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It's Only Common Sense: Summer Reading

Editor's Note: To listen to Dan's weekly column, as you've always done in the past, click here. For the written transcript, keep reading...We are in the heart of summer and it’s time for some great reading. While others may be reading the latest Robert Parker, Mary Higgins Clark, or Dan Brown, I’m jumping into some great business books that just arrived.

When I started getting interested in this genre of books about 30 years ago there were only about 10 or 20 new books to choose from at one time. Now, there are hundreds, nay thousands, of new business books at any one time--not to mention a great backlog of recently written books.

I love books that deal with marketing, customer service, and sales. I like books that are well written, interesting, and full of real-life anecdotes. I prefer books written by someone who has been on the job, someone who can really teach me something because the author has been there and done that. "That" being, of course, what the author is writing about.

I won’t read a book that has too many charts because that screams boring (academic) to me--I won’t read anything from Harvard, for example. I won’t read books whose paragraphs are numbered 1.3 or 7.2--that means the book was written by a left-brained person and, as far as I’m concerned, left-brained people can’t write, but that’s just me.

I want to tell you about a few of the books that I’m reading this summer, and maybe get you interested in actually reading one or two of them:

Attack of the Customers: Why Critics Assault Brands Online and How to Avoid Becoming a Victim written by Paul Gillin, with Greg Gianforte, is one hell of a good read. If you don’t think that social media has any power or influence, you really need to get this book, read it, and change your mind. The authors discuss how social media has influenced--no, make that changed--the course of business. Using real-life examples, they demonstrate just how this has happened.

This book shows how online customer attacks change the way companies do business and how your company should handle the situation if you are attacked in a similar manner. You've heard some of these stories, but these guys take you right inside the controversies and show you how they were handled.

Remember the Bank of America fees story? The bank announced they were going to start charging fees for having an account with them and one young lady, through social media, created such an uproar that the bank backed down. This angry customer got so many people behind her so quickly that the story became international news. Remember when Chick-fil-A was found to be donating to right-wing, anti-gay groups? That story created a backlash on Facebook that was so extreme that battles were fought not only in the media, but in politics as well.

This is fascinating stuff and pertinent to our industry. If you don’t think something similar could happen in our industry just remember that feeling you get in your gut when you hear that one of your customers’ products burned up and they have traced the problem down to a defective circuit board. Yikes! You need to read this book.

Smart Sales Manager: The Ultimate Playbook for Building and Running a High Performance Inside Sales Team by Josiane Feigon. I referred to this book in a previous column because it has had such an influence on me. I predict that this is the book that will change the way we think about all future sales management--and I don’t just mean inside sales. This book discusses how to sell in a world of social media. The author shows us why the old ways don’t work anymore and what to do instead. Feigon describes what the Sales 2.0 customer looks like and how to sell to him. She also spends much of the book teaching the reader how to sell to, and manage, the incoming generation fondly called the millennials. This book is not just a great read, but another great study for this summer.

Speaking of the Millennials, I’ve just started reading a book called Marketing to Millennials: Reach the Largest and Most Influential Generation of Consumers Ever by Jeff Fromm and Christie Garton. This book discusses how to sell to these newly-minted consumers. If you’re as old as I am and want to sell to these guys, you’d better read this one.

Another one of my favorites is Steve Curtin’s Delight your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary. I’m a true sucker for any book that has a title like this. Frankly, I buy and read any book that talks about great customer service and how to deliver it. I am always looking for new and exciting ways to deliver great customer service, and you should be too.

So, here’s the deal. You can sit around reading your Danielle Steele novel this summer or you can do something for your career, your job, your company, and, most importantly, yourself. How you spend your time is entirely up to you, but if you are serious about your career I would urge you run to the bookstore--actual or online--and pick up one of these books. It can only help because it’s only common sense.