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Jake Derry
Personal and professional development is fundamental in an industry that is so competitive and always changing.
The construction industry has seen a big shift towards digital trends and channels in recent years. With a new year approaching, now more than ever, is a great time to pick up a book and get ahead of the competition.
Oddly enough, many people don’t immediately think of books or reading as a form of personal development or CPD (Continuing Professional Development). Whilst, in fact, books are an invaluable way to keep up-to-date with learning and widen our knowledge of our industries or wider business.
So whether you’re a Managing Director, Business Owner, Sales Professional, Marketer or even undergoing an Apprenticeship, this list of books will ensure you have all the tools you need to boost your success and catapult your building materials business growth.
How Can Books Help Your Building Product Business?
As a business product professional, continual learning is paramount to ensure that you’re staying on top of your game and clued up on the business world around you. Not only is reading books on business a great investment of your time, but it can even count towards your Self-Directed CPD.
Books written by experts can speak to almost any area you want to develop professionally. From starting a business, management skills, to sales and marketing techniques. If you can think of it, there’s probably a book for it.
Books are also a great investment for you and your team financially. Training programs, workshops and online business courses can cost a pretty penny. Alternatively, buying a book for professional development can cost on average £20-£30 and be used over and over by you and your team.
Don’t know where to begin? Pick a book that appeals to you on an enjoyment level to begin with. Don’t bog yourself down with finding the one with the most to teach, trust me. You’ll learn a lot from each and every one.
They Ask, You Answer (Marcus Sheridan)
The Perfect Read For: Marketing Professionals & Business Owners Seeking To Learn More About Content Marketing
Marcus Sheridan’s, They Ask, You Answer, has become somewhat of a flagship title in the world of Digital Sales and Marketing.
This innovative book breaks down Sheridan’s business philosophy by adopting a new content marketing strategy focused on becoming the most trusted voice in your industry. Sheridan explains that by honing in on the needs and wants of your customers, you can identify how best to serve them through your business and answer their questions before they’ve even thought to ask them.
They Ask, You Answer gained traction due to being one of the first content marketing books written for sales and leadership teams, not just marketing departments. The philosophies and easy-to-apply business principles in this book make it the perfect read for your whole team.
4DX – The 4 Disciplines Of Execution (McChesney, Covey & Huling)
The Perfect Read For: Business Owners, Managers and Leaders
Written by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling, The 4 Disciplines of Execution is a business book based on hard-won experience.
In this leadership-centric book, the authors and guest contributors cover a simple framework you can implement, to ensure your whole business is given the tools and support needed to follow through on your biggest goals.
By tackling the commonly seen gap between strategy and execution, our businesses can overcome “the whirlwind” that many of us are susceptible to be swept up in. What’s ‘the whirlwind’ you ask? I had the same question. 4DX describes it as the ‘day-job’. The countless tasks and objectives that keep the business running, but can prevent the execution of larger goals.
The solution quite simply is the simplification of your business goals and maintaining accountability for achieving them.
Building A Story Brand (Donald Miller)
The Perfect Read For: Business Owners, Managing Directors, Sales & Marketing Professionals
Donald Miller expertly describes one of the most common weak points of businesses today – words.
Using the wrong words to communicate with your customers can be devastating. If you don’t market your product correctly, why should anyone buy it? It sounds harsh, but it’s true. In this book, Miller shows us how words and their meaning can impact a business and generate millions in revenue.
We love this book so much that this isn’t the first time we have recommended it. Miller draws on our experiences with stories. In every great story, a hero or heroine encounters challenges that need to be overcome. By making your customers the hero of their own story, you establish yourself as their guide and helping hand – their Gandalf the Grey if you will.
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know (Adam Grant)
The Perfect Read For: Any Business Professional With An Open Mind
Best-selling author Adam Grant, released this book earlier this year and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Within the book Think Again, Grant examines and details the art of rethinking, allowing ourselves to question our own opinions and open your mind and the minds of others.
By combining research, experience and storytelling, Grant teaches us the importance of choosing courage over comfort and challenging ourselves in order to achieve greater success. This book takes a deep psychological topic and discusses it in-depth in a light-hearted and original way, that anyone can enjoy.
Our biggest weakness in business is thinking we have mastered something and know everything. Grant allow us to foster curiosity and scepticism and ultimately seek out information that contradicts our own views, to accumulate even more knowledge.
We Read Too!
At Insynth, we're encouraged to read books regularly; in fact, we've read all the books on this list. And our CEO, Leigh Simpson, has probably read a lot more! (he likes books).
When we join the Insynth team, the team purchase an array of books selected specifically for our position and ambitions, and throughout our time, we'll be given books to read about construction, marketing, sales, you name it, to build our knowledge base. It's one of the fantastic perks about working here!
About Insynth
At Insynth we deliver a predictable flow of leads, customers, and specifications for building product brands through our inbound marketing approach, proven to reach a technically demanding audience.
We use the latest marketing techniques such as construction inbound marketing, to equip building product companies to grow sustainability in this era of digital transformation.
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major in construction marketing. We have a proven formula of bringing a variety of functionalities together including CRM Implementation, Web Design, Sales Automation, SEO, and Email Marketing to achieve your ultimate aim: Growing your business and gaining new specifiers and customers.