Recommended Reading

Visit any physical or online bookstore and you’ll find thousands of books related to sales, marketing, management strategy, and global perspectives. Some of them are better than others. The following have helped us on our journey.

On Selling

Lee Bartlett, The No. 1 Bestseller, London: Lee Bartlett, 2016.

Jeb Blount, Sales EQ, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2017.

Michael Bowland and Keith Hawk, Get-Real Selling, Belgium: Nova Vista Publishing, 2008.

Anthony Iannarino, The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need, New York: Portfolio Penguin, 2016.

John P. Kotter, Power and Influence: Beyond Formal Authority, New York: Free Press, 1985.

David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford, The Trusted Advisor, New York: Free Press, 2000.

Rick Page, Hope Is Not a Strategy: The 6 Keys to Winning the Complex Sale, New York: Nautilus Press, 2002.

Neil Rackham and John Devincentis, Rethinking the Sales Force: Redefining Selling to Create and Capture Customer Value, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999.

Neil Rackham, SPIN Selling, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988.

Nicholas A. C. Read, Target Opportunity Selling: Top Sales Performers Reveal What Really Works, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2013.

Jagdish Sheth and Andrew Sobel, Clients for Life: How Great Professionals Develop Breakthrough Relationships, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Andrew Sobel, All for One: 10 Strategies for Building Trusted Client Partnerships, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009.

Duane Sparks, Action Selling, Minneapolis: The Sales Board Inc., 2004.

Jerry Stapleton, From Vendor to Business Resource, Fort Collins, CO: Summa Business Books, 2002.

Dave Stein, How Winners Sell, Austin: Bard Press, 2002.

Tom Stevenson and Sam Barcus, The Relationship Advantage—Become a Trusted Advisor and Create Clients for Life, Chicago: Dearborn Trade Publishing, 2003.

On Marketing

Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Boston: Little Brown, 2000.

Hugh Macfarlane, The Leaky Funnel, 2d ed., South Melbourne: MathMarketing, 2007.

Mary A. Molloy and Michael K. Molloy, The Buck Starts Here: Profit-Based Sales & Marketing Made Easy, Cincinnati, OH: Thomson Executive Press, 1996.

Geoffrey A. Moore, Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Products to Mainstream Customers, New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Geoffrey A. Moore, Inside the Tornado: Strategies for Developing, Leveraging, and Surviving Hypergrowth Markets, New York: Collins Business, 2004.

Emanuel Rosen, The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word of Mouth Marketing, New York: Doubleday Business, 2002.

Robert J. Schmonsees, Escaping the Black Hole: Minimizing the Damage from the Marketing-Sales Disconnect, Mason, OH: Southwestern Educational Publishing, 2005.

Dan Stiff, Sell the Brand First: How to Sell Your Brand and Create Lasting Customer Loyalty, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.

On Management

Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson, The New One Minute Manager, London: Thorsons Harper Collins, 2015.

Bob Gates, A Passion for Leadership: Lessons on Change and Reform from Fifty Years of Public Service, New York: Knopf, 2016.

Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance: Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround, New York: Harper Collins, 2002.

W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition, Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2015.

L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Building Leaders by Breaking the Rules, Austin: Portfolio Penguin, 2015.

Michael E. Porter, Competitive Strategy, New York: Free Press, 2004.

Simon Sinek, Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, London: Penguin Books, 2011.

David G. Thomson, Blueprint to a Billion, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2006.

Jack Welch and John A. Byrne, Jack: Straight From the Gut, New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2003.

On Personal Professionalism

Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, New York: Pocket Books, 1988.

Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, New York: Free Press, 2004.

Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Work Week, New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

Raymond M. Kethledge and Michael S. Erwin, Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017.

David H. Maister, True Professionalism, New York: Free Press, 1997.

Og Mandino, The Greatest Salesman in the World, Hollywood: Bantam, 1995.

Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within, New York: Free Press, 1992.

On Western Business Strategy

Baron Carl von Clausewitz, On War, New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Donald G. Krause, The Art of War for Executives: Ancient Knowledge for Today’s Business Professional, New York: Perigee, 2007.

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, New York: Bantam Classics, 1984.

U.S. Army with an Introduction by General David H. Petraeus, Lt. General James F. Amos, and Lt. Colonel John A. Nagl, The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

On Eastern Business Strategy

Chin-Ning Chu, Thick Face, Black Heart: The Warrior Philosophy for Conquering the Challenges of Business and Life, New York: Business Plus, 1998.

Ted Fishman, China, Inc., New York: Scribner, 2005.

Kaihan Krippendorff, Hide a Dagger Behind a Smile: Use the 36 Ancient Chinese Strategies to Seize the Competitive Edge, Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2008.

Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, New York: Shambhala, 2005.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War, with a Foreword by James Clavell. New York: Delta, 1989.

On Global Perspective

Gary Allen and Larry Abraham, None Dare Call It Conspiracy, revised edition, Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books, 1982.

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, 20th Anniversary Edition, New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2017.

Daniel Estulin, The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, Waterville, OR: TrineDay, 2007.

Thomas L. Friedman, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Acceleration, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016.

Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.

Gavin Menzies, 1421: The Year China Discovered America, New York: HarperCollins, 2003.

Condoleezza Rice, Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom, New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2017.

James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds, New York: Anchor, 2005.

Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Change Everything, expanded edition, New York: Portfolio Hardcover, 2008.

Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World, New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2008.