Most Influential Books On "Build A Sales Machine"

In 2002, I went to salesforce to get my ‘MBA in building a sales organization’. Although I’d managed a VP Sales previously, I’d actually never done sales myself. Of course, I read all kinds of sales books while at salesforce.com. However, although each book had a few useful ideas, I didn’t get much out of any one book. I felt the authors usually took a few good , simple ideas (about 10-20 pages worth), and then hid those ideas among 300 other pages and cruft in order to make the book big and expensive enough.

So – I threw away all the books and started from scratch. Being very experimental, I tried things on my own and learned from experience. I’m fascinated by process improvement, organizational design, and how to maximize the morale and potential of teams of people. I’m drawn to books that get you to think different…because if you think like everyone else, you’ll end up like everyone else.

And now the list:

“Wooden”, John Wooden
Wooden is the ultimate management genius. “Neutron Jack” might have worked in the past, but Wooden is the future.

“The Toyota Way”, Jeffrey Liker Toyota has created an amazing ever-improving organization.

“What Is Lean Six Sigma”, Michael George I love this book. Short, sweet, amazingly powerful…if you take the principles to heart.

“The Goal”, Eliyahu Goldratt An easy read, in story format, about how to think about process and business improvement.

“How To Become A Great Boss”, Jeffrey Fox
A great, simple management playbook. I like his bite-sized chunks style.

“The Seven Day Weekend”, Ricardo Semler This book is BRAIN FOOD, and my favorite book on organizational design. But it’ll scare traditional managers and executives who feel that control over everything is the key to success (it’s not).

“The Breakthrough Principle of 16x”, Richard Koch
A great, easy read on the power of 80/20.

“Winners Never Cheat: Everyday Values We Learned as Children (But May Have Forgotten)”, Jon Huntsman
Stay away from anyone who thinks lying helps you succeed in sales (or business). Whether you’re a company or person, authenticity and honesty are always the best policies. In the internet age, when word of mouth spreads like lightning, your karma (good or bad), will catch up with you faster than ever.

Link to this list on Amazon:
Most influential books on the thinking behind “Build A Sales Machine”

Next Up
I just ordered “Punished By Rewards”, by Alfie Kohn, which was recommended by Chris Kenton, CEO of MotiveLab (and who’s now founding a new company in the social media space):

“Our basic strategy for raising children, teaching students, and managing workers can be summarized in six words: Do this and you’ll get that. We dangle goodies (from candy bars to sales commissions) in front of people in much the same way that we train the family pet.

In this groundbreaking book, Alfie Kohn shows that while manipulating people with incentives seems to work in the short run, it is a strategy that ultimately fails and even does lasting harm. Our workplaces and classrooms will continue to decline, he argues, until we begin to question our reliance on a theory of motivation derived from laboratory animals.

Drawing from hundreds of studies, Kohn demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives. Programs that use rewards to change people’s behavior are similarly ineffective over the long run. Promising goodies to children for good behavior can never produce anything more than temporary obedience. In fact, the more we use artificial inducements to motivate people, the more they lose interest in what we’re bribing them to do. Rewards turn play into work, and work into drudgery.

Step by step, Kohn marshals research and logic to prove that pay-for-performance plans cannot work; the more an organization relies on incentives, the worse things get. Parents and teachers who care about helping students to learn, meanwhile, should be doing everything possible to help them forget that grades exist. Even praise can become a verbal bribe that gets kids hooked on our approval.

Rewards and punishments are just two sides of the same coin — and the coin doesn’t buy very much. What is needed, Kohn explains, is an alternative to both ways of controlling people. The final chapters offer a practical set of strategies for parents, teachers, and managers that move beyond the use of carrots or sticks.
Seasoned with humor and familiar examples, Punished by Rewards presents an argument that is unsettling to hear but impossible to dismiss.”