The Five Books You Must Read

When I started my technical sales career at Pharmacia Biotech, the sales department had a well-planned sales and product training program that to this day remains my gold standard of training.  It consisted of a comprehensive course: two weeks at headquarters for sales/marketing product lectures, hands-on product training, and Professional Selling Skills training. After the second week, the trainers sent you into your territory with your manager for two weeks applying everything that you just learned.  After that, back to HQ to focus on different product areas and more selling skills for another two full weeks and then back into your territory.  This cycle repeated for over four months and the team selling/coaching sessions with your manager lasted another three or four months after.  During this period, it was also expected that you continue with your self-study on the products and your customer’s business. On top of that, you were required to hit your monthly sales targets and complete your admin duties consistently.  It did get a lot easier once you mastered the product line, and your customers, and learned what’s important to manage your manager. (See the 80/20 rule.)    This methodology of constant and never-ending improvement became part of a very healthy corporate culture and a team driven to lead the market in best-in-class products, technical sales, and customer satisfaction. The lifelong skill that this method taught me is not only learning new skills and how to apply newly developed skills. Knowing is not enough, one must apply.
On the topic of constant improvement, do you remember when you were in school, you were required to read and keep up with classwork to keep up with your grades?  In some cases, the reading material was, at times, uninspiring.  Several years after graduation, you re-discover reading for two different purposes. One is for pleasure, the other is to keep up on skills that translate into opportunity and increase your value and compensation to your business, and of course, yourself.
One of the challenges of making reading a habit again is reading for purpose and deciding what you should start reading.  I touched on this topic in a previous post and offered a suggestion.  How many of you followed through?  To help you build your summer reading list, the link below will direct you to the Five Best Personal Finance Books ever written, which happens to be the opinion of three different bloggers.  One of which is a surprise to me and will pick it up at the library after I finish the stack that I’m working on right now. These five books will provide you with the methodology that was written about in The 20-rules that you should follow. 
J.Money references another blogger (ESIMoney.com) who did the legwork of writing his review on each book.  Head to your bookstore, library, or Amazon and pick up any or all of them. Set a goal for yourself to finish reading each of these books before the end of summer. Your Future Self will thank you for reading and apply some new skills. In addition, it will help reinforce what you’ve learned, or remind yourself what may have forgotten.

Carry On and enjoy the learning process.

http://rockstarfinance.com/money-books-package-giveaway/

Author: Francis

Started out in science and somehow ended up in sales & marketing. Grew into a results oriented sales professional with extensive experience selling and positioning scientific solutions in the pharma/biotech, life sciences and medical diagnostics markets. In 1998 I created an excel sheet to track spending and cash flow to learn personal finance on my own. They don't teach this in school and by the time one figures it out, most of let all these resources slip through our fingers. It's time to pay it forward to this next gen so that they can shave 15-20 years off for working for "the man" with insights, a library of tools, and motivation from me and plenty of other FI bloggers that I follow.