It's been a great summer!  For me, it's been wicked busy with just enough time off here and there to refresh. Off this morning with the unhappy cats already packed into the car to head to Vermont for a week before back to Boston for cataract surgery on the other eye the last week of August. I thought I would end the summer blogs with answers to a question that I get asked all of the time and for whatever reason was asked by a bunch of people after last Saturday's blog:  "What books do you recommend for keeping up with Sales & Marketing?"   

•  First, I read a ton. Always have since college and more and more over the past 10 years feel compelled given what I do with our customers and especially in my teaching Sales and Marketing at The Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts.  What that means in real time is about a book a week at bedtime and at least an early-morning hour every day reading WSJ and Bloomberg News on the treadmill. I enjoy it; it makes me realize how much I don't know and the repetition of the process itself kicks me into gear for the day ahead.
• Harvard Business Review. I love what I do in the sciences of Sales and Marketing and realized 5 to 8 years ago that everything that was happening in the real world of successful selling at the best companies we were involved in was nothing like in "the old days" of Sales back in 2019.  Actually, that shift from decades-old "Relationship Selling" to the principles of "Solution Selling' in the 1980s to today's "Value Selling" began for me as a result of a cover article in the Harvard Business Review 15 years ago outlining a  "Science of Sales" approach focusing on selling customer value and not selling products. It totally changed the way I thought about both Sales and Marketing.  
  
  So that's my first recommendation today.  Subscribe to The Harvard Business Review if you want to be on the leading edge of change. No, it is not meant just for large corporations, and, yes, you will not find many of the articles to be relevant to you personally. Focus on what you want to learn about, and for me, that's their articles on Sales, Marketing, Venture and Strategy.  
  
  
  Buy David's Book Today!.  If you want to understand what's happening today in Marketing, buy David Meerman Scott's new 9th edition (just out this week) of his iconic "The New Rules oif Marketing & PR".  Simply, the best book! and the most up to date regarding today's best "advanced" Marketing tactics in general and specifically how to unfold and actually put into practice the magic of Inbound Marketing from the guru of Inbound. I've known David for a long time and find him both captivating and thought-provoking while totally rooted in what it takes to bring marketing into the real world of bottom-line revenue, His book is a required pre-read for my course, and I'm privileged to have him come to class and lecture. 
  
  
• Louis Gudema's Book, Bullseye Marketing, 2nd Edition.  Solid introductory basics, timeless, and steeped in hands-on examples from a solid marketing pro!  Superb for basics and for a refresh!
• McKinsey's Blogs.  I read their relevant blogs every day focusing on Sales, Marketing and thought-provoking Strategy.  Data-filled and forces me to think both at a strategic and tactical level frequently pushing me move beyond just considering ideas to actual experimentation. Simply excellent!  Also, since I end up driving all over New England raking up around 40,000 miles a year, most of what they produce is also available on podcasts.  
• HubSpot Academy's Videos.  As you know, I'm a huge HubSpot user and flag-waver.  Their underlying strategy and superb technology leading to "A Single Source of Truth" mirrors the way I both think and sell. To keep up to date, and my fingers in the dirt, I frequently work through their excellent videos on what interests me at the time.  I require my students to be HubSpot certified in Inbound Marketing at the beginning of our Marketing course, plus I've been thinking how to use HubSpot more meaningfully in the course projects.  That pushed me to work through 17 videos on a variety of topics along with 3 recertifications this summer.  Easy-to-use, frequently updated and very well-paced, and, yes, there is the certification opportunity if you want it to add to your LI, but it's not necessary.  
  
  

Executing on your Sales Plan in 2024!

For a few ideas on your sales plan for the second half of the year and improving the productivity of your own team, you can click here for our new  "Writing the Winning Sales Plan in 2024", for a few ideas on structure, sales models, process funnels and a number of productivity tools and how to recruit and hire the best. 

Or, just give me a call, and we can kick around a few ideas, talk about game plans and specific training..

www.derbymanagement.com  
Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts.