Author: Ian Lurie

Approaching prospects and customers as if you’re just having a conversation tailored specifically for their situation is a great way to better connect with them and ultimately get them to buy. That’s the basic premise of the book, and I found it to be a good, albeit short, read.

Since the book IS so short, this is a quick read for anyone looking for ideas on a different approach to marketing their goods or services. It’s to the point and delivers some good food for thought.

Overall, I’d recommend Conversation Marketing although it won’t give you a brand spanking new approach to try. There are a lot of books that touch upon this concept (Seth Godin talks a lot about it in his books) so the odds of you having read other works that deliver the same basic message are pretty good if you’re into this sort of thing.

Author: Ian Lurie

Approaching prospects and customers as if you’re just having a conversation tailored specifically for their situation is a great way to better connect with them and ultimately get them to buy. That’s the basic premise of the book, and I found it to be a good, albeit short, read.

Since the book IS so short, this is a quick read for anyone looking for ideas on a different approach to marketing their goods or services. It’s to the point and delivers some good food for thought.

Overall, I’d recommend Conversation Marketing although it won’t give you a brand spanking new approach to try. There are a lot of books that touch upon this concept (Seth Godin talks a lot about it in his books) so the odds of you having read other works that deliver the same basic message are pretty good if you’re into this sort of thing.

Author: Chet Holmes

First off, this is a fantastic book for anyone involved in the marketing of a business; not just salespeople. Chet Holmes does a great job connecting the strategic aspects of business with the sales and marketing functions to the point it would be hard not to increase revenue if you take action with the 12 areas he covers in the book.

As an aside: I also sat in on one of the webinars given by one of his direct reports, and it was fantastic. The webinar covered many of the same concepts included in the book, but it sometimes helps to hear the material presented in various ways so that it sticks.

Education based marketing is the way to go in today’s business climate, and Holmes’ drives that point home very well throughout the book. Potential consumers and prospects are bombarded with messages every day, and they are very self centered when they make a purchase. In order to standout from the clutter, an education based marketing approach is necessary and highly advisable based on Holmes’ approach.

Overall, I’d highly recommend this book if you’re looking to improve your marketing’s reach and increase sales as a result. If you take action, you will get results.

By Michael Wade

Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters by Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery, and Mark Thompson mentions plenty of famous names but its main emphasis is on how ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

Although some of the book’s findings are predictable (Successful people maintain a high level of passion for their calling), one of the book’s strengths is its willingness to challenge conventional wisdom – they’re not big on balance and love obsession – or give it some new twists, such as noting that if you don’t love what you do you’ll be at a competitive disadvantage to someone who does.

A listing of traps that can keep you from responding to your true career desire includes:

1. Getting too practical.
2. Letting things (“Bright Shiny Objects”) own you.
3. Being seduced by competence; i.e., beng simply good instead of great.
4. Pleasing others instead of yourself and creating false choices (“ors”) when you can have “ands.”

Those are only sidelines. The main theme is the necessity to find a cause that will engage your passion and your efforts and, regardless of your personal charisma, provide you with the charisma of its mission and the self-esteem that comes from achievement. The cause is all. It gives you drive, sustains you when setbacks occur, and is far more realistic than mere positive thinking.

Persistence and a rock-solid determination not to act like a victim bolster the commitment to the cause. But so too is the pragmatic willingness to drop projects that are failures if they prove to be inadequate avenues to furthering the cause.

There were many times when I found myself arguing with Success Built to Last. “But what about this event?” and “There are exceptions to that!” came to mind more than once. I have to admit though, that the book’s most powerful appeal is not the Big Hairy Audacious Goals (from Jim Collins’s and Porras’s Built to Last) or its interesting personal success stories.

It’s the power of The Cause and how finding one can unleash creativity, strength, and energy that a quest for mere personal advancement will never unchain.

This is an intriguing piece that isn’t organized like your typical book. It’s very thought provoking, but it’s not a step-by-step manual or something you can read front to back in a weekend that some may desire. You’re not going to walk away after reading this with a laundry list of things to do that will propel you to another hemisphere professionally. You will likely have a lot of thoughts percolating in your brain that may seem far fetched at the moment but are likely legitimate ideas to expand upon. That’s what this book does—it takes you out of your mental comfort zone and expands your thinking. To me, that’s the mark of a good book so I love it. Others may find it a bit bizarre because it’s not organized in a logical start to end fashion.

I’d suggest keeping notes of your thoughts as you read this collection of blog postings, and please don’t try to read it all at once. Your brain will hurt! That being said, I highly recommend this book if you’re someone who enjoys stretching your mind and considering various perspectives.

Want to get your own copy? Click this link: Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas