24 books to help solve business problems

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Stories, tips, and helpful case studies can help you get around the pitfalls of your entrepreneurial journey.

1. GET FEEDBACK, Jay Baer

One outraged comment or negative post on social media can seriously damage a company's reputation. How to avoid a similar fate?

Marketing consultant Jay Baer believes that the right answer to Internet critics will help not only to defend their position, but also to increase the audience. The author of the book has worked for companies such as Nike, Cisco, Walmart, and 34 other firms and has collected all the great tips for working with social media reviews.

2. "Customers for Life", Carl Sewell, Paul Brown

Carl Sewell and Paul Brown believe that retaining loyal customers and creating warm relationships with them is the foundation of a thriving business. In their book, they tell you how to build a smart service strategy, stop promising and start fulfilling customer requests and benefit from complaints about your company.

3. "Delivering Happiness" by Tony Shay

The book is from the creator of the large online shoe and clothing store Zappos, which was bought by Amazon for $ 1.2 billion. Tony Shay enthusiastically shares the story of his entrepreneurial journey with readers and gives advice to experienced and aspiring businessmen. Especially "Delivering happiness" will interest those who are engaged in online sales. The book contains information on how to choose the right niche for your business, what in no case should you outsource and how a brand is formed.

4. "Refresh Page" by Satya Nadella

The "Refresh Page" is worth reading for those who are enthusiastically watching the battle of giant firms in the world of the latest technologies. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, shares his experience at one of the largest companies, talks about the fierce competition between corporate leaders and explains how ethical issues affect working with artificial intelligence. If you are thinking of changing the course of development of your company or you need to painlessly close your beloved project, then you should turn to this book.

5. "Blue Ocean Strategy", Rene Mauborgne, Kim Chan

If the struggle for customer loyalty has drawn all the forces from the organization and the team, this book will definitely come in handy. Renee Mauborgne and Kim Chan offer a way to get out of the meat grinder of competition - to create your own blue ocean, where you have no equal. You can do this by investing all your efforts into the innovation of value - the quality and feature of your product - and drawing up a well-thought-out development strategy on its basis.

6. The Pumpkin Method by Mike Mikalowitz

The Pumpkin Method is a guide for those who do not want to go bankrupt with a startup. Author Mike Mikalowitz stepped on a lot of rakes, but decided not to give up and did his best to develop a new business strategy. In his book, he tells why firms should not chase a huge flow of clients and how to find reliable employees so that they are not afraid to go on vacation.

7. Good to Great by Jim Collins

The author and his colleagues have done a lot of research to determine the conditions necessary for building a great company. They used the experience of firms that consistently produce high results over the years: Gillette, Kimberly-Clark, Nucor, Philip Morris, Wells Fargo and others. Jim Collins collected his findings into a book that will help an entrepreneur and his business to reach a new level.

8. "Analytical Culture: From Data Collection to Business Results" by Karl Anderson

Business will need any information about the client, his tastes and interests, lifestyle and budget, and this information needs to be properly analyzed and put into a big picture. Carl Anderson, director of analytics at Warby Parker and Ph. D., talks about the data-driven culture, what data should be collected, and suggests various statistical methods for processing it.

9. Blood, Sweat and Pixels by Jason Schreyer

The gaming industry is a serious and tough business. In support of this, journalist Jason Schreyer has collected hundreds of stories from the world of game development, which describe in detail not only the process of creating games, but also the technology of their promotion on the market. The book features tales of bestsellers such as Diablo III, Uncharted 4, The Witcher III, and more. It will be useful to all those who want to connect their lives with the world of games.

10. "Catch the Rabbit" by Stephen Spear

Each large company has an internal complex business system that allows you to quickly and simultaneously solve diverse tasks. Author Stephen Spear studied the experience of large firms and tells how to create your own unique system that will be characterized by high mobility and rapid development. Spear also explains how to adapt the company to the new operating mode and not fail at the same time.

11. "Key Account Management", Stefan Schiffman

Clients are different, and each should be approached. But how to form an integral system where the buyer and the seller will be equally comfortable? Stefan Schiffman suggests introducing the technique of creating key strategic connections. It sounds tricky, but if you read it, you can not only build relationships with company customers, but also win the trust of influencers.

12. "Purpose: The Process of Continuous Improvement" by Eliyahu Goldratt

A book that will help save a dying company. One of the authors, Eliyahu Goldratt, created the theory of limitation: any business has its own limits that prevent it from moving on. To move to the next level, you need to identify these constraints and put all your energy into working on them. Only in this way, according to the authors, it is possible not only to save a dying business, but also to significantly accelerate its development.

13. "How to find money for your business", Oleg Ivanov

How to find finance for starting a business and not get into debt? There are many ways, and one of them is attracting investors. Oleg Ivanov talks about how to convince important people of the seriousness of your intentions, correctly draw up legal documents and avoid common mistakes associated with investing.

14. The Purple Cow by Seth Godin

In today's business environment, “just advertising” is not enough. Every business requires its own well-thought-out marketing strategy. It is desirable that it contains a lot of innovative tools and interesting features. Entrepreneur and economist Seth Godin shares his knowledge of real marketing, who works with a product from the very beginning and advertises it only to those who really need it.

15. “Launch! A Quick Start for Your Business, Jeff Walker

The book will be useful both to those who are just starting their own business, and to those whose business is "stuck" in one place. Jeff Walker knows how to drive a company and breathe new life into it. His recommendations will help you quickly occupy a niche in the market, find an audience and start working for a result.

16. "Managing Polarities" by Barry Johnson

Rivalry or cooperation, rigid structure or flexible ties, individual or collective - these ideas and phenomena are closely related and, at first glance, contradict each other. However, Barry Johnson, a management expert with 35 years of experience, calls such dilemmas "polarities" and offers his approach: not to choose something once and for all, but to take their advantages from both poles and eliminate disadvantages. There is a chance that after reading the book, many of the business riddles will have their solution.

17. "Built to Last" by Jim Collins, Jerry Porras

Long-term business projects seem incredibly attractive. But building an indestructible business that will generate stable profits is not easy. Jim Collins and Jerry Porras spent six years studying the characteristics of large firms with long-term success: Walt Disney, 96, Sony in its eighties, and Boeing, a century old. The authors have collected their conclusions in one book. It also provides advice to entrepreneurs on creating a company that will live for more than one century.

18. The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Mueller

Even the most sensible idea can be brought to the point of absurdity. The book is about the desire to meticulously measure every indicator in the work of the company. Jerry Mueller explains why you shouldn't go to the point of fanaticism in analytics and take the numbers obtained as an immutable truth. One example of an unhealthy addiction to analysis, according to the author, is the quantification of employee performance. An attempt to calculate with the help of mathematical analysis the achievements of an employee can end badly for the whole team.

19. "Explosive Growth" by Morgan Brown, Sean Ellis

Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest were all niche sites with strong competitors at the start. Now they are the market leaders who have achieved popularity and made millions.

The book's authors argue that companies have relied on an elaborate “explosive growth” methodology that has an incredible following to be successful. The publication provides not only general concepts of the system, but also tools that will help to create a customer base and increase market share.

20. "Sales department to capture the market", Mikhail Grebenyuk

A must-read book for salespeople with a set of case studies and explanations of business strategies. Here, the process of creating a sales department is described step by step: up to writing a script for calling potential customers. Leaders should also read - such a useful and informative manual is not often found.

21. "Scaling, or How to make your business grow", Evgeniy Oystacher

“Scaling” is primarily a must read for those who want to work on a grand scale and plan to grow from a small business to a large international business. Evgeny Oystacher, an entrepreneur with twenty years of experience, talks about the mistakes of managers that hinder the development of business, and shares the secret of the "growth hormone".

22. "Business on your own", Dmitry Kibkalo, Sergey Abdulmanov

It seems impossible to open your own business for personal savings - how much you need to purchase and invest at the start! However, the authors are confident that their hard-earned money will be enough. The main thing is to carefully consider every nuance even at the stage of planning an enterprise. How to do this, Dmitry Kibkalo and Sergey Abdulmanov tell in the book.

23. "How to put things in order in your business", Mikhail Rybakov

The author offers over 130 practical tasks for entrepreneurs: for example, draw a diagram of one of the company's business processes and find errors in it. Such tasks will help both beginners and experienced businessmen to learn how to solve problems at the stage of their inception. In addition to the workshop, "How to put things in order in your business" contains 123 cases from the heads of large companies and more than 400 examples from the practice of Mikhail Rybakov.

24. "VkusVill: How to make a revolution in retail, by doing everything wrong", Evgeny Shchepin

The history of Izbyonka can be called one of the most inspiring for entrepreneurs. From a kiosk of dairy products, the company has turned into an extensive grocery chain that gave birth to the famous VkusVilla.

The book provides details of the implementation of both projects, describes the difficulties faced by entrepreneurs, and gives advice on how not to lose the will to win and achieve your goal.