Books that I am reading?

Personal development is a topic I feel particularly passionate about. ‘You are your best investment’ – when you invest in yourself, it means taking on the importance of educating yourself. A really simple way of investing in yourself is by reading books, and educating yourself through text. This blog post shares with you the my top three reads of the week, and some key tips I have taken from my favourite reads.

The Ultimate Sales Machine – Chet Holmes
The first book I would recommend is ‘The Ultimate Sales Machine’ by the one and only, Chet Holmes. If you haven’t heard of Chet, he is, in my opinion, one of the leading sales business gurus across the world. He is behind the business program that Tony Robbins uses and has presented many sales and business strategies. In this book, Chet goes into detail about the core areas of building your sales funnel.

One of the key areas he covers that I believe to be of particular relevance in recruitment is Chapter 1 ‘Time Management’. Whilst building a million-pound recruitment business, I found this chapter gave me some great tips and tricks on how to maximise my time and productivity.  

Another great section was ‘Executing Effective Meetings’. I believe that a lot of individuals in the recruitment industry waste too much time in meetings. This chapter shared some great advice on how to actually progress through meetings and achieve goals effectively.  

Particularly in terms of recruitment ‘Hiring Superstars and Players was a fantastic chapter too. Here, Chet goes through the steps he took to hire really good sales people, providing great insight and demonstrating first hand a successful strategy.

Some of the strategies Chet has taught in this book are live and running in my business Ronald James right now. I would absolutely recommend that you have this on your bookshelf.

Small Giants – Bo Burlingham
The next book is ‘Small Giants’ by Bo Burlingham. Burlingham has actually written a number of good books that I have really enjoyed, however Small Giants sticks out to be my favourite. In this book Bo discusses in depth about small businesses that have stood the test of time and gone from strength to strength without having to sell, exit or gain external investment. To gather all of the information, the author actually research a number of businesses and delved into how they build a culture within a small business whilst remaining profitable and achieving growth.

Small Giants is a really cool book that you should check out, particularly if you’re building a recruitment business. It shows that it doesn’t have to be a 50,000 man plus team to be successful, you can actually have a small business and still have the rewards.

Key Person of Influence – Daniel Priestley
The final book I would recommend is by an author called Daniel Priestley, called ‘Key Person of Influence’. I actually went to Daniel’s event not so long ago in London, where he taught the exact, five-step-method of being a key person of influence within the market. So, some of the key things I took away here in order to be a key person of influence:

• Write a book.
• Ensure that you are all over social media.
• How to be perceived as the market leader within your industry.

A lot of Priestley’s tips are implemented within my business to make it successful. I have built the business off the back of using the five key person of influence strategies.

The most important thing I took away from this book is giving value back to the client. It’s important to give value back to the client so you offer a really good service, finding out your client’s pain point and then giving them a prescription, i.e. fixing that for them. If we were to relate this to the recruitment sector for example, this could be a certain type of candidate system that you want to build for your clients, or actually just building a rapport to ensure they ‘know you, like you, trust you’.

So, I hope these suggestions and tips provide insight to some of you. I think it’s really important to always be self-improving, and really easy way to start doing this is by reading books.You can pick some fantastic books up on Amazon for sometimes around two-three ponds, and gain some really insightful bits of knowledge that you can implement into your business.

So, I hope you found this article insightful – if you’d like to hear more then check out the free webinar that I host on a Tuesday and Thursday by clicking here.

Book a 15-minute Strategy session with James Now.