AMiable Solution #197: Re-Schooling

With summer nearly over and thoughts turning to a new school year, you may be wishing for a little education yourself.  But if there’s just no time or budget for a marketing course or seminar, check out your colleagues’ bookshelves or your local bookstore for a little inspiration.

Not sure where to start?  Here are three marketing books to look into this fall:

1.      Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D..  An amazon.com bestseller in the “Marketing & Consumer Behavior” category, this book explains why people say “yes” and examines six principles that you can use to become a skilled persuader.  Geoffrey James, a contributing editor for Inc.com, calls this 2006 revised edition “as useful to salespeople as it is to marketers” and “essential stuff” (“Top 10 Marketing Books of All Time,” June 25, 2013).

2.      Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers by Seth Godin.  Despite its age (it was originally published in 1999), this book continues to offer marketers insight into building long-term relationships and creating trust with customers who have indicated an interest in learning more about a company’s product or service.

3.      The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer.  If you just need a little motivation to get you going and don’t want to spend much time processing heavy material, Mitch Joel, President of Mirum, a global digital marketing agency, suggests this book.  In fact, Joel re-reads this book every year.  In his twistimage.com blog article, “20 Best Marketing Books of All Time," he calls Gitomer’s book “simple, fun and short” and “full of how to better position, market and sell both yourself and the products and services that you represent.”