Category: Books

How come the companies you hear boasting about their growth rarely seem to rack up impressive growth numbers? For all those that talk the talk, very few can say they have doubled their revenue in the last 3 years. And yet, according to our guest today, by simply increasing new sales by 15%/yr and selling 15% more per year to existing clients, doubling revenue is totally achievable.

In the 27 years since he graduated with his MBA, Darrell Amy has worked  heavily in the tech sector, mainly in sales and marketing. Wanting to help a larger number of companies, in 2004 he started his own business, speaking and acting as a fractional Chief Revenue Officer. In 2020, Darrell authored Revenue Growth Engine book  How To Align Sales & Marketing To Accelerate Growth.

He is a member of the Forbes Business Council and co-chair of the Kingdom Missions Fund. Based in Arkansas, with a family that now includes a couple of grand-children, let’s go talk to Darrell Amy.  

Darrell’s personal site

Revenue Growth podcast

Selling from the Heart podcast which Darrell co-hosts 

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Jon Ferrera of GoldMine & Nimble

Tiffani Bova

Jay Abraham

Keith Eades author of The New Solution Selling

Brent Adamson co-author of The Challenger Sale

Theodore Levitt

Seth Godin

Donald J Miller’s “Storybrand”

Episode Reboot – get Darrell’s Revenue Growth Engine audiobook free by filling out this form or by texting ‘revenue’ to 21000

The relationship between those who generate creative work and the rest of us in revenue-related roles can be …strained. From those I’ve talked to in graphics or visual arts, being left to their lonesome makes it hard producing creative that’s exactly what the marketers and other stakeholders wanted. 

That’s one reason why I hope you listen to today’s talk with a graphic designer who wrote a guide for other graphic designers.  To help your interactions with your creative counterparts. 

The other reason is this author’s healthy outlook…on everything. I was first exposed to how zen-like he was when I met him at an event in 2017. Reading LinkedIn updates over the next few years I marveled how he did everything at his design agency, his training business and his college lecturing. When we met again (virtually) in 2020 , he talked about everything he had going on, but in that same calm tone. 

So by the time he came out with his second book this last year – “Stop Looking for Zebras”, I seized the chance to let you hear his unique viewpoint for yourself. 

Let’s go hear from our guest Robert Smith who will explain the book’s title, and much much more.

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Robert’s firm Think-Smith

Registered Graphic Designer designation

Steven Pressfield, “Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be“

Don’t be bugged when accolades don’t come. Bryan Adams called his second album https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Want_It_You_Got_It but had originally wanted it called “Bryan Adams hasn’t heard of you either!”

Episode Reboot.  If you’re stuck on something creative, use Robert’s catchphrase: ‘Let it go, Picasso’

“So, what does your company do?”

This is a simple question, which should have a simple answer. Yet whenever I’m asked it, I feel the tug to drift into a talk-track full of feature dumps. 

This, and other sales sins, lead to situations that lose potential sales. They put all of marketing’s hard work at risk of going to waste. Meticulously-crafted content, research on ICPs and  intent-based campaigns aimed at key Accounts can all be for naught if sales doesn’t have a game-plan for their conversation with the prospect.

It is at this point that companies seek the help of our guest 

After getting his Ph.D. at Stanford Brent Keltner spent ten years as a social scientist at the RAND Corporation. 

While he liked using his academic training, he looked for places his knowledge could be more practically applied.  Jumping to enterprise and early stage companies, he found gaps in their revenue function. But also found he could get sales teams unstuck from specific challenges with a bit of theoretical modeling. 

After more than a decade of experience as a revenue leader, he founded Winalytics LLC, a go-to-market and revenue consultancy whose clients include DealerRater, Lexmark, and Ascend Learning. He continued developing his list of situations and corresponding plays, which led to the publishing of his collection of The Revenue Acceleration Playbook which Brent came out with in 2022. 

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Brent on LinkedIn

Salesforce

Author Todd Caponi

Author Neil Rackham

Buyer First, by Carol Mahoney

Marcus Sheridan books

Socratic method

Episode Reboot. 

Brent freely offers the first chapter of the book at AuthenticityWins.com

In this episode, I spoke with Danny Decker about the book he co-wrote with RJon Robins, “The Automatic Marketing Machine” which came out in 2022. The book combines direct marketing, nurturing emails and retention tactics to form a sustainable supply of ready-to-buy leads.

Danny Decker spent most of his childhood in West Africa, where his parents were missionaries. When he was young, he saw people spending a large portion of their day getting water. In a similar way, businesses struggle to get a steady supply of prospects, even though leads are as important to business owners as water.  In their frantic bid to fill their funnel, they commit random acts of marketing, looking to Danny just like the villagers that he once watched use up precious energy, spending much of their time on just subsisting.

He is based in Huntersville, NC with his wife, two kids, and a hyperactive German shepherd. Through the Automatic Marketing Agency, Danny now shows businesses how to secure their prospect-supply by building marketing systems that work to help businesses reach their full potential. 

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The Automatic Marketing Machine book

Danny on LinkedIn

Danny Decker Marketing

Danny’s Podcast (2018-2021)

Unbounce

Building a Storybrand book by Donald Miller

Episode Reboot. 

The five-step marketing automation email sequence: 

1. Instant response, delivering the resource that the prospect requested. (This is the email we’ve already reviewed earlier in this chapter.)
2. Send two days after the first email, following up to ensure the prospect got the resource, asking if they have any questions, and providing a link to schedule their appointment or visit your store.
3. Send three days later, offering another piece of helpful content such as a blog entry or a video. Also include a link to schedule their visit to your location.
4. Send three days later, sharing testimonials and success stories designed to help the prospect begin to create a vision for how much better life could look once they purchase your products or services. Include a link to schedule their visit.
5. Send three days later, sharing a blog, infographic, article, or video that will be helpful to the prospect. And include a link to schedule their visit.

As a follow up, add the prospect to your main mailing list.

My guest believes that online advertising gave birth to one of history’s greatest frauds, and has become a threat to democracy. That’s right. It’s actually the subtitle of a 2022 book he wrote called AdScam.  

It is the basis for our talk, which looks critically and conscientiously at the unsavory side of digital marketing. 

He’s not some advertising outsider wagging his finger at the industry. Bob Hoffman has been the CEO of two independent agencies and led a major international agency’s US operations. He has written numerous books, including “Bad Men” and “Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From New Jersey.” 

Nicknamed the “Ad Contrarian,” his writings under that name caused Business Insider to recognize it as one of the world’s leading blogs about marketing. He has been honored as the Ad Person of the Year by the San Francisco Advertising Club and served as part of the Advertising and Marketing International Network and the California Academy of Sciences. In short, he knows what he’s talking about when he says there is something  wrong with advertising. 

He and I both agree that there is a war between the privacy-side and the surveillance-side proponents here. And  it’s unclear how this dichotomy we’re in is going to be resolved. I will say that his solution for how to fix this – to eliminate all tracking – is harsher than mine. I’d like to end up with some arrangement where buyers receive advertising that gets close to feeling personalized, but that doesn’t track them without their consent.

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Bob’s original AdContrarian blog

Bob’s website

Bob’s LinkedIn profile with details on his company, Type A Group

Association of National Advertisers

Stephane Hamel

Oxford philosopher James Williams

Throughout  our youth we are subtly encouraged to fit into our surroundings, staying on the expected path of taking our studies as far as we can before getting a job. Today’s guest didn’t do that, dropping out of high school to go work in the retail sector. 

Because she was a go-getter, she was recruited in 1997 to join in a retail experiment by a telecom carrier. At that time, cellphones were exclusively a corporate thing; they were seeing whether there could be a consumer market for them. That turned out to be a great money-making opportunity. 

That led to her owning her own physical store called Parlez Wireless, that operated as an authorized dealer for that carrier. She sold the franchise six years later and since then she has been providing consulting support to other businesses in Service and Retail sectors, as well as Speakers, Consultants and Authors.

After hearing the unconventional path she took, you can see why her philosophy on marketing isn’t the same as everyone else. She believes using those old tired ways yields merely mediocre results, and she wants companies to do better than that. So  she teamed up with Alan Weiss  in 2022 to write her second book. “Masterful Marketing” 

I first met her a dozen years ago at a Podcasters Across Borders conference and I’m so glad to have you join me to hear from Lisa Larter.

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Lisa Larter Consulting

Lisa on LinkedIn

Colleen Francis

Greta Bloskie

Small-to-mid-sized businesses make up half of the economy. When surveys are done on why one company is chosen over another, buyers most-commonly cite the people as the main factor why they buy from them. 

It’s great that the founders or select team members are known by those buyers. But what about those who don’t know them? How can they get a wider circle to know about their expertise and how excellent they are at what they do? 

The vehicle that my guest believes does this better than anything else is public speaking. 

Majeed Mogharreban is a professional speaker, world traveler, and founder of ExpertSpeaker.com. Holding professional speaking status for 10 years, Majeed has worked with the United Nations, Fairtrade, celebrities, politicians, Olympic medal winners, CEOs, and top entrepreneurs to give speeches and tell stories that change the world. 

He is the author of the international best-seller  “Expert Speaker: 5 Steps To Grow Your Business With Public Speaking”

He is the highest-rated trainer in the world at Learning Tree International. Majeed resides in Quebec, Canada.

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Majeed on LinkedIn

Majeed on Twitter

Majeed on Instagram

Majeed is on TikTok

Expert speaker podcast

Episode Reboot. 

Get the free Expert Speaker Book or get time on his calendar

As my eldest son has been in university, he’s worked part-time at a sporting goods store. The section he works in is the category-leader in the store – as you can probably guess – it’s shoes.

Need to admit that I’m not that into shoes. 

I am fascinated by the conversations my son has with customers when it comes to shoes. They not only talk about the design features of a specific shoe. They also chat about the athletes who’ve worn it or collaborated with the  brand to design it. They bring up details about how that athlete signed with the shoe company, the battling that went on between that brand and other companies to win the athlete’s endorsement. 

Clearly when people buy shoes for exercising or training for something, they aren’t just going after ergonomics.   

This back-story on the brand’s struggles matters to them, as if they’ll only wear a brand that works as hard as they do in staying fit or competing in sports. 

This bond clearly applies to shoes, but it obviously reaches to many other types of brands too. 

It’s good for products to have a strong brand message and proof-points of their value, but the true winners are those that connect their story to the customers’ internal values, or that give the customer a transformational experience. 

Today I’m talking with someone who works with what he calls  ‘meaningful’  brands, producing their media creative in a way that resonates with buyers. Fittingly, the name of his London-based boutique agency is ‘Way’

My  guest is a public speaker, an ultra marathon-runner, podcaster, skydiver and minimalist.  In 2021, he released the book we’re talking about today: “Not Another Pair of Shoes”

Let’s talk with Alexander Novicov. 

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Seth Godin

Dyson

EpictetusAlexander’s link to obtain a Free Chapter of the book.

For several years running, noted marketing expert David Meerman Scott would access all the corporate press releases captured by major wire services. These covered product launches, major client signings and other moments when companies would talk about what distinguished them from their competitors. He posted his analysis of all this data and, without fail, almost all of them chose the same words to describe themselves. They made matters worse by, in David’s words, by “using gobbledygook-laden phrases that are so overused to have become meaningless”

We know we must try to embed our brand’s personality into our writing – my last episode featured an expert talking about that. But that’s not all we can do. 

We’ve got to change the way we talk about ourselves, to cut through people’s cynicism. If we’re ever going to be believed by our prospective buyers, we’ve got to own what customers say in reviews of our products or services, and make claims about ourselves that duly represent what they could experience by buying from us. 

Though noble, pulling this off sounds like a ton of work. But the premise of the book I’m covering today is that it’s doable, if you make it part of your normal marketing workflow.  The book which came out in 2022 is called,  “Prove It.“

It’s the second book by Melanie Deziel, whose first book was “The Content Fuel Framework” She is an award-winning speaker and content creator. She has worked at various media companies, including The New York Times and Time Inc. In addition to her professional experience, Melanie has also taught courses on content marketing and digital marketing at universities such as Fairleigh Dickinson, Syracuse, and the City University of New York. 

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One brand that proves it: Patagonia

Melanie’s Linkedin profile

Melanie’s Twitter profile

Book Contributor Phil Jones

Melanie’s agency, Storyfuel.co

Our guest says that marketing  has a problem. In his words, “I think there’s an over-reliance on people’s opinions at the expense of creating a vision and sticking with it.” and he claims this hurts our ability to build brands that get strong traction. Already a published author, he devoted his second book to this argument. The book’s title is his plea to marketers: “Stop Listening to the Customer: Try Hearing Your Brand Instead”

Adam Ferrier is the founder of Thinkerbell, an agency that creates ‘measured magic’, and was ranked 2021 number one Creative Agency in the world by industry publication BestAds – the first time awarded to an Australian agency. Leading Australian publication Mumbrella also lists Thinkerbell as Full Service, Creative, and PR 2021 Agency of the Year (the only time an agency has ever won all three titles in one year).

Adam is one of Australia’s leading consumer psychologists, a brand strategist and an authority on behavioural economics. He’s the author of The Advertising Effect: How to change behaviour (Oxford) and Stop Listening to the Customer: Try hearing your brand instead (Wiley). No stranger to the TV screen of Australia, Adam is a regular panelist on the Gruen Transfer, 7’s Sunrise, and 10’s The Project.

As the creator of the idea behind the WARC World Innovation prize (2013), and winner of the rare Cannes Gold Lion and Gold Effie double, Adam has won at all of the world’s major advertising shows. He created the successful board game The Analyst (translated into four languages), space; an unconference where ‘ideas meet influence’, and the social cause agency DOA (Decade of Action). Adam also co-hosts Black T-Shirts, a podcast that delivers XXL creativity for marketers.

An unstoppable force in the Australian advertising landscape, Adam’s hands delegate the keys to embrace evidence-based creativity – whether to buy, perform or change – through cognitive behavioural psychology, hardcore creativity and a deep understanding of behavioural economics.

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The ‘Share-a-Coke’ campaign

Yousuf Karsh

Adam’s Twitter  profile

Adam’s LinkedIn profileAdam’s Instagram profile

Books that look into these phenomena outside of the marketing realm:

• Dan Gilbert, “Stumbling on Happiness”

• Brene Brown, “Daring Greatly”