There’s a lot of “How to do something” reading out there, which is perfect if you’re looking to solve a particular problem – mine included “(How to Write a Sales Plan)“.

Then there are books that show us how the world works. They help us understand the behavior of individuals, organizations and consumers. Here are a few of those books (all are affiliate links to Amazon.com).

Made to Stick

by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

This is one of the best books I’ve come across for quite some time. It’s focused on stickiness, which I connect to persuasiveness and branding. So there are big insights here for selling, proposal writing and marketing.

slide:ology

 by Nancy Duarte

Slide:ology is a great book for slideshow design and graphics. Nancy Duarte’s book provides actionable guidance. This is an absolute required read.

Delivering Quality Service

by Valerie Zeithaml, A. Parasuraman and Leonard Berry

This is the go-to source for understanding how customers determine service quality. If you want to know how customers fundamentally judge service quality, read about it here.

Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers

by Seth Godin

Here’s the first recognition of the chase for customers’ attention in an information overloaded world, written in 1999. Today we  still just ignore ads rather than buy as our parents and grandparents might have.

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

by Chris Anderson

The Internet made numbers king and The Long Tail followed those numbers to stand a basic business sales tenet on its head: more is no longer better. Selling to the smaller niche markets because there’s more of them out there.

The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization

by Peter Senge

While the subtitle addresses the learning organization, it’s an introduction to systems thinking. It takes the “when a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil there’s a real estate boom in Iceland” idea and makes it rationally understandable.

Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance

by Michael Porter

If there’s only one academic text book you ever read, make it this one. There are two takeaways (among many others) that make this a most important read; the Value Chain and a 5-forces analysis.