These 5 reads are game-changers, each has a profound impact on our industry. Written by top industry thought-leaders, these books offer fascinating, sometimes even revolutionary, perspectives on various topics that touch businesses nowadays, including sales, management and entrepreneurship.
I hope these books will inspire you.
Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry/ Marc Benioff
Written by the CEO of one of the largest SaaS companies in the world, the format of this book is practical and interesting. Typically, these kind of books follow in sequence like a story. But, Marc takes a new approach by interlacing diverse plays around a theme (like technology, finance, sales, and international) in logical sequence.
Building Applications in the Cloud: Concepts, Patterns, and Projects/ Chris Moyer
This one is a little more technical. Succeeding the familiar “Design Patterns” layout, knowledgeable cloud developer Chris Moyer brings established patterns for cloud infrastructure from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and other providers. Moyer validates these patterns at work through extensive example code and case study applications for Python and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Predictable Revenue/ Aaron Ross, Marylou Tyler
“Scaling is not about hiring more salespeople.”
I relished the book Predictable Revenue and enjoyed the author’s style of writing. Ross did an astonishing job aiding Salesforce.com produce its breaks, and this book expresses his story of constructing the sales function from scratch and give some great examples of how success can be attained.
From Impossible To Inevitable/ Aaron Ross, Jason Lemkin
“Turn your revenue funnel into an hourglass by tracking how Customer Success affects revenue.”
Written by the authors of Predictable Revenue, the book discusses the hyper growth playbook of companies like Salesforce.com (the fastest growing multibillion dollar software company), SaaS unicorn Zenefits (which skyrocketed from $1 million to $100 million in two years), and EchoSign—(which catapulted from $0 to $144 million in seven years).
The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million\ Mark Roberge
Provides a scalable, foreseeable method to grow revenue and build a successful SaaS marketing team. Author Mark Roberge has succeeded by employing an exceptional practice that he shares in his book. As an MIT alum with an engineering background, Roberge tested the conservative techniques of scaling sales using the metrics driven approach; the rest is history.