Bill Rice Internet Marketing > books

10 Books that Will Improve Your Sales

April 14, 2011 By

Selling words

Whenever I’m asked about sales success I always list three important skills: writing, reading, and listening. Today, I’m going to focus on reading and give you my current favorites.

1. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – I always list this book first. Influence is the core of every sale. Yet, many of the key elements and triggers that create influence aren’t intuitive. Many even seem silly, but they work—like magic! This is the book that unveiled that magic to millions. But, never fear it still works because each “Weapon of Influence” attacks the core of human psychology.

2. Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness – I still pick this book up routinely. I have read it many times, but I still grab it when I’m stuck or in a sales dip. You can literally open this book to any page and grab a tip that will help you in your very next sales conversation.

3. The Approachable Salesperson: 22 Daily Practices for Enabling Customers to Buy– My guess is you may have never heard of this one, but it’s one of my favorites. It’s written and self-published by Scott Ginsberg, the Name Tag Guy. The whole premise is increasing your approachability, which believe it or not is the biggest weakness I encounter in working with sales folks. We hide our phone numbers, emails, and addresses. We remain ignorant or self-righteous about social media. We generally are invisible to our market until we ambush them on the phone. Scott will make you an expert on approachability.

4. How To Win Friends and Influence People – Time for classics. This book is often attributed as the first best selling self-help book. Why it is the Godfather of self-help is logical—friends and influence are the cornerstones of any success in life. Get this. Read this. Practice this.

5. Think and Grow Rich – Another classic. There are a lot of similarities between the advice given in the How to Win Friends and Influence People and Think and Grow Rich, which should give you even more confidence this stuff is important to get.

There are so many awesome sales titles, but these are pillars that should be in any sales library. If there are any of these titles you haven’t read buy, read, and commit to implement one thing you learn this month.

 

Update: Do you only see 5 books here? Yep, I goofed. Here are the other 5 books to improve your sales.

Filed Under: Books Tagged With: books, reading, social selling

Books I Want to Write

December 11, 2009 By

Acknowledgement: This post is inspired by Chris Brogan’s hugely helpful 100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write. I recommend you bookmarking this and grabbing a topic the next time you are short of blogging ideas.

Intelligence 2.0

Why Think About Writing a Book?

I have always wanted to write a book, or two.

Unfortunately, it always seems that I am on a treadmill that is set just a step too fast. You see I have had a long-term addiction to start-ups. That means I am usually in the mode of getting things up, running, and profitable. Then I have a tendency to get bored and move to the next challenge.

However, over the last five years things have changed a bit. I bootstrapped my own start-up, which put a lot more skin in the game–my money, my family, my people (second families), my company. It is sort of my legacy and the passion is sticking. That means two important things for a potential book:

  • I have a bit more free allocated time to write the book
  • I have learned a ton and made many mistakes that are sure to be valuable

With the motivation explained and the creative juices flowing, let’s take a look…

Bill Rice’s Book Ideas

Here are a few ideas for books I want to write (and why):

  1. Black Ops Guide to Internet Marketing Strategy - Having spent my early career in the Air Force as a Counterintelligence Case Officer I have a grand appreciation for tradecraft and motivating covert (but impactful) behavior.Internet Marketing is not such a different affair. We are still dealing with humans, motivation, and behavior. And most interestingly, there are little tradecraft secrets that we don’t really talk about. Things that work, but sound a little dark and sinister when said out loud. I would love to compile this sure to be powerful guide to Internet Marketing.
  2. Competitive Intelligence 2.0: Using Social Media to Eavesdrop on the Competition - This is a little of life coming full circle. Kaleidico has been taken deep into the Competitive Intelligence realm by our sales, marketing, and now PR clients. Again, the counterintelligence background comes in handy, only the targets I snoop on have changed.The open and increasingly social Web is enabling the consumer to get closer and closer to the brands they buy. Meanwhile, the companies increasingly are embracing the reduction in buying friction and free promotion it often brings. However, the same social infrastructure is leaking company intentions, strategy, and talent like crazy. Smart competitors are learning how to use this opportunity to get stronger.
  3. Social Media for Sales: Getting Your Sales Team to Engage - Boy, have I seen how hard this is to do. Sales people are either taking this strategy on their own initiative and working through the hard knocks, or simply losing opportunities. The tools are not perfect and there is a steep learning curve. I know to take a lot of the steepness out of that curve with some very specific tools and processes I have refined.
  4. How to Integrate Social Media and Web 2.0 into the Classroom - This one is a bit more personal and would be a research project. Personal because I have three kids, from elementary to middle school. Personal because they are getting little or no introduction to these skills that are going to be critical to them competing in the global economy. And, a research project because I am not sure there are many examples.All the same, as a Trustee on a Public School Board I know this is important to start working on sooner than later.
  5. When the Market Changes, What Do You Do with Your Business? - This is another very personal one, but sure to be a hit with many entrepreneurs. Seth Godin introduces this a bit in his book The Dip.I want to take it a step further and talk about recreating your business when the market changes, or in my case (mortgage sales software) literally goes away overnight. There is nothing quite like 75% of your revenue sending you bankruptcy notices inside of payments, in a single month–ice water on the back.

    What do you do?

What do you think? Which book(s) would you buy and why? I would love to hear your feedback and suggestions.

Filed Under: Reading List Tagged With: bill rice, book deal, books, writing

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