Ask Outrageously; The Secret to Getting What You Really Want by Linda Swindling
I felt encouraged to be bold after reading Ask Outrageously. This book is a well-researched book, and the examples help enormously to deliver the message such that you think “I can do that.”
Communication is the glue to everything we do but we are not taught vital communication skills and asking for what you want is fundamental. This book helps you to understand what motivates you may not motivate others sharing the same values. You are encouraged to prepare, present the reasons to support WIIFT (what’s in it for them) and then ask. It best to ask them and listen to understand their perspective first and then clearly state what and why; when asking for. The book helps you see how you can make it easy for the respondent to say yes, essential in a selling situation.
I cannot see how anyone could not gain from reading this book. I would highly recommend this book.
Social Selling: Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers by Tim Hughes and Matt Reynolds
I have meant to read Social Selling for a long time it has been sitting on my desk for a year, it was the only hard copy book I packed for my 6-week book writing retreat. There is nothing I would dispute in Social Selling. Social Selling is a well written, excellent piece of work that gives you a structured approach to community building.
Social Selling is a book for people new to social selling and those that want to brush up on the subject. I am jealous that I did not write this book because I think Tim and Matt have done an excellent job. Social Selling is a must-read if you want to develop your social selling skills or build the community for your organisation through these social selling techniques, you need to look no further. I would highly recommend this book.
Business Storytelling for Dummies by Karen Dietz and Lori Silverman
I am halfway through this book but impressed enough to write a review before I finish. I have already used chapter 6 to recraft one of my stories. Business Storytelling is by far one of the best books I have read on storytelling.
Stories are no longer add on but core to many forms of business presentation. Storytelling for Dummies is your bible. Dietz and Silverman break down everything you need to know about narrative and story structure and giving ample examples.
I love the chapter on data storytelling I have not seen this before. The before and after examples are brilliant. There is no way you cannot get the point easily implement the insights to your business stories.
This book is your business storytelling bible, detailed, thorough, well written with copious examples. I would highly recommend this book.
Selling with Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud by Lisa Earle McLeod
I enjoyed reading the book, Selling with Noble Purpose. I love the concept of caring for your customer more than you care about making the sale. McLeod called this NSP, Noble Selling Purpose. The Noble Selling Purpose applied to sales, is having a clear understanding of the difference your efforts and company solutions create for the specific customer. Clarity of purpose is critical.
The company mission statement must have a Noble Purpose statement, although I believe in the best organisations have customers at their core, as an organisational strategy a noble purpose alone will not make a product-focused organisation customer-focused, it is just the start of the required cultural change needed to become a truly customer-centric organisation.
McLeod succinctly shows why Noble Selling Purpose is a critical ingredient to achieve sustainable growing sales, giving ample examples throughout the book.
This book is for sales managers and sales organisations; however, McLeod has made the book accessible for sales entrepreneurs wanting to define their Noble Purpose.
McLeod work is engaging and insightful backed with research and great stories. The selling with Noble Purpose is ideal for any sales leaders, holiday reading list.
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization by Peter M. Senge
In the Fifth Disciple, Senge captures concepts of how to create a learning organisation or a productive ecosystem.
The world is no longer independent but interdependent, and the job of the seller is to look for connections. Senge shows how we can break the traditional cycles of linear thinking to systems thinking. Transformation involves a focus on more than your current position. Proactive is seeing the whole system; reactive is seeing the symptom (1-way causality). Thinking of the whole and all the interconnected consequences, this is system thinking.
I love the explanation that complex systems are cause and effect with a distance in time and space.
It is essential to understand the DNA of the system you are working with if you want to transform it
I love the example of the cold shower with a slow response when you turn the shower on and it cold, so you keep turning until the shower suddenly get hot and you have to set the dial in the opposite direction because it is too hot. We think the problem is that the temperature dial is not working, but we do not understand the system has a slow response. If we only turned the dial slightly and waited the temperature would respond accordingly. Another example is when a driver oversteers (turns the wheel more than is required) for the car to take the corner and crashes into the corner.
Stop creating the world you have now. I can relate to this in corporate decision-making, recruitment and especially in sales, selling marginally more than the customer already has or solving a symptom of a problem, that create a broader problem for the ecosystem. A systemic system understands the behaviours that shape the current position (the whole).
Although you know that you cannot force another to think differently, and Senge suggest you must to work on thyself first and that this influences others. My model Scale Your Sales has this insight at its core.
I loved the explanation that the word emotion is a predisposition to taking action. I also thought it interesting that the reason we do not have people-centred learning organisations says Senge is because we have no idea the level of commitment to change that is required. I also love on the discipline of building shared vision: “It’s not what the vision is – it’s what the vision does.”
There is so much new insight to be gained from reading The Fifth Discipline. I now want to look for a stepped process to apply the learning and systematically make the changes. It is an enlightening read and so much more than the benefits of operating under a learning organisation.
This book is well written and structure, I found it enlightening from start to finish, highly recommended.
The Dance of Change: The Challenges of Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations (A Fifth Discipline Resource) by Art Kleiner, Bryan Smith, Charlotte Roberts
Having read The Fifth Disciple, I went on to The Dance of Change, to be honest as I went through this book, I lost track of what I was reading and why I was reading it.
Many excellent examples and case studies bring the Fifth Discipline to life, but after a while, it felt like more of the same.
In Dance of Change, Senge argues that the key to achieving and sustaining significant change lies in changing people’s primary ways of thinking. This book demonstrates how to implement the five disciplines and practical ideas to achieve organisational change.
There are many examples of how organisations have initiated, maintained, and recreated and lead with new thinking systems to change and create a learning organisation.
If your core discipline is change management, then I think you will enjoy this book more than I did.
Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
Cybernetic means the steer the human brain or man has a machine that he uses/steers.
Maxwell Maltz was a plastic surgeon in the 1950s, and though his work he realised that he could fix the external image but if this new image is not aligned with the patient’s internal image the psychological problems persisted.
I have read self-help book all my life from Tony Robins NLP, Law of Attraction, teachings of Abraham, and more recently Byron Katie, Noah St John, Brene Brown and Mel Robbins. All valuable work and helpful in their own right, but I do think self-image is the essential missing piece. If not aligned with where you want to go, your journey to self-improvement is difficult if not impossible.
I remember learning about visualisation in the 1990s as part of a self-development course; I even practised it for many years. It is not until reading Psycho-Cybernetics that I realised what was missing. Maltz states the self-image is a strong determinant of how we think, act and achieve.
I work with sales professionals, and sales training fails because it cannot change the outcome of the sales unless the self-image of the salesperson matched the actions, mindset of success and desired sales outcomes.
In this book, Malts explains that the internal picture you carry of yourself directly affects your real sense of self-confidence, well-being and successful outcomes. The importance of focusing on your self-image is something I’ve found many other works glossed over or lacked. Therefore I would recommend Psycho-Cybernetics to everyone.
Self-Image Psychology, states if you can change your self-definition you change your self-image.
Realise that your actions and emotions are a result of your self-image and beliefs give you the lever needed for changing personality. Practising mental practice of the self-image pictures gives you the opportunity to make perfect.
Psycho-Cybernetics should be essential reading for all school leavers and adults as it explains the mechanism of the brain and how you can use this powerful success mechanism. I would highly recommend this book.
Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life by Bryon Katie
I like the question structure alternative that makes cognitive behavioural therapy easily accessible. I found the Q&A of the woman who suffers from child abuse particularly alarming and lost faith in the content. Nevertheless, I think there is value in the simple and clear questioning that Bryon refers to as self-inquiry called The Work. It helps you to discard the negative stories you tell yourself, which Bryon says is a source of suffering, the truth or “what really is”, this is your joy.
