go of Who You’re ‘Supposed’ to Be & Unleash Your True Leader is such a good book, you are going to think you robbed a bank! Make a deposit for your career and read this book.”

Michelle Tillis Lederman

Michelle Tillis Lederman shows how networking can be as easy, enjoyable, and fulfilling as having a conversation with friends—and still be highly beneficial to career goals.

“When networking feels like something you have to do rather than want to do, it’s hard to motivate yourself to do it at all, let alone do it well,” acknowledges Lederman. In her book, THE 11 LAWS OF LIKABILITY: Relationship Networking…Because People Do Business with People They Like she will show you just how to achieve those relationships in business that last.

Forget the conventional emphasis on business transactions, work-related topics, targeted objectives, and self-serving thoughts. Lederman encourages networkers to radically shift their thinking and place a priority on something everyone can relate to, something at the heart of honest, engaging conversations and meaningful connections: liking and being liked.

This book, featuring activities, self-assessment quizzes, and real-life anecdotes from professional and social settings, shows readers how to identify what’s likable in themselves and create honest, authentic interactions that become “wins” for all parties involved.

Readers will discover how to:

  • – Start conversations and keep them going with ease
  • – Convert acquaintances into friends
  • – Uncover people’s preferences and tweak their own personal style to enable engaging, reciprocal interactions
  • – Create follow-up and stay in others’ minds long after the initial meeting

The worst thing we can do when trying to establish a personal bond with someone is to come across as manipulative or self-serving. Authentic connections go much deeper—and feel much easier—than trying to hit self-imposed business card collection quotas. This book presents a new paradigm that shows how even the most networking-averse can network…and like it.

Shelly Alcorn & Willis Turner

Play predates the development of human culture and our brains are hard-wired to use play as a tool to accelerate learning, strategically explore unfamiliar environments and develop collaborative social connections. Games are human created, formalized structures and processes designed to maximize engagement and get the most out of the “play” impulse. In fact, gaming comes so naturally to us we don’t even notice it for what it is. Two examples of large scale gaming structures include our educational and political systems. Going deeper into understanding how gaming structures work, and intentionally applying those mechanics can give us an advantage when designing experiences meant to engage our members in the work of our associations.

Although games have been with us since we first learned to scratch marks on small rocks, what is new is the impact the internet and technology is having on games and players alike. What was simple activity in the past, is rapidly turning into a large scale social phenomenon. At some point the term “gamer” will lose it relevancy and we will recognize gamers for what they are – an increasingly sophisticated class of experience consumers. Games are the first mass media of the 21st century and gaming literacy is an essential skill all executives, staff and volunteers need to develop in order to attract, appeal to and invite a new generation of players to play the association game. In this book, we take a simple, practical approach to helping you and your volunteers take these ideas one step farther.

By using these 42 rules from Shelly Alcorn and Willis Turner,, you will be able to use simple gaming mechanics to increase member engagement, improve educational outcomes and build community in your industry or profession.

Bizcast-for-CSBC-Website

Wally Hauck

The aim of this book is to compel leaders to replace their typical performance appraisal methods with one more closely aligned with systems thinking. In addition, the aim is to replace it with one that actually achieves the desired outcomes of increasing individual development, improving communication between employees, implementing organizational strategies, and improving organizational performance. The motivation to replace the typical performance appraisal methods is achieved by clearly articulating four essential steps. First, the book clearly demonstrates the folly of using the typical performance appraisal. It provides compelling evidence of its inability to achieve the intended outcomes. Most leaders who use the typical appraisal process are already convinced of this. Second, the book explains how we have all been misled (with the best of intentions) to adopt a flawed paradigm that sustains (justifies) the use of the typical appraisal. Third, it describes a more effective leadership paradigm (systems thinking and Dr. W. Edward Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge) which is based on a set of assumptions consistent with systems thinking. Finally, Wally Hauck’s book provides a replacement for the typical performance appraisal (aligned with the more effective paradigm) which enables leaders to address the daunting contemporary challenges that keep them awake at night.

Timothy Keiningham

Customer Loyalty Isn’t Enough. Grow Your Share of Wallet! The Wallet Allocation Rule by Timothy Keiningham is a revolutionary, definitive guide for winning the battle for share of customers’ hearts, minds, and wallets. Backed by rock-solid science published in the Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review, this landmark book introduces a new and rigorously tested approach–the Wallet Allocation Rule–that is proven to link to the most important measure of customer loyalty: share of wallet. Companies currently spend billions of dollars each year measuring and managing metrics like customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score (NPS) to improve customer loyalty. These metrics, however, have almost no correlation to share of wallet. As a result, the returns on investments designed to improve the customer experience are frequently near zero, even negative.

With The Wallet Allocation Rule, managers finally have the missing link to business growth within their grasp–the ability to link their existing metrics to the share of spending that customers allocate to their brands. – Learn why improving satisfaction (or NPS) does not improve share. – Apply the Wallet Allocation Rule to discover what really drives customer spending. – Uncover new metrics that really matter to achieve growth. By applying the Wallet Allocation Rule, managers get real insight into the money they currently get from their customers, the money available to be earned by them, and what it takes to get it. The Wallet Allocation Rule by Tim Keiningham provides managers with a blueprint for sustainable long-term growth.

Don Crawley

Now in its third edition, The Compassionate Geek by Don Crawley, was written by a tech person for tech people. There are no frills, just customer service best practices and ideas that actually work! Filled with practical customer service tips, best practices, and real-world techniques, The Compassionate Geek is a quick read with equally fast results. Each chapter includes a reflection and discussion section to help you improve your customer service skills. There are lots of personal stories and examples of mistakes made and lessons learned. This new edition adds an entire chapter on overcoming personal and professional obstacles. All of the information is presented in a straightforward style that you can understand and use right away. There’s nothing foo-foo, just down-to-earth tips and technical support best practices learned from years of working with technical staff and demanding customers and end users.