"Read a Little, Learn a Lot" by Ken Bernhardt Taylor E. Little Jr. Professor of Marketing and Special Assistant to the Dean Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University Atlanta Business Chronicle - June 5, 2009 Truett Cathy, founder and CEO of Chick-fil-A, often says "You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read." Last year 11,000 business books were published. If you placed one on top of another, the stack would reach as high as a nine-story building. So how does one know what to read? For the past 25 years, Jack Covert, founder of 800-CEO-READ, a business book distribution company, has been identifying the ones that are truly important to read. He and Todd Sattersten, the president of the company, write a daily blog on business books (800ceoread.com); compile a monthly list of the best business books recently published; present Annual Best Business Book Awards; and have just published a fascinating book, The Hundred Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You (see 100bestbiz.com). The criteria the authors used to select the 100 books were a) the quality of the idea, b) the applicability of the idea for someone working in business today, and c) accessibility (the quality of the writing). Given limited space, I will comment on a few of my favorite marketing books which are included on the 100 Best list. Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, originally written by Al Ries and Jack Trout in 1981 with a revised edition in 2001, is perhaps the most important marketing book of all time. It documents the importance of a brand and describes how a brand can "own" a place in consumers' minds. Think Volvo and safety, FedEx and overnight delivery, Crest and cavities. A runaway bestseller in 2002, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, uses lots of examples to document how ideas, products, messages and behaviors spread like viruses. The book discusses the role of three social groups, the Mavens, the Connectors and the Salesmen, and the importance of "The Stickiness Factor." A more current book with a similar theme is Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, published in 2007. The authors propose six principles of how to sell ideas that "stick" in people's minds: Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotional Connections and Use of Stories. The book gives readers the tools to obtain more traction for their ideas and get more attention for their products. A New Brand World, published in 2002 by Scott Bedbury with Stephen Fenichell, is one of the best books on branding. Bedbury was the senior vice president of marketing at Starbucks from 1995 to 1998 and before that was head of advertising for Nike for 7 years, where he helped launch the "Just Do It" campaign. The book discusses brand building, brand extensions and brand loyalty, and demonstrates the importance of product research, customer research and competitive market research. This led to the strategy to "reward our customers with consistently better service, not a sometimes cheaper cup of coffee." The best book on how to provide superior service quality is Discovering the Soul of Service by Leonard Berry (who used to be my marketing colleague at Georgia State). As Berry states, the purpose of the book is "to identify, describe and illustrate the underlying drivers of sustainable success in service businesses." Although written a decade ago, the examples and lessons presented in this book are as valid today as they were when they were written. The Experience Economy, written in 1998 by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, documents how to take service to a higher level, creating memorable customer experiences. As the authors state, "Those businesses that relegate themselves to the diminishing world of goods and services will be rendered irrelevant. To avoid this fate, you must learn to stage a rich, compelling experience." The book contains many examples of how companies have successfully done this. Another excellent book on the marketing of services is Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing, written is 1997 by Harry Beckwith. Beckwith maintains it takes a completely different skill set to market a service versus a physical product. He explains, "This is not a how-to book, although it contains many concrete suggestions. Instead, this is a how-to-think about book." The book shows how to understand what people really are buying, position your service, understand prospects' buying behavior and communicate with customers. How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients by Jeffrey Fox is one of the best books on selling. A rainmaker is someone who brings the revenue into an organization. Fox presents significant practical advice on how to build your customer base. The purpose of reading a business book is to find solutions to problems. Occasionally spending about $20 and a few hours of your time reading the right books can result in your being a very different person five years from now. Happy reading!