B2B sales and marketing is constantly evolving and there is always something new to learn. Getting into the swing of things with this industry is no easy task and staying abreast of strategies and tactics that have been successful for others can help take you to the next level. Whether you’re trying to grow your revenue by x amount of dollars or create a new, compelling marketing campaign, the books below should make it to your “to read” list for 2017.
1. The 10 X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure
Grant Cardone
The 10 X Rule unveils the principle of “Massive Action,” allowing you to blast through business cliches and risk-aversion while taking concrete steps to reach your dreams. It also demonstrates why people get stuck in the first three actions and how to move into making the 10X Rule a discipline. Find out exactly where to start, what to do, and how to follow up each action you take with more action to achieve Massive Action results.
2. Hacking Marketing: Agile Practices to Make Marketing Smarter, Faster, and More Innovative
Scott Brinker
Hacking Marketing will show you how to conquer those challenges by adapting successful management frameworks from the software industry to the practice of marketing for any business in a digital world. You’ll learn about agile and lean management methodologies, innovation techniques used by high-growth technology companies that any organization can apply, pragmatic approaches for scaling up marketing in a fragmented and constantly shifting environment, and strategies to unleash the full potential of talent in a digital age.
3. Account-Based Marketing For Dummies
Sangram Vajre
Written by Terminus co-founder and #FlipMyFunnel founder, this practical guide takes the intimidation out of account-based marketing in today’s highly digitized world. You’ll be armed with the knowledge you need to increase your reach in real time, giving you greater exposure to other decision-makers and influencers within an account. You’ll discover how, through a combination of marketing technology and online advertising, your messages can be displayed where and when your customers already engage online.
Travis Wright
Today’s customer is savvy, with more options than ever before. It’s critical to meet them where they are, and engagement is the cornerstone of any cohesive, effective strategy. The technological revolution has opened many doors for marketing and sales, but the key is knowing what lies behind each one—what works for your competitor may not be right for you. Digital Sense cuts through the crosstalk and confusion to give you a solid strategy for success.
Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler
How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s fastest growing software company in less than a decade? For the first time, Marc Benioff, the visionary founder, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, tells how he and his team created and used new business, technology, and philanthropic models tailored to this time of extraordinary change. Showing how salesforce.com not only survived the dotcom implosion of 2001, but went on to define itself as the leader of the cloud computing revolution and spark a $46-billion dollar industry, Benioff’s story will help business leaders and entrepreneurs stand out, innovate better, and grow faster in any economic climate.
Jeb Blount
Sales EQ arms salespeople and sales leaders with the tools to identify their most important sales specific emotional intelligence developmental needs along with strategies, techniques, and frameworks for reaching ultra-high performance and earnings, regardless of sales process, industry, deal complexity, role (inside or outside), product or service (B2B or B2C).
Matt Heinz
One of the greatest opportunities with the social Web is to find, engage and convert prospective customers well before they’re actively ready to buy. The channels, relationships and content available openly across the Web make it easier than ever to build strong, scalable pipelines of near-term and future business. This book will help you organize, harness and capitalize on the information, buying signals and qualified prospects identifying themselves to you online every single day. With a mix of strategies, tactics and tools, you can immediately start filling your sales pipeline with more qualified prospects and conversion opportunities.
8. Winning with Data: Transform Your Culture, Empower Your People, and Shape the Future
Tomasz Tunguz and Frank Bien
Big data is becoming the number-one topic in business, yet no one is asking the right questions. Leveraging the full power of data requires more than good IT—organization-wide buy-in is essential for long-term success. Winning with Data is the expert guide to making data work for your business, and your needs.
9. Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World
Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg (Foreword)
With Give and Take, Adam Grant not only introduced a landmark new paradigm for success but also established himself as one of his generation’s most compelling and provocative thought leaders. In Originals he again addresses the challenge of improving the world, but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?
10. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Simon Sinek
START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who’ve had the greatest influence in the world all think, act, and communicate the same way — and it’s the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY.
11. Aligned to Achieve: How to Unite Your Sales and Marketing Teams into a Single Force for Growth
Tracy Eiler and Andrea Austin
Misalignment is frustrating for everyone in sales, marketing, and leadership. It’s also detrimental to your organization’s performance—but the problem is not insurmountable. In fact, most of the obstacles it creates are self-inflicted, and entirely within control of leadership. Aligned to Achieve helps you identify and remove those obstacles, and build a culture of sustainable growth.
12. A Practitioner’s Guide to Account-Based Marketing: A Growth in Strategic Accounts
Bev Burgess and Dave Munn
A Practitioner’s Guide to Account-Based Marketing includes case studies from practicing professionals working in account-based marketing, including pioneering companies such as BT, Cisco, Cognizant, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard and more. It explores the development of account-based marketing as a business practice, including the lessons learned by the pioneers of the approach, and the pitfalls that those implementing it should avoid. It gives a step-by-step process for those wishing to set up an account-based marketing program, and use it tactically to accelerate growth in strategic accounts. An emphasis on practicality, an accessible and pragmatic tool for those who want a holistic guidebook to dip in and out of as they develop careers in ABM.
13. Unleash Possible: A Marketing Playbook That Drives B2B Sales
Samantha Stone
Unleash Possible is a how-to guide for high-growth marketing in complex selling environments. Author Samantha Stone, the revenue catalyst, doesn’t just tell you what to do, she shows you how to do it, and how to partner with sales to get the right results. There is no shortage of inspiring advice calling you to transform your marketing efforts. They all preach, correctly, that B2B marketing has changed and buyers are in control. The problem is—most advice tells you to transform, but does little to address the practical realities of making changes in organizations that have complex relationships with sales.
14. Driving Demand: Transforming B2B Marketing to Meet the Needs of the Modern Buyer
Carlos Hidalgo
In this book, Hidalgo provides a prescriptive roadmap that organizations can follow to ensure that the changes that are made become part of the DNA of their organization. This ensures that true transformation occurs—doing things differently instead of just doing different things.
15. Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content
Ann Handley
In Everybody Writes, top marketing veteran Ann Handley gives expert guidance and insight into the process and strategy of content creation, production and publishing, with actionable how-to advice designed to get results. These lessons and rules apply across all of your online assets — like web pages, home page, landing pages, blogs, email, marketing offers, and on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media. Ann deconstructs the strategy and delivers a practical approach to create ridiculously compelling and competent content. It’s designed to be the go-to guide for anyone creating or publishing any kind of online content — whether you’re a big brand or you’re small and solo.
David Meerman Scott
The New Rules of Marketing & PR is an unparalleled resource for entrepreneurs, business owners, nonprofit managers, and all of those working in marketing or publicity departments. This practical guide shows how to devise successful marketing and PR strategies to grow any business.
17. Inbound Marketing, Revised and Updated: Attract, Engage, and Delight Customers Online
Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah
Inbound Marketing, Revised and Updated: Attract, Engage, and Delight Customers Online is a comprehensive guide to increasing online visibility and engagement. Written by top marketing and startup bloggers, the book contains the latest information about customer behavior and preferred digital experiences. From the latest insights on lead nurturing and visual marketing to advice on producing remarkable content by building tools, readers will gain the information they need to transform their marketing online.
18. Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue
Nick Mehta, Dan Steinman, Lincoln Murphy and Maria Martinez
Customers want products that help them achieve their own business outcomes. By enabling your customers to realize value in your products, you’re protecting recurring revenue and creating a customer for life. Customer Success shows you how to kick start your customer-centric revolution, and make it stick for the long term.
19. Think Outside the Inbox: The B2B Marketing Automation Guide
David Cummings and Adam Blitzer
Marketing automation has been called the most transformative advancement in sales and marketing since the advent of CRM. Never before have sales and marketing professionals had so much insight into prospects’ interests, behaviors, and buying intentions. Many people think of email marketing, and the inbox, as an effective part of online lead generation and nurturing, and it is. But marketing automation provides a complete solution, with the inbox as just one piece of the toolkit. Learn about marketing automation and how it can benefit your business today.
Joe Pulizzi
Pulizzi walks you step by step through the process, based on his own success (and failures) and real-world multi-million dollar examples from multiple industries and countries. Whether you’re seeking to start a brand-new business or drive innovation in an existing one, Content Inc. provides everything you need to reverse-engineer the traditional entrepreneurial model for better, more sustainable success.
Bonus: The Sales Development Playbook: Build Repeatable Pipeline and Accelerate Growth with Inside Sales
Trish Bertuzzi
This book is about not just growth, but high-growth, explosive-growth, the kind of growth that weather satellites can see from space. The success of any business-to-business company is directly linked to how effectively they acquire new pipeline. To skyrocket growth, sales development is the answer. This book encapsulates author Trish Bertuzzi’s three decades of practical, hands-on experience. It presents six elements for building new pipeline and accelerating revenue growth with inside sales.
