To get you in the right frame of mind to design your Maximum Customer Experience, VisionPoints lists the absolute essential reads for every business owner, manager, stakeholder, and lifelong learner. If you read every single one, and many more, then eat, sleep, and breathe the lessons for several years, you'll be as crazy for Experience Design as we are.
Books
Getting Business to Come to You, Paul and Sarah Edwards
The one book that should be in every business person's library. Think your firm is too big to benefit from these home-based-business experts' wisdom? Think again. Every chapter has an insight about an element you, too, have let slide. They've got advice any size business can grow with. Now they just need a third edition to take stock of the Internet...
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey
The one book that should be in every human's library. Live it and your business will grow along with your heart. That's true success.
Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time, Keith Ferrazzi
This may be the new 7 Habits. It's an eye-opening, instant classic. If you're like us you'll read it again and again. No tricks, no salesmanship. Keith Ferrazzi embodies Customer Relationship Management because he lives for relationships, and he knows you can, too. Groundbreaking common sense? An oxymoron, but oh-so-true.
The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth, Clayton M. Christensen
His earlier book The Innovator's Dilemma was great too, but in this book he bottom-lines it for us: sell the hole, not the drill. Maybe you've heard it before, but never like this. How to figure out what hole to sell, before many customers even know they want it. This book is 100% aha! moments.
Your Marketing S***s. Mark Stevens
It's got a title you don't forget, but it's the wisdom inside you can't go without. Revolutionary marketing expertise presented with punch. His message: make it pay or make it go away!
Free Prize Inside!: The Next Big Marketing Idea, Seth Godin
The king of titles-you-have-to-grab-off-the-shelf, Seth Godin is one of the few authors who deserves the overused term "thought leader." He saw the train that led to today's pull-marketing coming over a decade ago, coined the über-terms "ideavirus" and "permission marketing," among others, and continues to lead and provoke today. This book is filled with his very best insights on how to interest an over-stimulated and under-attentive target market.
Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing, Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg
As the way we communicate with customers moves forward at lightning-speed, are your customer interactions like pushing on a rope? Loyal dogs are being replaced by independent, fickle cats, this book warns—the new day is here, and old "push" marketing methods just can't pull in a cat.
Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert D. Putnam
Where did the dogs go and how are cats replacing them, exactly? Before Web 2.0 came Bowling Alone, seeing the trends with a historic perspective. Jam-packed with stats that will make you worry, wonder, and ponder solutions. What would a revision of this 1990s gem have to say? (The Bowling Alone website is a great resource for Putnam's updated thoughts.) How can your business use these sobering insights?
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven D. Levitt
Maybe it won't directly improve your business (maybe it will?), but it will give you renewed awareness and a good laugh. This is a pass-along amazing book.
Rain Making: The Professional's Guide to Attracting New Clients, Ford Harding
How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients, Jeffrey J. Fox
Did your high-school English teacher make you read the Richard Nash play? We've never shaken that image of the Rainmaker, so compelling, so seemingly capable. There are no tricks here—both of these books aim to help you really promote your company, and though the titles are similar, each is full of its own uniquely practical insights. You'll want to dog-ear every page. Jeffrey Fox's discussion of dollarizing ("Rainmakers sell money!") is priceless for firms of any size. After putting these two to use, you'll be far more than seemingly capable of making a lot of rain for your firm.
Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed, Jakob Nielsen
Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, Steve Krug
These two are sure to make you think. It is all about the customer's Perception. The hapless web surfer frustrated by his user experience as described in these indispensable resources is more than that. He (she) is the frustrated person in your store on another day, the impatient person on the phone another day, the person who gives up and goes to a competitor! Missed opportunities are easy enough to measure and possibly correct online, so read these two. Ask yourself as you read, is this happening to your customers in the real world? Two great tools that are food for thought, too.
The Mac is Not a Typewriter and The PC is Not a Typewriter, Robin Williams (no, not that Robin Williams)
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss
The Elements of Style, William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White
Four crucial writing utilities: You must write well and use (no-longer newfangled) technology properly to have effective communications with your customers. And with your suppliers. And with your mother. It's not just something that English teacher tried to rope you into. Read these books and commit them to memory today.
We have purposely left interior and graphic design resource books off this list. To us a great business is all about doing your number one job—connecting with customers and potential customers. The books above are all about connecting. Training your eye for design that powers those connections is hard to get from a read. These books should give you the basics of why you need both strategy and design in connecting with customers (so they can pay you, so you can stay in business...).
Magazines/ Newspapers
After all those reviews, we'll let these periodicals' sites do the explaining for them.
Your city daily paper (if you're in a "megalopolis" like we are, read a few cities' papers so you don't get tunnel-vision: here, at least check in with The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Delaware News Journal)
Your local business paper (in north Delaware that's The Business Ledger)
Blogs
"You can get anything you want...." Arlo Guthrie wasn't talking about blogs, but these days it's very true. It's also hard to sort through to the good stuff. What we want in a blog is actionable advice, keen insights, ways of looking at the world that we haven't tried, and occasionally, a bit of humor to blow off some steam. (Not surprisingly, our favorite authors also host a couple of our favorite blogs.)
For our business buck, these few blogs are the best, because they combine a flair for words (or images) with wisdom that can help you share your passion and grow your business. We love that.
(See our Links page for non-blog favorite sites; click here to subscribe to our own Maximum Customer Experience Blog.)
Keith Ferrazzi's Never Eat Alone blog: <http://nevereatalone.typepad.com/>.
Chatty sometimes, dead-on useful other times, this is unvarnished Keith Ferrazzi... it is all about those relationships. He is as authentic here as he hopes you will learn by example to be.
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox ("don't call it a blog"): <http://www.useit.com/>.
The most stripped-down site from one of the most well-known figures in Internet marketing thought. Like Steve Jobs in blue jeans, Jakob Nielsen's site and his advice are simple, unpretentious, and brilliant.
Brian Clark's Copyblogger: <http://www.copyblogger.com/>.
There is no better writer in the ether, and while his advice is aimed at persuasive writers, specifically bloggers, it usually can apply to marketers (if you're a business owner you are a marketer, like it or not), speakers, and rainmakers of all stripes. Once you're hooked, you will read Copyblogger even if you are late for a train, (a) just in case he has the one piece of advice you need that day, and (b) because... you're hooked.
Seth Godin's blog: <http://sethgodin.typepad.com/>.
Always provocative, usually practical, and did we mention unrivalled thought leader? An easy read with lots of actionable takeaways.
Tony D. Clark's Success from the Nest: <http://successfromthenest.com/>.
Don't let the "from the Nest" part fool you—this is savvy advice for any size business, in any location. His own brilliant illustrations liven up the pithy posts on subjects universal to business owners, managers, and those working on their own "personal brand" strategy, no matter where you hang your hat.
Brian Carroll's B2B Lead Generation blog: <http://blog.startwithalead.com/>.
It all starts with a lead, Brian Carroll says, and that is the theme of his blog. How to get that initial attention... what to do to keep it... how to create a satisfied customer from a curious prospect. Great ideas presented in a strong voice.
SEOmoz's Daily SEO blog: <http://www.seomoz.org/blog>.
Search engine optimization is complex, ever-shifting, and downright frustrating at times. These are the New Gurus: the laid-back, plugged-in folks at SEOmoz never break a sweat while delivering the very latest news and techniques in this blog. They go off-topic once in a while, but that's part of the charm. Their cool participation vehicle, YOUmoz, makes SEO a free-wheeling two-way discussion.
Hugh MacLeod's Gaping Void: <http://www.gapingvoid.com/>.
Letting off steam is not off-topic, not when Hugh MacLeod runs from the intimate, to the social, to the mundane, to the business world, in a stream of consciousness he calls the Gaping Void.
A true artist who humbly thinks he's "just a cartoonist." We beg to differ—Hugh MacLeod is a little bit Roy Lichtenstein, a little bit Jean-Michel Basquiat, and bit of Keith Haring, but isn't afraid to make a living, too. We want to see his work in a gallery, getting the attention it deserves, as well as being freely and publicly shared by the artist. Keith Haring would be impressed. Be prepared to sort through all his thoughts! You'll find he's spot-on when he reflects on the state of business and marketing today in his tiny cartoons drawn on the back of business cards. Masterful commentary.
If all this reading has you ready to Go Where Your VisionPoints, click here to fill out our simple online form, and we'll begin to create your Maximum Customer Experience.
*An unfortunate theme we feel obligated to point out, before our readers and clients point it out via email: with the exception of Robin Williams and Lynne Truss, our two favorite nitpickers, no women writers are singled out here in books or blogs, although Copyblogger does feature the most excellent writer and marketing analyst Roberta Rosenberg's posts on a regular basis. (Sarah Edwards co-wrote the indispensable Getting Business to Come to You with her husband, Paul.)
On the subject of women in business, we would not be without Pitch Like a Girl, by Ronna Lichtenberg, and Wildly Sophisticated, by Nicole Williams. Author and graphic design expert Sheree Clark has written several books we refer to for inspiration, and writes for Dynamic Graphics, a mag we never miss, as well, but we did not choose to list design books of the interior or graphic sort, for reasons already discussed.
Where are the women thought leaders in marketing, design, and business theory? wonders Kelly Erickson, founder and Creative Director of VisionPoints. She walks in the shadows of all the giants and emerging leaders listed above, and doesn't care if great thought comes from a man or a woman. We could have thrown in a couple of women's names above just to pander, but we wanted a list that authentically represents our considered essentials, to help you wade through the fluff and jump-start your growth. 'Nuff said.
