If you’re looking for books to help you grow your business and increase sales, we suggest looking to the experts and reading what they’re reading. After all, they’re successful for a reason.

We chatted to one such expert, Abbie White, founder, and CEO of Sales Redefined with a client list of some of Australia’s leading banks, tech, and telco companies. Before starting Sales Redefined in 2017, Abbie managed a $100 million-plus portfolio with leading tech giant IBM and has since become a leading voice in the sales and marketing community.

As an avid reader, Abbie has done the leg work to scour the best business and sales books for inspiration and fresh techniques. Here are her Top 7 book recommendations to get you started on your sales journey. 

1. The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes

Chet Holmes has worked with over 60 of the Fortune 500 companies and is one of the leading teachers in sales and marketing. With a 4.6 rating on Amazon, this is a great book to start with.

“This book offers highly practical sales strategies,” Abbie says. “My favorite concept out of the book is the Dream 100 which identifies who would be your dream 100 clients, and then creates regular touchpoints with those clients. Chet Holmes also talks about needing pig-headed discipline if you are to win with sales.”

 2. Sales EQ, by Jeb Blount

‘Emotional intelligence’ is the new buzzword in sales and marketing and what many experts describe as the key to sales success. If improving your ROI is at the core of your mission, this one is for you.

“For a long time, people thought sales was just about relationships and product,” says Abbie. “There’s substantial research these days showing how high-performance salespeople are higher in EQ.”

 3. Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne

New York Times bestselling authors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne are professors of Strategy at INSEAD. If you’re looking to pivot your business in a different direction or shift to a new strategy, there is no better hands to be in.

As Abbie says, Blue Ocean Strategy offers readers a new strategy that moves away from the ‘red ocean’ where everyone is fighting with each other for clients.

“Fighting in the ‘red ocean’ essentially boils down to price,” Abbie says. “If it’s only about price, it’s a race to the bottom. But through carving out a “blue ocean” you are in an uncontested marketplace where you can win.”  

4. How to Make Millions With Your Ideas by Dan Kennedy

Who doesn’t love a catchy title? Reminiscent of 90’s self-help books, this is an oldie but a goodie with lots of practical tools and real-life case studies.

Abbie says, “It’s an old-school book although the strategies are easily modernized. A lot of it is about the little things that have a big impact.”

5. Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson

Russell Brunson is the founder of ClickFunnels, a million-dollar company and one of the fastest-growing software companies in the world. Here, Russell shares his secrets to his success, a worthy bible when you’re in need of inspiration.

Abbie says, “In my opinion, Russell Brunson is one of the best thought leaders globally on sales funnels.”

6. Chapter One – You Have the Power to Change Stuff by Daniel Flynn

This is the ultimate playbook for entrepreneurs just starting out. Its raw, grassroots approach is both entertaining and inspiring. If this book doesn’t empower you to start now, nothing will.

“There are just so many lessons in this book,” Abbie says. “It’s about how you make a massive impact, how you cut through the noise, how you get traction on sales but with absolutely no budget and from ground zero. Also, it’s about doing good along the way.”

7. The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney, Jim Huling and Sean Covey

If you’re looking for a tried and tested method, a ‘winning formula’ for success, this is where you start. The 4 disciplines set out in this book, from notable and award-winning authors and business leaders, have been tested and refined by over 100,000 teams from all over the world.

“Often, when mistakes are made, it’s not for lack of strategy or good ideas, but rather an error at the execution stage,” says Abbie. “This book gives you the tools to execute your well-considered strategy to ensure the best possible outcomes”.

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Consequently, the acceleration of music streaming and instant distribution options will continue to rise, growing from 9% to 47% of total industry revenues in the past six years. Well, the industry is, of course, fighting back, capitalizing off the advantages live-streaming and online album debuts yield for both artist and consumer. 

For producers, like Mike Wise, who helped turn James Blunt’s music more ‘beautiful’ than he ever thoughts, this is the time to ‘stay relevant.’ While personal branding isn’t something Wise continuously works on as a producer, he most definitely helps his artists discover and maintain their branding and sound.  

In working with many of today’s most relevant artists like James Blunt, Fall Out Boy, Alyssa Reid, and Neon Dreams, understanding digital branding is a major component of music production. 

Grit Daily: Why do you think branding is important in today’s digital age of music?

Mike Wise: Today’s music landscape is very dense! Listeners have unlimited access to music and artists have greater access to listeners than ever before. While this has somewhat democratized the music industry it has also made it a bit challenging to cut through the noise. For better or for worse, it can take more than just a great song to reach people and that’s where branding can give an artist an edge. 

GD: How do you use personal and commercial branding in your everyday career?

MW: While I’m not the biggest user of social media (perhaps I should be), I’m conscious of the fact that Instagram is essentially one’s business card and this is where you can see what I’ve been working on. I believe that one’s work speaks for itself and that your catalogue becomes your brand as a music producer and songwriter. 

GD: Explain how you have branded (yourself) over the years as a music producer?

MW: While I’ve been fortunate to work with some bigger established artists, a lot of my success has come from working with unknown, developing artists. I think to some degree people look to me to help shape a sound/direction for a new project and that’s something I’m proud of. 

GD:  How has COVID-19 impacted the need for you and other artists/producers to take a closer look at their branding?

MW: This pandemic has made it even more clear that the biggest stage for artists is the internet. Your work and your image are at everyone’s fingertips so it’s important that you put your best foot forward at all times, so to speak. For better or worse, artists and producers need to stay active online to keep people’s attention. The upside of this is the fact that you have a lot of control over your own image and brand which, if used well, can be a great tool. 

GD: What brands are you loyal to when it comes to your music, equipment, etc. and why?

MW: I’m a Pro Tools user through and through. For me, it’s the best tool to realize my ideas. I use a lot of Universal Audio hardware and software as well. 

GD: What observations have you noticed from the artists you have worked with when it comes to their branding?

MW: I really believe that the most effective branding for an artist is simply being yourself. If an artist is likable for some unique reason, they will resonate with people! While listeners do fall in love with songs and records, they also fall in love with personalities. In today’s world, with the internet and social media, people can smell fake. Any time I’ve worked on a project where the artist is putting forward some kind of facade, it generally doesn’t connect. It’s also way easier to be yourself! 

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Hitting on existential themes of loneliness, love, and creativity – one can quickly notice that his videos are educational but different. Instead of being mundane walkthroughs of specific topic areas, they were packed with beautiful fragmented film coupled with uplifting orchestral music with embedded lessons from the likes of Kant, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus and other famous philosophers and scientists.

On apathy

This newly discovered content allowed for an apathetic college student with a poor academic past to perceive school in a brand new light. The ability to engage with informative content through this medium almost instantly resulted in a transformed GPA, a deep love of philosophy, as well as education generally.

So, what’s the larger point here?

In the 21st century, we have an education system built for an age of mass industrialization. A factory bell rings, people rise from their assigned posts, they are shuffled into the next room to endure the same dull setting and experience on repeat week after week. Yet when those students go home, whether they are 12 or 32, they can have a conversation with George Washington on their Playstation, fight in the Battle of Waterloo alongside the Duke of Wellington or Napoleon on their computer, or explore the entire known cosmos via their iPad. 

What’s dead?

The assembly line model of education is dead and if we don’t integrate these tools into the classroom we will continue to lose students. Western civilization, whether we want to admit it or not, is no longer driven by large factories and coal plants but by big, revolutionary ideas — we have transformed into that consumer-based economy we once dreamt of. Our fears of the future in many parts of the developed world are justified and the restructuring of society will not be easy but let me ask, is this not an easy first step that we can take? 

Where better to start with than our youth and while I acknowledge fully that not all students are like me – not everyone needs a dopaminergic surge in order to want to learn — we can’t continue to leave such a large swath of the population behind. We are not China or any other totalitarian state, we do not coerce our children and students into regimented institutions. This naturally begs the question, how should we get students through that door every morning?

As Jason Silva says, “the IMAX theatre is our new cathedral,” or stated differently the place where we now go to be taken out of ourselves, to be inspired and captivated into a larger than life experience. We can make schools that collective hub of enthrallment and I look forward to the day when a child in Kindergarten can walk up to Martin Luther King Jr., with his or her virtual reality headset on, shake his hand, and ask him “how?” 

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