Here at GoSpotCheck, we pride ourselves on our foundation and an appreciation for the core business essentials that infuse our efforts every day.
So, we’re wrapping up the What We’re Reading series with a roundup of our top nuts and bolts of business books. These reads inspire us, teach us and motivate us to always strive to be better, stronger, and more efficient.
The Four Steps to the Epiphany
by Steve Blank
While this step-by-step business strategy primer may be intended as a lean startup guide for very early stage companies, we find ourselves returning to it every year to revel in its lessons. Blank very clearly lays out the steps required to turn an idea into a product. For anyone who asks us how to take the leap and start their own business, we point them to Four Steps. It best approximates a tech startup cookbook, encouraging the reader to really get out there, talk to customers and take decisive action.
by Jim Collins
Collins is a management guru, and in this book he delivers the insights learned from companies whose stock prices were well above the market (and their competitors) for 15-plus years. Whether you lean more toward the creative or corporate, you will learn relatable concepts in these pages that you can apply to your life and professional decisions.
Inbound Marketing: Attract, Engage and Delight Customers Online
by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah
This is the definitive text on inbound marketing from the co-founders of the HubSpot software platform, and it brilliantly explains how to get discovered by customers online. This comprehensive book covers everything a burgeoning digital marketer needs to know to interest, gain and delight customers—before, during, and after the sales process. It’s a true bible for how to navigate and benefit from the contemporary web terrain in order to, in the authors’ words, “get found.”
by Douglas W. Hubbard
This books is a profoundly thoughtful guide to overcoming the obstacles of measuring the seemingly immeasurable across disciplines, from business to science and beyond. It’s brimming with practical advice and examples for working through misconceptions about ideas, objects and methods of measurement. And best of all, the book points readers to measure the right things, instead of contriving correlation or causation from variables that are easy to measure. We all agree that it’s a real eye-opening seminar—a book that opens pathways to a wealth of exciting new discoveries.
The New Rules of Retail: Competing in the World’s Toughest Marketplace
by Robin Lewis, Michael Dart
The New Rules of Retail is a no-holds-barred description of the historical shifts in retail over the last 150 years. As the authors break down what successful retailers are doing today to compete, they underscore the crucial factors that will determine if a retail business succeeds or fails. Enabling companies to measure and advance their standing in the retail landscape is our purpose and passion. New Rules is a standout appraisal of the world we inhabit, offering key tips on how to flourish in this brave new world.
The books we’ve highlighted in our What We’re Reading series strengthen our interpretations of the business landscape at large and inspire us in myriad ways to steadily advance our mobile data collection software for retail execution. To see the first two installments of the What We’re Reading blog series, check out the links below.
