Business Book Must Reads

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Starting the conversation…

What’s the best business book you’ve read recently?

Host: Jessica Dewell
Panelists: Michael Coffey, Michael Bernstein, Miles Austin

What You Will Hear:

The impact of experience.

4 key elements of a moment.

Different ways to look at strengths in leadership.

Core strengths a team needs.

Key traits followers want in their leaders.

Always find a way to do the work to be done.

When it takes 10 prospects to close 1, there are 9 more needed in your development pipeline.

We can’t sit back and ride the wins, we must keep working to sustain the wins.

Stand out and differentiate in an impactful way.

Compliment your natural strengths.

Make the time and dedicate it to the work to be done.

Confidence builds with practice.

Prioritize activities for productivity.

Qualify through how we use time.

It is BOLD to keep investing in yourself by reading and learning.

Notable and Quotable:

Miles Austin 3:48
Why do we tend to remember the best or the worst moments of an experience, as well as the last moment and we forget all the rest? Why do we feel most comfortable when things are fairly certain, but we feel most alive when they’re not

Michael J. Coffey 8:18
You as an individual are best served by doubling down on what you’re good at. In other words, don’t be well rounded. Whatever you do, don’t try to be well rounded. Because the things that you’re good at, you’re good at, so get better at those things. And the things that you’re not good at, you’re going to put an enormous amount of effort into trying to get better at those things, and not see much from that effort.

Michael J. Coffey 8:49
A team should try to have strengths spread across a number of domains: executing, influencing, relationship building, and strategic business.

Michael J. Coffey 10:06
Followers follow leaders who build trust, who show compassion, who provide stability, and who create hope.

Michael Bernstein 11:50
You tend to look for shortcuts, you tend to utilize technology in certain ways and end up wasting more time trying to figure out the technology instead of actually you making calls.

Michael Bernstein 12:00
The mindset of what a fanatical prospector is: do they act competitive, confident, relentless, thirsty for knowledge, adaptive, very efficient, typically no shortcut in sales, and a strict numbers game.

Michael Bernstein 12:48
Once you win itself, a lot of people either sit back, or get compliments of the sale, or celebrate the win. And in actuality, when you win a sale, and you really want to grow your business, you have to not only add one prospect to the pipeline, but you have to add the nine prospects to the pipeline just to get the next sale.

Michael Bernstein 13:33
The Anatomy of a sales slump, generally people think “Oh, you know, maybe there’s issues with closing, or writing a business proposal,” or many other things, where it’s more of a prospecting issue.

Michael Bernstein 13:58
If you don’t have a good pipeline, and if you don’t constantly prospect every single day, no matter if it’s a good day, or if it’s a bad day, you can find yourself in a slump, and you can start questioning yourself of you know, I’m having issues closing, why is that. And then the negative issues can come.

Michael Bernstein 14:13
You can create a situation where you’re desperate to get sales, and that can be viewed on the phone, people can hear that in your voice. People can sense that. So it’s just the overall sales cycle, the focus that people are tending to get away from just continue to prospect every day, no matter what. That’s ultimately the solution to many, many sales, people’s issues.

Miles Austin 15:14
The field is more and more crowded every day. Online, there are new websites, there’s new tools, there’s new approaches. There’s new authors. It’s very crowded. And I think the challenge is just to stand out from the crowd. And an even bigger challenge for many of us, how do you compete with those big kids.

Michael Bernstein 20:41
I just set myself up for success, I feel, and I start calling with the most likely yes’s, or the deals that I think are going to close the soonest and build my self estee. When you have good call, good call, good call, meeting, meeting, meeting, and then when you call someone blind, the confidence that you have, you already won. And then all of a sudden, that’s going to takes it to another level. Your confidence and energy in the call later on, and that prospecting hour, sometimes are the biggest wins, because you’ve already felt like you wan.

Jess Dewell 21:55
Their skills we need to learn, whether it’s creativity. Whether it’s self reflection, whether it’s how we use our time. Doesn’t matter. It’s all about skill acquisition, and honing those skills.

Miles Austin 22:17
Every one of us is reading something, which first of all is unique in our society as it is, but I think that says we’re investing in our career and our ability to grow. Whether it’s business or personally, it’s important, I think the winners learn all of their life,

Miles Austin 24:27
I have to be able to move quickly, Speed is money.

Michael J. Coffey 27:01
I like efficiency and effectiveness and things going by at a quick pace, and getting things done, and all that kind of stuff. But with my clients, oftentimes they want hand holding.

Michael Bernstein 30:24
Just to know the customer, I try and identify their personality, very early on, either on a sales call or meeting, I try and get an understanding of when is a good time to call the. What type of communication they like. They’re like texting? Do they like Facebook Messenger, phone, email? And I try and to mimic that type of communication. That to me can build relationships quickly. And because you’re doing business in a way that you can adapt the way that they want to do business, you can get to your end goal quicker.

Miles Austin 31:08
The greatest gift my mom ever gave me was the love of reading, period. No other thing comes close. If you’re not reading, you’re not learning, you’re not growing, and you’re eventually going to get passed by everyone else that is.

Michael J. Coffey 31:31
Learning is like paddling in a river. Not to advance is to fall back.

Michael J. Coffey 31:38
In order to make progress anywhere, you need to constantly be learning.

Michael Bernstein 32:38
When you’re not expecting something, they come. When you want something to come, it won’t come.

Michael Bernstein 33:12
There’s a lot of similarities between just relationships with people and building a better business.

Michael Bernstein 33:21
If you want something real bad, it’s going to be hard to get. And if I don’t want something, sometimes just falls into your lap and then you get more confidence.

Resources:

Tags:

leadership, compassion, prioritization, changing markets, adapt, business growth, customer service, effort, teamwork

What’s the best business book you’ve read this year?

Books expand perspective. What you read influences how you look at daily situations as well as unexpected problems, an enhances the ability and desire to be more inquisitive. Books and podcasts offer concepts that you can practically apply – just read (and listen)! Jess hosts panelists Miles Austin,”The Web Tools Guy” and Sales & Marketing Speaker & Trainer,  Michael Bernstein, Lead Account Executive for T-Mobile, and Michael J. Coffey Jr., digital strategist and educator, to discuss business book must-reads.

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