Friday Funnel Focus Blog by EPOCH Sales Management Solutions
14 Books to lead yourself, your business, and your sales team
Happy New Year!!! Hope everyone had a great holiday season and you feel recharged for a great 2024! At EPOCH Sales Management Solutions, one of our Core Values is:
Always Learning - We strive to grow ourselves and the business
In that spirit, we want to kick off the new year with 14 books to lead ourselves as we lead sales for our small businesses. The books are arranged into these four categories:
- Self
- Leadership
- Business
- Marketing
- Sales Management/Sales
SELF: As Mike Weinberg shares in his book, “Everything flows from culture. Culture is everything”. As the leader of our business, we need to first take care of ourselves to help instill that winning culture. Our attitude is impacted by four things: Our Spirit, Our Mind, Our Body and, Our Tribe. We recommend 3 books to help us grow in these four areas.
- Spirit - Another one of our Core Values is:
Faithful - We strive to be the best disciples of God.
Irresistible by Andy Stanley, is a book that represents Jesus' new command,
“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” (John 15:12) as well as any book I have read. I think Andy is one of the best there is at communicating what it means to truly live life as Jesus would want us to do.
Our intimate relationship with God is our best protection against worry, resentment, and guilt as growing entrepreneurs. While our Younger Next Year authors below may cringe a bit at this comment, it has been said, “It’s not what we eat that will kill us as much as what eats us!” Taking care of our spirit is where it all starts. While you are at it, check out Andy’s podcasts and video bible studies.
- Mind - Here is another one of our Core Values:
Passionate - We love what we do
Hero on a Mission by Donald Miller is a book that can anchor a great goal setting exercise. He blends his “story making” talents with Victor Frankl’s logotherapy concepts as a means to build goals that truly matter to us. It is a great book for us, as leaders, as well as each of our salespeople.
- Body and Tribe - Younger Next Year by Chris Cowley, Henry S. Lodge, MD with Allen J. Hamilton, MD touts itself as a book to “Live Strong, Fit, Sexy and Smart - Until You’re 80 and Beyond. (Here is a link to the women’s version.) This is not a book about living longer, but living better thanks to taking care of your body, connecting with your tribe, caring, and committing to something.
Business: I selected the two books below as the best place to start for that small business owner seeking to grow their team from themself to 5 salespeople and beyond.
- Traction by Gino Wickman is an excellent guide for the small business owner that wants to build a solid foundation for their business. The tools in this book will arm you for almost any challenge or issue that you face as you scale your business from 1-50 employees to 10-250 employees.
- Business Made Simple by Donald Miller, is an excellent resource to help reduce the most common mistakes made by small business owners. Donald’s biggest strength is in the area of Storytelling and Marketing, which we will address further in the upcoming Marketing section.
We recognize that Verne Harnish, Dan Sullivan, and Michael Gerber have also written good business books for small businesses and countless others have written great business books. We believe that Traction is the best guide to start with when building a business that seeks to grow from 1-50 people to 10-250 people.
Leadership: Multipliers by Liz Wismen As a Leader are you multiplying or diminishing your team? Truth is that most of us do both. In Liz Wiseman’s book, “Multipliers, How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, you can learn how to optimize your “multiplier” skills and reduce your “diminisher” effect.
Marketing: Small business owners need an ROI for their marketing dollars that does more than build awareness. They need leads that help build a healthy sales pipeline. Donald Miller is your go-to guide.
- Marketing Made Simple by Donald Miller is an excellent guide to help small business owners get their one-to-many messaging and marketing right. We recommend our clients scan chapters 1-9 and use Chapter 10 to manage their execution. When you get to step 2 in Chapter 10, use Donald’s next book to help you get your message right.
- Building your StoryBrand by Donald Miller provides an excellent framework to get your marketing messaging right.
We believe a key Marketing metric for small businesses is the “number of engaged contacts in your email list”. To augment your List Building capabilities, you might want to consider the principles that Amy Porterfield provides in her List Builders Society Program and Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. You may not be her target market for her Digital Course Academy, but you might find the concepts behind her List Builder Society program very helpful.
There are two other areas to consider when promoting your Marketing Made Simple Program that Donald does not detail: Blogging and Social Media. Following his program will make you better at blogging, podcasting, and social media, but we recommend that you consider the following to help you in these two areas.
- 60 Days to LinkedIn Mastery by Josh Steimle provides a guide to gaining traction in this area. We caution that LinkedIn constantly changes its rules and one needs to constantly update their strategy there.
- Business Blogging is a free course in the HubSpot Academy that helps provide technical details to support your blogging efforts.
Sales Management/Sales: We believe that the most challenging hire for a small business owner is their first SUCCESSFUL salesperson. Our first goal in helping small business owners scale their teams is to help them Make Their Business … Sales Team Ready. These books best help small business owners scale their teams from themselves to 5 salespeople and beyond.
- Sales Management
- Cracking the Sales Management Code by Jason Jordan and Michelle Vazzana provides a blueprint to operationalize your sales team.
- Sales Management Simplified by Mike Weinberg, might be the best Sales Management book on the market for small business owners.
- Sales
- New Sales Simplified by Mike Weinberg, is the best New Business Development Book I have read in over 35 years.
- The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes may be a bit dated, but it provides one with a blueprint to truly master sales.
- The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need by Anthony Iannarino details what it takes to be successful in sales.
Master the principles in these five sales management/sales books and you can build one great sales function!
Come join the EPOCH Sales Management Solutions HubSpot Community.
While growing Small Businesses and Building Great Sales Teams is hard, the process to do this is simple. But, simple does not mean easy.
Want to explore the process further, schedule a free 30-minute consultation.
In the meantime, get our guide to the 3 Part Formula to a Healthy Sales Pipeline
