Accel5®’s Business Book Summaries of the Month: May 2021

Add these summarized business books to your May reading list.

This month’s collection covers a variety of topics including sales, marketing, leadership, finding your passion and staying connected, all summarized to be enjoyed in minutes!

Building Brand Communities by Carrie Melissa Jones and Charles H. Vogl
In Building Brand Communities, Carrie Melissa Jones and Charles H. Vogl explain how a company can create a brand community that provides value for both its members and the organization as a whole. You can help your own company create a brand community and reach its goals by building a strong base around common values, bolstering personal connections through shared experiences, and expanding the company’s influence utilizing the proper growth principles.

Content Marketing, Engineered by Wendy Covey
Gaining the trust of technical buyers requires a special form of marketing based on specifically designed content. In Content Marketing, Engineered, Wendy Covey outlines the steps you must take to engage with technical buyers from the starting points of their purchase journeys to the metrics of your sales. You’ll learn to write, promote, and track brand-specific content that buyers will continuously self-select. Follow the strategies in this book to make your brand a trusted icon for engineers and other technical buyers.

The Grit Factor by Shannon Huffman Polson
Shannon Huffman Polson knows grit. As the youngest woman to ever climb Denali, one of the first women to serve as an Army attack helicopter pilot, and a leader of an Apache flight platoon that was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina, she’s taken on challenges, faced complications, and achieved success. In The Grit Factor, she shares the lessons she’s learned from her experiences and the stories of others who used their courage, resilience, and leadership skills to succeed. Polson’s aim is to inspire women to courageously embrace their challenges, develop resilience, and own their capacity to lead in any context.

Don’t Keep Your Day Job by Cathy Heller
Many people dread getting up each morning and going to work. Despite their unhappiness, they’re uncertain about how to make a change. In Don’t Keep Your Day Job, Cathy Heller shows that it’s possible to dream bigger, change your behavior, and become truer to yourself. She shares techniques that will enable you to generate profound shifts in your personal and professional lives by finding your passion and turning it into a profit.

Lead from the Future by Mark W. Johnson and Josh Suskewicz
Leaders have always leaned on their drive, commitment, and intellect to bring revolutionary ideas to life. However, another set of commonalities may explain the magnitude of their successes. These leaders were able to look past conventional wisdom, develop a vision about the future, and mobilize people to help them create it. In Lead from the Future, Mark Johnson and Josh Suskewicz explain how leaders like you can adopt these critical executive skills to realize your own visions of success. Their actionable guide will help you develop a granular view of your vision and build future-focused strategies to ensure your success.

The Nine Types of Leader by James Ashton
In The Nine Types of Leader, author and journalist James Ashton describes the nine types of leaders he’s identified based on 20 years of interviews with more than 400 executive leaders spanning a variety of industries and nonprofits. Through anecdotes and analysis of corporate performance, he assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each leadership type and identifies where each type can be found. You can use this book to help you identify your own leadership type and the types of those you work with.

Full-Spectrum Thinking by Bob Johansen
Many leaders rely on categorical thinking to define and develop their identities. Often, they use categories to describe the qualities of other people, forces, and scenarios, too. These descriptors tend to be limiting rather than empowering because they rely on stereotyping, polarization, and simplistic thinking. In Full-Spectrum Thinking, Bob Johansen encourages leaders to look outside, across, and beyond common descriptors to find patterns, appreciate nuances, and resist forms of certainty that blind them not only to the potential of people but to new ideas and opportunities that can’t be viewed in a binary way.

Ruthless Consistency by Michael Canic, PhD
Research shows that 60-70 percent of strategic change initiatives fail. More often than not, these failures occur when companies aren’t completely committed to the initiatives they’re pursuing. In Ruthless Consistency, Michael Canic, PhD, provides a step-by-step guide to developing the focused determination your company needs to achieve meaningful change. By adopting his principles and practices, you can establish and execute a strategic framework that enables your company to succeed.

The Power of Virtual Distance, Second Edition by Karen Sobel Lojeski and Richard R. Reilly
Many people use digital communication technologies to foster feelings of connectedness and vitality in their relationships. However, these technologies often have the opposite effect, fueling feelings of isolation and creating too many opportunities for misunderstandings to occur. These problems are becoming increasingly evident in relation to people’s well-being, productivity, satisfaction, and effectiveness in their essential tasks. In The Power of Virtual Distance, Karen Sobel Lojeski and Richard R. Reilly explain this phenomenon and the steps leaders can take to reduce the harmful impacts distance can create.

5-Minute Selling by Alex Goldfayn
In the business world, sales professionals spend most of their time communicating reactively with customers and solving problems for a small portion of their client base. To close more sales and earn more money, salespeople must instead communicate proactively with customers and prospects. In 5-Minute Selling, Alex Goldfayn shares his proven system of consistent, repeated actions that take only minutes a day but result in greater sales success.

Accel5^® features hundreds of business book summaries, videos and articles from top authors and publishers, covering a wide range of business topics to help enhance soft skills, personally and professionally.