B2B Reads: Next-Level Leadership, Workplace Passion, and Improving Retention

In addition to our Sunday App of the Week feature, we also summarize some of our favorite B2B sales & marketing posts from around the web each week. We’ll miss a ton of great stuff, so if you found something you think is worth sharing please add it to the comments below.

Overcoming Competitive Pressures: “Making” vs. “Milking”
As a business strategist, many are often confronted with two broad innovation ideas. The making strategy focuses on enhancing value creation through an organization’s products and services by better meeting customers needs. Milking involves positioning an organization to better capture the value it’s already creating for customers by bargaining more effectively. By analyzing situations utilizing both of these strategies, it was found that addressing weaknesses may be impactful in deciding what plan of action is best for your business. Thank you, Peter B. Zemsky, for describing these two strategies and helping us identify which works best for our organizations.

5 Easy Tricks to Beat Procrastination You Should Start Today
Procrastination is a constant struggle that can have massive consequences to businesses if not addressed properly. Some tips to overcome this and hold people accountable include being realistic about your bandwidth, breaking up larger projects to smaller tasks, utilizing time blocking, eliminating distractions, and rewarding yourself. Thank you, Amanda Pressner Kreuser, for teaching us how to combat procrastination and be more productive.

How to Build Workplace Passion
Passion leads productivity and it’s well-documented that many employees are not excited or passionate about their work. A passionate employee brings noticeable energy to their work, is more loyal to their team members, and performs at a higher level with each passing year amongst many other examples. Strategies to increase passion within the workplace include making it a priority, connecting to your emotions, breaking down barriers, crafting the job around their interests, building capacity and efficacy, and putting passion all around them. Thank you, Naphtali Hoff, for highlighting the importance of passion in the workplace and showing us how to increase this.

4 Principles to Develop Next-Level Leadership at Your Company
In order for a company to be and remain successful, it must learn how to develop next-level leadership which doesn’t always mean hiring externally. The ability to train internally and build next-level leaders within your company is important because these employees are already familiar with the flow of the business. Four principles that can be instilled within your training format to build internally include taking ownership, using next-level thinking, respecting time, and focusing on progression, not perfection. Thank you, Scott Miker, for sharing your insights on how to develop next-level leadership.

Marshall Goldsmith: How to Earn Your Life
This article opens with the exercise called, “Flip the Script” that has readers think about doing for themselves what they do for others, then has them ask themselves what they want to do for the rest of their lives. Following this, the Earning Checklist is anchored in motivation, ability, understanding, and confidence as readers should dissect ways that challenge them to understand these attributes within themselves. The text also highlights how nothing happens overnight and to ensure aspirations are both practical and tactical. Thank you, John Baldoni, for breaking down the most valuable elements of Goldsmith’s book on earning our lives.

Why Tech Companies, Even If They’re B2B, Should Stop Ignoring Instagram
Social media has proved to be a very valuable asset to a company’s success in marketing, however many B2B firms are still hesitant to utilize it within their model. B2B tech companies specifically should capitalize on Instagram as part of their marketing strategy because it can showcase their company’s culture, highlight their employees, make their product more accessible to new audiences, let existing content go further and wider, and give your audience a visual stage. Thank you, Hillel Fuld, for noting the importance of instagram for technology and B2B companies.

The Most Effective Communication Channels at Work
Today’s workplace is incredibly fast-paced, but fragmented as well which can make effective communication difficult to maintain. In-person, video, phone, voicemail, and email communication are all effective channels that can be used to make an impact within an organization. Thank you, Joel Garfinkle, for breaking down each of these effective communication channels for best practices within the workplace.

How Sales Really Works
The two methods of starting a sales conversation include outbound marketing or prospecting, as well as the inbound or lead generation approach. As a salesperson is communicating value to their potential clients, it’s important to not just ask for the problem as a way to provide the solution, remember you’re being evaluated too, understand the sales conversation is the greatest value add, and know how to negotiate. Thank you, Anthony Iannarino, for helping us propose value within the sales process.

Author Talks: Can You Trust Your Gut?
While intuition is helpful in making decisions, we have unlimited information at our fingertips that proves to be more reliable in making plausible choices that are backed up by research. Many individuals trust their gut in making important decisions which is helpful to a point, but using data can provide more context and reasoning behind these choices. The ability to be informed is valuable and while not necessarily the best option, but a different approach to decision-making with more information. Thank you, Adam Volk, for discussing some key points to your novel regarding how we can use data to get what we really want in life.

Seven Ways to Immediately Improve Retention
Retaining top talent should always be one of a company and leader’s top priorities, however during economic crises this can be difficult. Many assumptions are made about employee retention but it’s important to make specific and immediately implementable ideas that include saying please and thank you, asking for opinions, listening, trusting more, providing feedback, asking for feedback, and communicating the big picture. Thank you, Kevin Eikenberry, for providing your insights on how to immediately improve employee retention.