Top 15 books for marketers

Holidays were left behind, and the time came when it was time to stir up the results of the past year (for those who did not have time to do this before the holidays). As Ostap Bender used to say: “Give me the sausage, you fool! I will forgive everything! But today we will give not sausage, but knowledge. The first, after the New Year's post, will be devoted to useful books, which, from my point of view, are worth it for a self-respecting marketer to spend on them the most valuable resource - his time.


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Why the choice fell on these books (You can skip)

This top was made up of more than 60 books that I managed to read in 2015. I will say right away that the choice was not simple, and it included not only professional-oriented books (there are a lot of them everywhere, especially in the MYTH ), but also those folios that can be added to fiction. They were selected by only one, but very important criterion - the impact on the thought process. Each book should force the reader not only and not so much to get an instant take-and-do solution, but to induce analysis, reasoning on those difficult working issues that the marketer faces every day.

TOP 15

Bergman Peter - 18 Minutes

Disciplinary book. It is obligatory for reading to people with the torn working schedule or very big loading. Reading it, you can solve three key “HOW?” Questions for yourself on various examples:

• how to build a working day;
• how not to distract on third-party tasks;
• how to analyze the results.

18 minutes in the title, the author explains with the following formula (for those who like short):

The basis of productivity and concentration is the proper organization of the day. It should be a kind of ritual that you will observe every day. It consists of three main steps:

Step 1 (5 minutes in the morning) - plan your day. Make a list of tasks for the day, prioritize them. View past tasks. Is it possible to cross out something from them?

Step 2 (1 minute per hour) - focus. Start your watch, smartphone, or computer so that it beeps at the end of each hour. When you hear a beep, take a deep breath and ask yourself how productively you have been working for the last hour. So, hour after hour, control your day. Such small segments will help to better assess their productivity.

Step 3 (5 minutes before bedtime) - evaluate your day. Before bed, ask yourself: “How was your day?” What have I learned? Have I not forgotten anything? ” This assessment is very important, because it shows that you have achieved your goals.

Harvey Ben - 100 Greatest Sales Letters

Book reference. I will say right away - it is not very fresh and this is its strength. In the "100 Greatest ..." collected in retrospect a huge number of examples, headings and phrases that have been used over the past 100 years and led to a significant increase in sales and the success of companies. Great for those who plan to launch serious e-mail campaigns.

Quote from the book:

PS I hope I spelled your name correctly. Please check the enclosed liner to verify this. If I made a mistake - forgive me and please make corrections.

From what will be the final version of its writing on the insert, directly determines the design of your desktop reference book, on the cover of which your name will be carved in gold letters - congratulations on behalf of publishers

Chan Kim - Blue Ocean Strategy

Book guide. In the “Strategy of the Blue Ocean” signs in points: what, in what sequence, why and why you need to do to make the product truly unique.

Quote from the book:

The scarlet oceans symbolize all branches existing at the moment. This is a known part of the market. Blue oceans denote all industries that do not yet exist today. These are unknown parts of the market.

Ford Henry - My life, my achievements

Desktop "Bible". Much of what I could tell about this book would already look like a spoiler, so I will be brief. “My life, my achievements” will make it very serious to think about how to approach the creation of a product / solution and further work on its promotion. Required to purchase in paper form and personal place on the bookshelf.

Quote from the book:

From a similar self-deception, suggesting that life is a battle that can be lost every minute, having made only one false move, there is an addiction to regularity. People get used to being only half alive.

Underhill Paco - Why we buy.

Book-adviser. Paco Underhill describes the market more than a decade ago, on the example of supermarket chains. The book, in spite of its venerable age, very strongly focuses on the "change of places of the components": how to locate the product, what factors should be considered and what to focus on when working with the target audience. In fact, this is a work on usability in the offline, how, after long and painstaking research, those small changes in points of sale were noted that help customers, and as a result - increase profits.

Quote from the book:

The last criterion for evaluating the work shop, the easiest is the waiting time. We talk about it everywhere, it is the most important factor in customer satisfaction. When a customer is forced to wait long in too long lines (or any other places), their opinion about the service in this store falls dramatically.

Halvorson Heidi Grant - Psychology of Motivation

The book is a crib. "Psychology of Motivation" addresses a number of questions on how to learn to understand people, their motivations and stereotypes. How to work with these people and for what, in no way, it is impossible to focus. who are not at all like you, and influence them when you need it?

Quote from the book:

To be useful - to know what is happening, to manage events, to achieve the desired results. Have the opportunity to interact with the world that surrounds us, understand its goals and manage it in order to achieve its goals.

Branson Richard - Fuck it all! Take it and do it.

The book is a motivator. For those who do not want to reread in all the details of “Losing Innocence”, Richard Branson gathered all his ideas and thoughts, during the period of his main business activity, into a brief guide. A huge number of examples from the personal life, in practice, showing how to solve this or that "insoluble" problem. "To hell with all of it! Fight and do "makes the brain work at 100%

Quote from the book:

Lessons:
- Fight and do
- Think “yes”, not “no”
- challenge yourself
- Set goals
- Live fun
- Strive to change the world
- Stand firm on your own feet
- Be true to people
- Live full life

Andy Weier - The Martian

There are not so many art books in the world about which it can be said that this work must be included in the must-read list in all courses and trainings on drawing up marketing plans / project management / sales planning. This is just a mega-mega smart book that teaches:
1) set the correct tasks;
2) plan the achievement of the result;
3) analyze the variants of events during long periods of time;
in a simple, understandable and quite fascinating form. No borrowing and divorced from the life of the theory, as is the case with many certified textbooks. Take it and do it.

Quote from the book:

The main hope is potatoes. It is prolific and contains enough calories (770 per kilogram). I'm sure my potatoes will sprout. The problem is that I am not able to grow enough of them. On 62 square meters I may be able to get about 150 kilograms in 400 days (for which I have enough food). Total will be 115,500 calories, that is, 288 calories per day. Given my height and weight, and also if I agree to go hungry for a while, I will need 1,500 calories per day.

Piri Gordon - Run fast and without injury

The book is about health. We all know that good work requires not only a healthy body, but also a healthy mind. One of the ways to keep yourself in good shape and solve super-complex problems is running. It is about him that the repeated champion of England in running, the consultant Adidas and just a wonderful trainer, Gordon Peary, writes in his book. The book discusses in detail the technique of running, the requirements for athletes. athletic shoes and motivation.

Quote from the book:

I say this to confirm that there are no unattainable heights, if only there is the will to strive towards them. People themselves invent restrictions.

Makarevich Andrey - In the beginning was the sound

The book is a memory. A lot of irony, thoughts about life, and that surrounds us all. An excellent book for those who want to take a break, look around and reflect on further actions in their lives.

Quote from the book:

For each of us, it is better for him to grow up, to whose music he kissed the girl for the first time and woke up the next morning. Music is only part of the overall picture of happiness.

Lobas Vladimir - Yellow Kings

The book is a life story. Memoirs of Vladimir Lobas - a fairly well-known person in the USSR, who moved to the USA and passed the way from a taxi driver to a rather successful businessman. Reading it you understand that in life you can really achieve a lot. In addition to the memories, reflections and examples from the personal, and not only life, this book contains a large number of tips.

Quote from the book:

Every morning, waking up in his apartment on the nineteenth floor of the house,
across the street from the ocean in Brooklyn, I first look out
out the window to check whether my cab is worth where I put it in the evening.
This car, which I rent and for which I answer with my head, thank God,
I have never been hijacked, but cars in New York are stolen so often that I
developed such a reflex.

Fromm Erich - The Art of Love

The key book. For those who thought to enter graduate school once, Fromm evokes the enduring association “Once upon a time in Candminimum”. So why is this book on this list? “The Art of Love” is one of Fromm’s most serious work, summarizing his many years of experience in analyzing human behavior. After reading this book, you can understand more deeply:
people's psychology and motives
major behavioral problems
incentive and prohibitive incentives
and many many others.

Quote from the book:

Herd conformism has only one virtue: it is stable, not periodic. An individual masters a sample of a device at the age of three to five years, and as a result, it never loses contact with the herd. Even a funeral is perceived by a person as his last significant social affair, performed in strict accordance with the model.

Vyacheslav Pankratov - Black Book Manager

Book-approach. Why is this book here? Without understanding the basic processes in the company and their construction, it is very difficult to make a correct analysis and even more difficult to promote something. This book is a very brief insight into understanding project management. Very simple (even primitive), rude and with a mat. It will hardly take you more than an hour to read. But I recommend reading it to everyone, even if you are far from management. I'll be brief and just give one example from the book:

Did or did not have no relation to knew or did not know. Make this result - know this state. You do not know - ask, swarm of the Internet, find someone who knows and fly off to him for the weekend (at your own expense!), But at least the ground from the pot Hawai handfuls - your work, the result is needed

Peters Tom - Imagine!

The book is a contradiction. As the slogan reads in one advertisement of the beginning of the two thousandth: “You may not accept the book indifferently. The management guru, Tom Peters, encourages action in very clear and direct phrases. Many, many controversial statements, but 100% motivating

Quote from the book:

Losing together does not mean achieving synergy.

Zhvanetsky Mikhail - Odessa dachas

A book for the soul. And finally, a little more about the people ... although what the hell? Here everything is about people and their relationships! :) Monologue in several faces. Simple, with taste and with deep irony, about all of us and our lives. For reading in the evening, after a hard day, under a rug and with a cup of tea.

Quote from the book:

Here we are all gathered here ... In our city ... Near our sea ... I want us to live forever. So that we never parted. So that the weather was like in the soul, so in the soul like this evening ... And may we live ... And he will describe all this.

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