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booktag: c-suite book club

Jay Baer

The difference between helping and selling is just two letters. But those two letters are critically important to your company’s success. If you’re wondering how to get more attention and how to make your products seem more exciting online, you’re asking the wrong question.

You’re not competing for attention only against other, similar products. You’re competing for attention against your customers’ closest friends and family members, and against viral videos and cute puppies. To win in this hyper- competitive environment, you must ask a different question: “How can we help?”

It’s a new approach that cuts through the clutter: marketing that is truly, inherently useful. If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life. This is Youtility.

Drawing from his experience consulting for more than 700 brands, and rich with case studies and examples, in Youtility Jay Baer provides a groundbreaking recipe for how to use information and helpfulness to transform the relationship between companies and customers.

Youtility is a new marketing framework for the age of information overload.

Salim Ismail

For hundreds of years, traditional business structures have put an organizational/legal boundary around an asset or a workforce and ‘sold’ access to that scarcity. However, just in the last few years, a new breed of organizational structure is emerging that is able to scale at unimaginable rates – we call these Exponential Organizations (ExOs). These new organization structures are leveraging a newly available set of externalities like big data, community, the crowd or accelerating technologies and by doing so, are performing 10x better than their peers in the same space. This book examines the attributes of an Exponential Organization and provides a how-to guide for building a startup with these principles, how the principles can be applied to a mid-market company and how to retrofit these ideas into large organizations.

Christine Comaford

Are You Scaring Your People into Mediocrity?

All leaders want to outperform, outsell, and outin­novate the competition. And most teams are fully capable of doing so. The problem: we consistently say and do things that spark unconscious fears and keep our people stuck in their Critter State. This primitive fight, flight, or freeze mode distills all decision mak­ing to one question: What will keep me safest?

Lying low, sucking up, procrastinating, and doing a good enough job may keep employees breathing, but it doesn’t make for vital organizations. Leaders have to get their people unstuck and fully engaged, replacing their old, limiting mental patterns with new patterns that foster optimal performance.

New York Times bestselling author and applied neuroscience expert Christine Comaford knows what it takes to move people from the Critter State into the Smart State, where they have full access to their own creativity, innovation, higher consciousness, and emotional engagement. When an entire culture maintains that state, it becomes what she calls a SmartTribe. Focused. Accountable. Collaborative. Imbued with the energy and passion to solve problems and do what needs doing, again and again and again.

Comaford brings to this book more than thirty years of company-building experience, combined with her expertise in behavioral modification and organizational development. She has helped hun­dreds of leaders navigate rapid growth, maximize performance, resolve internal conflicts, and execute turnarounds with the full support of their people.

Now she shares potent yet easy-to-learn neuro­science techniques that will help you do the same. You’ll learn how to move your team forward and reach your next revenue inflection point using the five key Accelerators of the Smart State—focus, clar­ity, accountability, influence, and sustainability. You’ll get better at anticipating and moving through your own stuck spots and those of your people.

Using her proven system, Comaford’s clients have already created hundreds of millions of dollars in new value. They’ve seen their revenues and profits increase by up to 210% annually; individuals become up to 50% more productive and 100% more account­able; marketing demand generation grow by up to 237%; new products and services created up to 48% faster; and sales close up to 50% faster. They spot changes in their markets more quickly, then pounce on them to create the future they want.

Ultimately, SmartTribes will help you and your team achieve optimal performance and engagement—brilliance—and leave competitors in the dust.

Cindy Goldsberry

There is no magic bullet for sales success…and a focus just on sales skills, lead gen tactics and sales process only sets down a fraction of the groundwork required for achieving the critical success factors to revenue generation. Everyone knows the sales ecosystem has changed dramatically while old sales techniques and playbooks are no longer effective. It’s time sales professionals and organizations adopt a new paradigm for approaching and engaging with their ideal clients. ZFactor Sales Accelerator V2V assists sales professionals to meet buyers where they are, lead their prospects on a benefit-filled journey, and change perception of their role in sales as they experience going from being a Vendor to one of Value Creator – or partner.

“A game-changer book that makes you question what you’re doing and make changes to accelerate your success!” With a focus on the individual contributor, this book focuses on deeply understanding the thinking behind what a difference it makes when one truly creates value for others. Rich with stories, examples and self-coaching materials, this proven thinking methodology inspires sales professionals to become relationally and strategically relevant to their ideal prospects thus increasing the lifetime value of these relationships.

David Newman

As a small-business owner or solopreneur, you wear many hats–perhaps the most important of which is marketer.

But these days, with so many new ways to reach customers and clients — and only so much time in the day — it’s hard to know where to start. Should you be using social media? Email? Blogs? Video? SEO?

Small business marketing doesn’t have to be a mystery. It’s just a series of simple decisions (and the action steps to implement those decisions) that will help you regain the clarity, confidence, and control you need to succeed.

Do It! Marketing is a quick read and an encouraging kick in the pants that will reignite your marketing mojo. The underlying premise is that “only action creates results.”

Packed with do-this-now ideas to attract, engage, and win more customers and clients, this no-nonsense book reveals how to:

  • – Avoid blah, blah, blah marketing
  • – Use magnetic marketing strategies that pull (not push) qualified prospects into your world
  • – Get noticed using the power of 3PR
  • – Position yourself as the go-to expert in your field
  • – Become the obvious choice by building your Thought Leadership Platform
  • – Do social media right
  • – Zero in on your customers’ pain/gain factors
  • – Learn to speak prospect language about prospect problems
  • – Generate a steady stream of referrals
  • – Identify and focus on high-payoff marketing activities
  • – Gain clarity, confidence and control so you sell more – more easily and more often
  • – Cultivate and leverage enthusiastic advocates
  • – And more

Energetic, inspiring, and filled with concrete strategies, tactics, templates, and tools, Do It! Marketing shows you how to stop “marketing by accident” and start outsmarting, out-positioning, and out-executing the competition.

Erin Botsford

This is a guidebook packed with the best strategies to manage wealth in retirement, helping readers live the life they have always envisioned – without risk of running out of money. With decades of experience as a financial consultant, Erin Botsford shows readers how to identify their preferred lifestyle and sustain it throughout retirement. With the philosophy that money allows choices, she shows readers how to become informed, wise investors – avoiding common pitfalls, challenging the status quo, and refusing to take advice blindly. No one wants to run out of money before they run out of time, and Botsford helps restore confidence in members of the Baby-Boom generation who may have lost assets during the financial crisis. With a thorough examination of the transition into retirement, she addresses common concerns such as Do I have enough money to last a lifetime? What about my spouse and children? Will Social Security be there when I am eligible to receive it? And what about Medicare, health insurance? From a chapter titled “Economics 101” to detailed analyses of market patterns, the author exposes the failures inherent in traditional methods of asset allocation. With comprehensive explanations of investment strategies, she helps readers adopt a new philosophy about their finances and retirement planning in order to protect their hard-earned money.

Shari Harley

We all know how it feels when our colleagues talk about us but not to us. It’s frustrating, and it creates tension. When candor is missing in the workplace, employees feel like they’re working in the dark. Leaders don’t know what employees really think; managers are frustrated when outcomes are not what they expect; and employees often don’t know where they stand performance-wise.

Many of us remain passive against broken, indirect communication habits, hoping that things will miraculously improve—but they won’t. Not without skills and effort.

The people you work with can work with you, around you, or against you. How people work with you depends on the relationships you cultivate. Do your colleagues trust you? Can they speak openly with you when projects and tasks go awry?

Take charge of your career by taking charge of your business relationships. Make your work environment less tense and more productive by practicing direct communication. Set relationship expectations, work with people how they like to be worked with, and give and receive regular feedback.

In How to Say Anything to Anyone, you’ll learn how to

  • – Ask for what you want at work
  • – Improve all types of working relationship
  • – Reduce the gossip and drama in your office
  • – Tell people when you’re frustrated in a way that resonates
  • – Take action on your ideas and feelings
  • – Get honest feedback on your performance

Shari Harley shares the real-life stories of people who have struggled to get what they want at work. With her clear and specific roadmap in hand, she enables you to create the career and business relationships you really want—and keep them.

 

 

Stephen Shapiro

In times of reduced funding, tighter deadlines, and fewer resources, a different approach to innovation is required.

Unfortunately, concepts such as “thinking outside the box” actually kill innovation.

It’s time to innovate the way you innovate.

Stephen Shapiro proves that innovation isn’t just about generating occasional new ideas; it’s about staying consistently one step ahead of the competition.

  • – Don’t innovate everywhere. To get the greatest return from your innovation efforts, you must “innovate where you differentiate.”
  • – Asking for ideas is a bad idea.Instead, ask for solutions to well-defined challenges. In other words, “find a better box.”
  • – Expertise is the enemy of innovation.The more you know about a problem, the more difficult it is to find breakthrough solutions.
  • – The brain kills innovation. The brain is wired for survival, not change.

Shapiro shows that nonstop innovation is attainable and vital to building a high-performing team, improving the bottom line, and staying ahead of the pack. In fact, his strategies have generated a tenfold improvement in innovation ROI.

Marcia Reynolds

Leaders, managers, and coaches are charged with getting people to stretch their limits but are often unsuccessful. Top leadership coach Marcia Reynolds says the problem is, incorrectly handled, difficult conversations create more resistance than growth. Reynolds offers a model and methods for discovering what to say so people change their own minds. As a result, leaders equip people to find their own solutions, see situations more strategically, and grow beyond their limitations.

Reynolds explains how to pick the right time and place to enter the discomfort zone and how to create a “safety bubble” so that people will trust your intentions. Then, drawing on recent discoveries in the neuroscience of learning, she helps leaders ask the kinds of questions that short-circuit the brain’s defense mechanisms and habitual thought patterns. Instead of being told, people see for themselves where they’re falling short and how they can do better, resulting in lasting changes. She includes numerous examples and case studies to see the techniques in action.

Conversations in the Discomfort Zone will never be easy. But with Reynolds’ assistance, a trip there will result in breakthrough solutions, lasting changes, and an engaged workforce.

Bizcast-for-CSBC-Website 

David Poulos

Everyone can “do” marketing . . . right?

Marketing Doctor’s Survival Notes is a collection of essays, articles, blog posts and white papers on marketing and related topics that proves otherwise on virtually every page. The stories, recommendations, guidelines and suggestions in this book are intended to provide marketers with a framework, a skeleton, upon which to build their own experience library. They are based on over thirty years of experimental trial and error, of avoiding, bending, breaking, circumventing and twisting the accepted “rules” of marketing practice. The win/loss record in that time gives credence to the saying that rules were meant to be broken. There are many books on the marketing resource shelf written by highly-credentialed, highly-trained, scholarly academics that outline study after study, testing the rules over time, seeking best practice, showing the exceptions that prove the rules, and trying to explain the evolution of marketing practice in a codified way. This is not one of them.

They should be taken at face value – it’s not exactly a ‘How-To’ book, these are not ‘unbreakable rules’, there’s no hidden agenda here, no subtle sub-text to be deciphered, no underlying mystery to be uncovered. It’s a book of principals, guidelines, brief vignettes of experiences that might have value to those just entering the field, or those transitioning from another pocket of the profession. It’s a book, perhaps not THE Book, but the principals it posits are sound and worth the time to read.

I hope you enjoy reading it, that you learn something from it, that you try to adopt some of the philosophies, some of the techniques, and absorb some of the lessons in the stories presented here.