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booktag: c-suite book club

Robert Sher

Most midsized company leaders want their businesses to become mighty growth machines. Unfortunately, sometimes that growth slows, stops, or goes the other way, and their leaders don’t know why. Is it the market? Is it the product? Is it the leadership team? Is it something he or she has done wrong – an ill-conceived deal; an unrealistic strategy?

Because business consultants focus on big companies that can afford big consulting fees, and because the problems of the Fortune 500 are very different than those of midsized businesses, there have been very few books that provide relevant growth advice for midsized company leaders, or can point out where the growth-killing potholes hide.

But not anymore.

Robert Sher focuses exclusively on midsized companies. He has long been an advisor to CEOs and their teams at many midsized businesses. His new book Mighty Midsized Companies: How Leaders Overcome 7 Silent Growth Killers gives readers the inside story on many highly-successful midsized companies and describes the critical factors that have powered their success. Sher has spoken to (and advised) many of the leaders of these companies, and he understands what drives midsize company growth as well as the issues can creep up to kill it.

Sher’s book is devoted to the executives who run America’s 200,000 midsized companies as well as those 370,000 businesses with 20 or more employees who are on the verge of becoming midsized. It explains how CEOs and their management teams have overcome the growth killers and instituted mechanisms for avoiding them in the future.

For leaders of midsized companies, and for people who would like to turn their smaller businesses into bigger ones, Mighty Midsized Companies is a unique and essential read.

Kevin Popović

Inside 20YEARS Communications, 20 leaders from different corners of the industry answer 20 questions on the evolution of communications, providing insight to where communications was, is, and will go.

Based on the video series, 20YEARS Communications contextualizes discussion with scholarly research, creating a multi-layered experience for academics and professionals. A thought-provoking learning tool, 20YEARS Communications is designed to generate discussion and critical analysis–ideal for the classroom, for team building, and for the professional communicator looking to expand their perspective.

“Over the last 20 years we’ve seen dramatic advancements in the ways we communicate, from a traditional platform to digital environments. Integrating communications followed by engagement is key to taking advantage of how far we’ve come, and how far we are yet to go.”

“Communication remains the fundamental touchstone for business and education, and it always will. Over the last 20 years in particular, we have seen dramatic advancements in the ways in which we communicate, from a predominantly traditional platform, now to expanding digital environments that give customers a voice without the letters-to-the editors and telephone trees of yesteryear. But for business, communication is only half of the task; the other half is listening. Integrating communications followed by engagement is key to taking advantage of how far we’ve come, and how far we are yet to go.”

-Jeffrey Hayzlett, Global Business Celebrity, Bestselling Author, Sometime Cowboy

David Meltzer

There are seven interconnected principles that are applicable to our lives in general and just as relevant to more specific pursuits such as business. Each principle is supported by four key elements. The goal is to create an energy that scales itself by generating its own like-kind energy. Ultimately, we want to not only put things out into the universe in a certain way that will come back to us twofold, but also where what we empower creates a similar energy. We can manifest things individually, but if we scale or empower others and create collective energy, we can manifest things on a global scale. The most successful businesses thrive by putting energy out there in a specific way, creating additional salespeople because of the power of what they ve provided. Companies like Apple exceed expectations and have been able to thrive utilizing the scalability of this concept. Connected to Goodness provides the knowledge for life and business to enable you to thrive.

Allison Graham

Want to supercharge your life? Getting connected & building authentic, profitable relationships is the answer and this book will teach you how.

Professionals of all stripes and ages are told to ‘get out there’ and network so they can build their careers, grow their businesses and elevate their influence in the community, but they are rarely taught the skills to do that. Most people are lost, intimidated by the idea of presenting their own personal brand, and frustrated when it comes to networking. Despite long hours at events and attempts to make the right connections, they aren’t seeing their desired results.

From Business Cards to Business Relationships is a start-to-finish guide that demystifies the networking process and teaches readers how to truly benefit from getting connected. Allison Graham provides an easy to follow road map that is adaptable to your personality, circumstances and growth goals. You will learn how to strategically decide where to go, what to do when you get there and what to do afterwards to turn those casual business card contacts into meaningful relationships. Allison’s approach is based on the Four Pillars of Profitable Networking: Perspective, Personal Brand, Procedures, and a Strategic Plan.

This is a prescriptive, practical system based on the author’s real-life experience of going from unconnected to connected in a short period of time. No cheesy gimmicks or high-pressure nonsense, just the skills and knowledge that will create success for anyone willing to do the work and follow this advice. Regardless of your past experience or current level of connectivity, your industry or profession, whether you’re an entrepreneur or climbing the corporate ladder: you can accomplish whatever you want by meeting and connecting with the right people. From Business Cards to Business Relationships gives you the tools you need to cement a positive personal brand and build your own profitable network.

Bizcast-for-CSBC-Website

Tom Hopkins

This is a complete and practical guide which highlights the authors’ new strategic approaches to selling when the buyer initially declines or is resistant on a sales opportunity. Hopkins and Katt explain that most sales reps take a traditional linear approach to selling, but that the trick in closing is in taking a more creative and circular approach. That’s the key.

It all starts with how the buyer initially says, “No.” Too many sales reps don’t pay close attention as to how that’s presented. Hopkins and Katt point out that “no” may suggest all sorts of other options — avenues that can eventually lead to the buyer actually saying yes.

The authors introduce a novel concept called the Circle of Persuasion which offers sales reps a new approach in this potentially tricky process. Along the way, WHEN BUYERS SAY NO details prescriptive steps and even sample dialogues that will instruct and guide sales professionals on how to best cultivate buyer-seller relationships.

There’s particular emphasis on how to establish the kind of rapport that ultimately leads to a successful close.

Steven Overman

A generation of people around the world, from Boston to Bangkok, from New York to New Delhi, are making everyday choices in ways that defy traditional logic. They are judging where and how their clothes were made, not just how they fit. They are thinking global but buying local. They are spending their money and their time, forming loyalties, casting votes and even enjoying entertainment based increasingly upon their desire to make a positive impact on others and the world around them. This new generation believes they can and must make the world better, and they expect business and government to get with the program.

The implications of the Conscience Economy are not “soft.” Ignore it, and your consumer or voter base will rebel, using a host of free tools and cheap connectivity to spread their rejection to peers around the world in real time. Leverage it, and Conscience Culture is a wellspring of financial upside. The Conscience Economy is the must-read guide to this unprecedented shift in human motivation and behavior. Author Steven Overman provides context, inspiration and some basic tools to help readers reframe how they evolve and grow whatever it is they lead—whether it’s a community, a business, a product, or a marketing campaign. From the boardroom to the startup loft, from the State Department to the pulsing marketplaces of the developing world, The Conscience Economy will help international leaders, influencers, investors and decision-makers to manage, innovate and thrive in a new world where “doing good” matters as much as “doing well.”

Mindy Hall

Too often executives allow their functional roles to define who they are as leaders. Instead, they should focus on the type of leader they want to be, and let that knowledge guide deliberate choices and actions – to lead with intention. Hall argues that this is the most overlooked skill for those at the top, and often is the differentiator of great leadership and a source of long-term competitive advantage. She offers real world examples and a prescriptive plan for choosing your actions with care and discipline, day by day, moment by moment.

John Brubaker

The Coach Approach: Success Strategies From The Locker Room To The Board Room is a book designed to help business leaders and their teams achieve peak performance. John Brubaker shares his coaching experience and knowledge by applying it to the sport of business. Additionally, he shares techniques and strategies from some of the nation’s elite coaches, executives and athletes.
The Coach Approach will help you focus on the process not the product. You will learn how to obtain better results in business with straightforward tools that turbocharge performance. Coaching in the workplace is even more important than on the athletic field, because in the sport of business every day is gameday!

This book will be your coach to guide you through all four quarters of the fiscal year. It incorporates a combination of motivation, accountability and practical leadership skills to help you lead your team to victory.

Albert Dunlap

Al Dunlap is an original: an outspoken, irascible executive with an incredible track record of injecting new life into tired companies. The business media have coined a new verb–“to dunlap”–when describing a fast company turnaround. In April 1994 he became CEO and chairman of Scott Paper, which had lost $277 million in 1993, was on credit watch for excessive debt, and whose stock had been comatose for seven years. In a mere nineteen months, Scott had record earnings, the stock had increased in value by $6.5 billion (over 200 percent), and Dunlap merged Scott with Kimberly-Clark in a stock swap that valued Scott at $9 billion and created the second largest consumer-products company in the United States.

Mean Business combines Dunlap’s colorful personal history–his working-class background, employment, friendship with such people as Sir James Goldsmith and Kerry Packer, his views on why too many executives think of themselves as corporate royalty–and his provocative ideas on management and leadership. His specific, tested program on how to evaluate and choose a management team, get the lowest costs from suppliers, improve the balance sheet, and develop a real strategy make this an invaluable book.

The controversy about corporate performance and how to achieve it is near the boiling point, as executives face the hard fact of business life: What is good or even excellent today won’t be satisfactory tomorrow. Mean Business is absolutely essential for both companies in trouble as well as those at the top of their game.

Colleen Francis

Put an end to boom and bust sales cycles – once and for all!

Do your company’s sales results lurch between highs and lows – with the end of each quarter reduced to a mad scramble to meet quota? For many sales organizations, the pattern is commonplace and unshakeable. Nonstop Sales Boom explains how to break this unhealthy cycle and achieve strong, steady results – every quarter, from every member of the team.

The secret is to broaden the focus from merely closing deals to actively nurturing the four critical stages of client engagement: Attraction: Fill the funnel with lucrative prospects; Participation: Turn them into customers faster; Growth: Invest in valued clients; and Leverage: Turn customers into referral generators.

When companies concentrate on only one or two of these areas, their results become erratic. With the field-tested strategies in Nonstop Sales Boom, readers will learn how to systematically attract a regular flow of prospects and move them smoothly through the pipeline.

Packed with enlightening examples of sales disasters and standouts, this practical guide brings balance to the selling process, reliability to revenues, and booming sales all year long.