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20 Tips on Sales, Transformation, Growth & More [CEO Bookshelf]

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You’ve heard you are what you eat, well we believe that you are what you read. Teach a CEO presents lessons from our bookshelf on how you can improve and grow your venture. We have taken gems or nuggets from our library and provide them for CEO’s, startups, entrepreneurs and business owners.

  1. Design thinking aka human-centered design, or, if you did brevity, “design” -is a creative problem-solving methodology used in the pursuit of innovation. (Naked Sales)
  2. When we sell, we're trying to solve a client's problem-ideally, with an innovative solution. All too often, when we innovate or problem-solve, we are bogged down in matters a feasibility and viability. Feasibility involves determining whether a potential solution can be readily integrated into the business-is it feasible to do? Viability involves the financial side. (Naked Sales)
  3. Design helps us keep our thinking open. Rather than narrowing and in converging on a known solution for a known problem, design encourages us to look deeper and broader to diverge into other interesting areas that could lead to a more creative approach. (Naked Sales)
  4. In Sell by Design, we talk about it embarking on discovery with a beginner's mindset. We even talked about becoming vulnerable with our clients, even if it feels awkward. We focus more on noticing what we don't yet understand, rather than seeking to confirm what we've seen and done in the past. That's where the magic lies. (Naked Sales)
  5. In many respects, the flow of a deep dive interview is not so different from the typical discovery interview we might conduct, except for two things: first, you'll build more report through your curiosity, and second, you'll ask the interviewee to share far more detail via stories than they are accustomed to sharing. This takes some careful framing as you set up the conversation. (Naked Sales)
  6. Empathetic sales people behave as if they work for the client. The best sales people we know get their clients because they dive so deeply. They speak their language, use their abbreviations, sometimes even adopt mannerisms and other cultural nuances when they interact with their client. (Naked Sales)
  7. The mindset in discovery was curiosity. For insight, it was empathy. The mindset in the accelerate phase is agility. (Naked Sales)
  8. In the broadest sense, the purpose of business is to help people by adding value to their lives, and for some business people it becomes a mission. Given that 50% of businesses fail in the first 5 years, entrepreneurship is not something to be undertaken lightly. Some studies show that the key trait of successful entrepreneurs is perseverance. (Business Tools, Not Platitudes)
  9. Reading broadly in various subject areas is also important because reconciling conflicting information is how we develop our critical thinking. (Business Tools, Not Platitudes)
  10. Meetings are often a huge waste of people's time. Remember that if 7 people are in attendance, a 1 hour meeting is not just one lost our. You just lost 7 hours of productivity. (Business Tools, Not Platitudes)
  11. Remember this: if you are thinking about solving your own problems, you're more like a customer or an employee; if you are thinking about solving the problems of others, you are on your way to becoming a true business person. And so, to recap: business involves offering something that people want to buy for a price they're willing to pay and then introducing buying behavior. (Business Tools, Not Platitudes)
  12. Transforming your business begins with finding the unique starting lines for you and your organization. In today's business lexicon, we put a lot of focus on the finish line. Most business concepts are designed and marketed as express lanes to the end goal. However, they make one critical error error. They assume that that where you start is not relevant. When you know your personal starting line, you can finally reach the finish line: a business where everyone is on the same page, asking great questions, confronting reality, and making the best timely decisions to gain an advantage over the competition. When that happens, the question “why is it so difficult?”stops playing in your head everyday. (Transform Your Company)
  13. Paddling a canoe without aligning the efforts of the people in the boat leads to going in circles. Similarly, running a business without coordinating the efforts of the team leads to the circle of frustration. (Transform Your Company)
  14. Core alignment tools are sets of essential questions that help you, as a leader, to transform your business into an unstoppable force from the inside out, using the answers to those questions. The answers, when applied rationally and consistently, lead to better decisions and results. (Transform Your Company)
  15. Implementing the new rules of fearless growth enables you to grow faster and in a less risky way. Becoming proficient at changing and adapting makes you more stable, and giving up control and they was you to gain control.  (Fearless Growth)
  16. Nothing is certain in business, and every day brings new challenges and New Opportunities. The only thing certain is that an overemphasis on predictability and an inability to understand and manage risk will kill a business to grow fearlessly, you must learn to embrace and exploit uncertainty. (Fearless Growth)
  17. Fast learning is the most valuable competitive Advantage a company can  build. Keenly observing the business environment, taking action before you feel fully ready, and incorporating what you've learned immediately into your strategy are tickets to playing and today's fast-changing global economy. An organization that learns continuously can achieve stability and safely even while in motion, just like riding a bike. (Fearless Growth)
  18. When you don't have a clear intent for your idea or specific reason for it to be put into practice, then it's really hard to get people excited about it. When the intent is clear, on the other hand, it is easy to get other people to collaborate with you, which will increase the chance that your nascent concept will be improved upon and implemented. (Fearless Growth)
  19. Trust starts at the top. Leaders must trust those they work with and who work for them, and they must model this behavior and reward and encourage it throughout the organization. Building trust will benefit your business, your people, your customers, your vendors, and others. (Fearless Growth)
  20. On the other hand, companies that start from scratch, including the more than 100 “unicorn” startups (those with valuations of more than $1 billion), such as Uber, Snapchat, Airbnb, Palantir, and others, start out with none of the established companies' advantages of size, assets, and employee base, yet they seem to have another advantage. Because these startups have little or nothing to lose if they fail they can fearlessly innovate. And if a start-up does fail, which many do, the founders, Executives, and employees can simply either start up a new venture, or move on to another company. (Fearless Growth)
See also  Lessons in B2B Marketing to Retailers

CEO Bookshelf

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