Top 10 Sales & Marketing Books (11/19/09)
Here are the top selling sales and marketing books from Amazon.com:
1. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell
2. Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, by Gary Vaynerchuk
3. Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media), by Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah, David Meerman Scott
4. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, by Malcolm Gladwell
5. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials), by Robert B. Cialdini
6. Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business, by Erik Qualman
7. The Art of the Idea: And How It Can Change Your Life, by John Hunt, Sam Nhlengethwa
8. The Never Cold Call Again Online Playbook: The Definitive Guide to Internet Marketing Success, by Frank J. Rumbauskas Jr.
9. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant, by W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne
10. Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust, by Chris Brogan, Julien Smith
Understanding Why People Like Where They Live
By Bob Soron, Copy Editor, REALTOR® Magazine
QUICK SKIM
Do you love where you live? Or is it just where you landed, where you happened to settle? When you meet a potential client, can you tell whether they’re just focused on the house, or do they seek a home that’s part of a vibrant community? For some time, many Americans have felt that community planners lost sight of the need for pleasant, lively neighborhoods, designed and built for people. These people have talked in code words such as “walkable,” “sustainable,” and “people-friendly.” And recently they’ve started to push their ideas to civic leaders, to green industries, and to the real estate trade, seeking communities that support a lifestyle centered on the neighborhood.
Fifteen years ago, novelist James Howard Kunstler wrote his first nonfiction book, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape (Touchstone Press, 1994), after wondering why he had always loved some of the areas in which he had lived and so strongly disliked others. At the time he had no training in urban or community planning; he wanted to explore the effect that cities, towns, and neighborhoods had on their residents’ quality of life. But he communicated his answers so well that he gave voice to those who agreed, and his book — which inspired a sequel, Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century (Touchstone Press, 1998) — has become a staple among people who care where they live.
FROM THE BOOK: 5 LESSONS FOR THE REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY
1. The car isn’t the enemy: People always need reliable transportation, whether it’s walking, cycling, driving, or public transportation. Above all, the car made America accessible, whether for the simple pleasure of a drive in the country or for the need to move and seek a better life during hard times. But many urban planners have ignored other transportation in favor of the automobile. Kunstler doesn’t spare his contempt for the worst excesses, but his focus is always on spaces that allow people easy access to all their needs. Read more
Excerpt From SuccessMapping: 8 Things That Are Blocking You From Success
The following is an excerpt from the book SuccessMapping: Achieve What You Want…Right Now! (Emerald Book Co., 2009) by Arlene Johnson. The book provides a step-by-step roadmap to achieving success and your personal goals.
Here’s a very basic and universal truth: We all have far more potential than we will ever realize. Really, you are wired to experience success in all that matters to you. It’s who you are. So, equipped with your belief in what might be possible and what you next want to accomplish, SuccessMapping will show you how!
The Eight Success Blockers
Even when we strongly believe that we are totally capable to achieve a specific goal, we can stall out and stop taking action before we accomplish what we set out to. What keeps preventing us from starting or completing our most important journeys toward life dreams and goals?
There are eight major reasons-”success blockers”-that can stop you from starting something you want to achieve or completing it once you’ve started.
The Eight Success Blockers are:
1. Neglecting your potential. Not believing that you can succeed with-or, because of multiple options, having no clarity about-what you really want to accomplish.
2. Lack of focus. When your thoughts, behaviors and actions are not “laser-focused” on what you want to achieve.
3. Choosing not to engage. Making decisions that Do Not Help you achieve what you want: When needing to change, choosing to wait and see and do nothing different. Or choosing to oppose or resist engaging in the change opportunity. Read more
You Are What You Choose
By Katherine Tarbox, Senior Editor, REALTOR® Magazine
QUICK SKIM
For years, social scientists have been using certain demographics such as age, income, and education level to determine how people make purchasing decisions. Scott de Marchi and James Hamilton argue that six core traits determine every choice we make from how we purchase stock to how we work or date to even if we’ll lie on our tax returns. In You Are What You Choose (Portfolio, 2009), the authors explain how by understanding these traits you can better market to your clients. The read is extremely insightful in understanding how different personalities make purchasing decisions, including homes.
THE SIX CORE TRAITS
1. Time
Do you want things now are you willing to wait for a larger payoff later? The authors argue that those who regularly exercise and eat healthy will also look at the resale value of a car before purchasing it because they care about the value of something in the future before making a decision. Read more
Author Chat: Erik Qualman Explains How Social Networking is Changing the World
Filed under: Author Q & A, Sales & Marketing, Technology
By Erica Christoffer, Contributing Editor, REALTOR® Magazine
- By next year, Generation Y will outnumber Baby Bombers. And 96 percent of Gen Y has joined a social network.
- If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth largest in the world.
- YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and has 100 million videos.
- Approximately 25 percent of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.
Erik Qualman uncovered these startling statistics and more, which he lays out in his new book Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business (Wiley, 2009). Social media has created a fundamental shift in how people communicate, Qualman says. One only needs to look as far as Qualman’s Socialnomics YouTube video that went viral just weeks after its release, topping out at nearly 1 million views. He believes that soon people will not have to search for news, products, and services — but rather news, products, and services will find them via social media. Thus, in order to be successful in business today and in the future, the social interaction with potential clients must be embraced.
What was your first social media experience and what were your thoughts at that time?
Erik Qualman
QUALMAN: I joined MySpace, like a lot of people, in 2005. An 18-year-old introduced it to me and it was like she was addicted to crack. She’d always have to check her MySpace to see if she had more friends or to see in anyone commented. It was obvious to me that it was something big, especially for someone to be so ingratiated with it. I hopped on and it made sense to me right away. It wasn’t a surprise once Facebook opened up their platform to go beyond just college students that Facebook became so popular. Then the world was turned on its head when they opened up their application program interface to allow anybody to write applications for Facebook. That decision was so far reaching that it actually caused Apple, which has typically been a very closed environment, to open up and allow others the ability to code applications for the iPhone. That was really the game changer. Read more
Bailout Nation: The Dynamics of the Downturn
By Brian Summerfield, Online Editor, REALTOR® Magazine
QUICK SKIM
As Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson once said, “Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences.” In his book Bailout Nation, author Barry Ritholtz lays out the causes and effects of the recent economic downturn in a voluminous feast for the market-minded reader. In a clear and entertaining fashion, he explains how the evolution of big business and big government led us to our current state, and offers important lessons about the interrelationship of money, credit, and value along the way. He also discusses problems that led to a meltdown in real estate, and provides a few suggestions on how to avoid these difficulties in the future.
In sum, if you’ve ever wondered why the Federal Reserve exists, why Bear Stearns was bailed out but Lehman Brothers wasn’t, and why your local classic rock radio station seems to play the same 20 songs over and over again, this book is for you. Read more
Author Chat: Barb Schwarz Writes to Help You Get That House Sold
By Erica Christoffer, Contributing Editor, REALTOR® Magazine
Barb Schwarz
You can call Barb Schwarz the God Mother of staging. She is the creator of the staging homes concept, founded the home staging industry, and developed the Accredited Staging Professional courses and designations. Plus, she spent years as a top-selling real estate pro in the Seattle area. Now this professional speaker and industry leader has published her fifth book, Staging to Sell: The Secret to Selling Homes in a Down Market (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009), where she addresses REALTORS®, stagers and sellers alike.
Here’s what Schwarz had to say about Staging to Sell, and the field she loves:
You have been published many times. Did you change your approach at all with this book?
SCHWARZ: Yes, this is my fifth book and my third staging book. I felt it was really important to do a dialogue between a seller, a stager and a REALTOR®, to really lay out the roles each one plays and how they need to listen to and support each other. I laid out the positive ramifications of listening and how that can create a successful sale — as well as marketing, practicing their business skills, and the commitments each needs to make.
What are the top three pieces of advice you give stagers and real estate practitioners when it comes to educating sellers on staging?
SCHWARZ: Number one for me is communication. By saying to the seller, “pretend that you’re the buyer.” Ask them what they would want to see. Show them before and after pictures of individual staged rooms. Pictures are worth a thousand words. You need to communicate verbally, with body language, and with eye contact. Show sellers respect. Show them what they are paying you for. Open them up to the concept of staging right way. And when it is staged and priced right, you know in your heart it will sell.
Propel Your Career From Good to Great: Simplicity Sells
Filed under: Building Relationships, Sales & Marketing
By Rick Smith, author of “The Leap: 3 Simple Changes Can Propel Your Career From Good to Great”
All ideas are not created equal. Some have the power to cut through all the filters and spam blockers that our brains have erected in an age of total-saturation communication, and stick. My research shows that ideas that grab your attention and get you to act share a very distinct characteristic — simplicity.
Willie Nelson once said that the toughest song to write is the simple song. It’s that very simplicity that makes such songs the most compelling. That applies to ideas, too.
Simplicity has a tremendous impact on whether an idea takes flight or sits on the tarmac.
Simple ideas spread quickly because they are broadly interpreted and easily translated into action by others.
Because they are easy to grasp, simple ideas increase the odds that people actually will respond.
In Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, author Robert Cialdini cites a study in which a group of randomly chosen people were shown two print ads for the same product. One ad scrimped on positive details about the product; the other was brimming with them.
Amazingly (but really not so), the barebones ad was judged by the ad hoc panel to be far more persuasive than the one with a longer list of compelling attributes.
Why? Because the less you tell people, the more they can write themselves into the story.
Top 10 Real Estate Books (9/9/09)
Here are the top selling real estate books from Amazon.com:
1. The Housing Boom and Bust, By Thomas Sowell
2. The Great Depression Ahead: How to Prosper in the Crash Following the Greatest Boom in History, By Harry S. Dent
3. The Real Book of Real Estate: Real Experts. Real Stories. Real Life., By Robert T. Kiyosaki
4. Rich Dad’s Advisors®: The ABC’s of Real Estate Investing: The Secrets of Finding Hidden Profits Most Investors Miss, By Ken McElroy
5. Real Estate Development: Principles and Process, By Mike Miles, Gayle Berens, and Mark Eppli
6. And Then the Roof Caved In: How Wall Street’s Greed and Stupidity Brought Capitalism to Its Knees, By David Faber
7. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Edition, By Marc Reisner
8. The Millionaire Real Estate Agent: It’s Not About the Money…It’s About Being the Best You Can Be!, By Gary Keller, Dave Jenks (contributor), Jay Papasan (contributor), Gary Keller, Dave Jenks, and Jay Papasan
9. The Subprime Solution: How Today’s Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do about It, By Robert J. Shiller
10. Home Buying For Dummies, 4th Edition, By Eric Tyson and Ray Brown
Author Chat: Lisa Holton on her iPhone Real Estate Dictionary App
By Erica Christoffer, Contributing Editor, REALTOR® Magazine
Lisa Holton, a prolific Chicago-based real estate and business writer, has conquered the iPhone. Her digital book, The Essential Real Estate Dictionary (Sphinx Publishing/Sourcebooks), is believed to be the first real estate dictionary published on iTunes’ App Store. The dictionary features more than 3,300 definitions, abbreviations, and Web sites, serving as a handy, on-the-go guide for buyers, sellers, and professionals alike. Here’s what Holton had to say about enlightening the world of iPhone users to terms like “Monterey architecture” and “simple assumption.”
How did the opportunity to create an iPhone app using your book, The Essential Real Estate Dictionary, come about?
HOLTON: To a great extent it had to do with the current fortunes of the publishing industry. My publishing company Sourcebooks and I had been weighing the opportunity to do a traditional book-form dictionary. This dictionary had originally been published by Barnes & Noble in 2003. But Sourcebooks suggested that because we’re in a down-publishing economy, why not take the product and put it digitally onto a phone? Agents and other people in the building trades rely on their phones considerably. It would be nice for them to have this kind of information at their fingertips. I added terms over the years and terms that have relevance in today’s lending environment. Read more
