The 2018 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards Marketing & Sales Book Giveaway

We will be dedicating the rest of this year's book giveaways to the books on the longlist for the 2018 800-CEO-READ Business Book of the Year.

This week, we're giving away the books in the Marketing & Sales category, which are listed below along with the publishers' descriptions of the books. You can find our thoughts on the category as we go Inside the Longlist.

Each of this week's winners will receive all five books in the Marketing & Sales category.

Fusion: How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers the World's Greatest Companies by Denise Lee Yohn, Nicholas Brealey

Internal culture + External brand = FUSION

For years, leaders at companies like Southwest, Starbucks, and Google have done something differently that's put their organizations at the top of "the most admired companies," "best brands," and "great workplaces" lists. They don't often talk about that "something" specifically in terms of brand-culture fusion, but, as author Denise Lee Yohn reveals, aligning and integrating their brands and cultures is precisely how they've achieved their successes.

Independently, brand and culture are powerful, unsung business drivers. But Denise shows that when you fuse the two together to create an interdependent and mutually-reinforcing relationship between them, you create organizational power that isn't possible by simply cultivating one or the other alone. Through detailed case studies from some of the world's greatest companies (including Amazon, Airbnb, Adobe, Nike, and Salesforce), exclusive interviews with company executives, and insights from Denise's 25+ years working with world class brands, Fusion provides readers with a roadmap for increasing competitiveness, creating measurable value for customers and employees, and future-proofing their business.

For readers interested in workplace culture, brand management, strategy, leadership, employee experience, employee engagement, integration, branding, and organization development.

The Snowball System: How to Win More Business and Turn Clients into Raving Fans by Mo Bunnell, PublicAffairs

Mo Bunnell's comprehensive system will help you win more clients, build stronger relationships, and bring in more business.

If you're good at doing something, and you need to connect with paying clients in order to keep doing it, this book is for you. There are more of us out there than you might think--from professionals like lawyers and consultants to big company account managers and freelancers of all stripes. And this book will teach you how to sell yourself without selling your soul.

In The Snowball System, Mo Bunnell offers powerful and proven tools for business development. Whether you are gregarious or introverted, whether you are a part of a small startup or a massive multinational, Bunnell's science-based system is effective and efficient, and easily adapted into your day-to-day work. With The Snowball System, you will not only succeed at growing your business, you'll learn to enjoy doing the activities that drive that growth. You'll be happier, and so will your clients.

Story Driven: You Don't Need to Compete When You Know Who You Are by Bernadette Jiwa, Perceptive Press

Every one of us-regardless of where we were born, how we were brought up, how many setbacks we've endured or privileges we've been afforded-has been conditioned to compete to win. Ironically, the people who create fulfilling lives and careers-the ones we respect, admire and try to emulate-choose an alternative path to success. They have a powerful sense of identity. They don't worry about differentiating themselves from the competition or obsess about telling the right story. They tell the real story instead. Successful organizations and the people who create, build and lead them don't feel the need to compete, because they know who they are and they're not afraid to show us.

How about you?

What do you stand for?

Where are you headed and why?

What's been the making of you?

What will make your career or company great?

You must be able to answer these questions if you want to build a great company, thriving entrepreneurial venture or fulfilling career. Whether you're an individual or you're representing an organization or a movement, a city or a country, Story Driven gives you a framework to help you consistently articulate, live and lead with your story. This book is about how to stop competing and start succeeding by being who you are, so you can do work you're proud of and create the future you want to see.

Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future—and What to Do About It by Tien Tzuo with Gabe Weisert, Portfolio

Companies like Netflix, Spotify, and Salesforce are just the tip of the iceberg for the subscription model. The real transformation—and the real opportunity—is just beginning.

Subscription companies are growing nine times faster than the S&P 500. Why? Because unlike product companies, subscription companies know their customers. A happy subscriber base is the ultimate economic moat.

Today’s consumers prefer the advantages of access over the hassles of maintenance, from transportation (Uber, Surf Air), to clothing (Stitch Fix, Eleven James), to razor blades and makeup (Dollar Shave Club, Birchbox). Companies are similarly demanding easier, long-term solutions, trading their server rooms for cloud storage solutions like Box. Simply put, the world is shifting from products to services.

But how do you turn customers into subscribers? As the CEO of the world’s largest subscription management platform, Tien Tzuo has helped hundreds of companies transition from relying on individual sales to building customer-centric, recurring-revenue businesses. His core message in Subscribed is simple: Ready or not, excited or terrified, you need to adapt to the Subscription Economy—or risk being left behind.

Tzuo shows how to use subscriptions to build lucrative, ongoing one-on-one relationships with your customers. This may require reinventing substantial parts of your company, from your accounting practices to your entire IT architecture, but the payoff can be enormous. Just look at the case studies:

• Adobe transitions from selling enterprise software licenses to offering cloud-based solutions for a flat monthly fee, and quadruples its valuation.
• Fender evolves from selling guitars one at a time to creating lifelong musicians by teaching beginners to play, and keeping them inspired for life.
• Caterpillar uses subscriptions to help solve problems—it’s not about how many tractors you can rent, but how much dirt you need to move.

In Subscribed, you’ll learn how these companies made the shift, and how you can transform your own product into a valuable service with a practical, step-by-step framework. Find out how how you can prepare and prosper now, rather than trying to catch up later.

This Is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See by Seth Godin, Portfolio

A game-changing approach to marketing, sales, and advertising, by bestselling author and renowned business thinker Seth Godin

Over the past quarter century, Seth Godin has taught and inspired millions of entrepreneurs, marketers, leaders, and fans from all walks of life, via his blog, online courses, lectures, and bestselling books. He is the inventor of countless ideas and phrases that have made their way into mainstream business language, from Permission Marketing to Purple Cow to Tribes to The Dip.

Now, for the first time, Godin offers the core of his marketing wisdom in one compact, accessible, and timeless package.

This Is Marketing shows you how to do work you’re proud of, whether you’re a tech startup founder, a small business owner, or an executive at a large corporation. Great marketers don’t use consumers to solve their company’s problem; they use marketing to solve other people’s problems. Their tactics rely on empathy, connection, and emotional labor instead of attention-stealing ads and spammy email funnels. When done right, marketing seeks to make change in the world.

No matter what your product or service, this book will teach you how to reframe how it’s presented to the world, in order to meaningfully connect with the people who want it. Seth employs his signature blend of insight, observation, and memorable examples to teach you:

• How to build trust and permission with your target market
• The art of positioning—deciding not only who it’s for, but who it’s not for
• Why the best way to achieve your marketing goals is to help others become who they want to be
• Why the old approaches to advertising and branding no longer work
• The surprising role of tension in any decision to buy (or not)
• How marketing is at its core about the stories we tell ourselves about our social status

You can do work that matters for people who care. This book shows you the way.