Optimizing Revenue Through Effective Growth Strategy Books

CGTM Consulting

Revenue books that changed my perspective

Most people enjoy learning, and some love hypergrowth. Challenging your thinking and perspective can energise you. Learning is a growth strategy.

Reading books has led to my personal and professional growth. I love that they challenge and sense-check my perspective.

Part of my career was in early-stage start-ups and small companies. Working in smaller businesses can be exceptional do-it-yourself places to learn. 

The downside is that they can make maturing your knowledge and upskilling difficult. Often, your options are Google, a peer in your team, external training, and, if you're lucky, a mentor. Even with a training budget, it might not cover all your needs. 

I found books are a cheaper resource that gives you access to world-class thinking. Reading can help to destress you while you're scaling a company and attempting to improve revenue. 

Alternatively, when in larger companies, I found teams with siloed knowledge. Those teams often have strong expertise in one area but limited exposure to other perspectives. Broadening your lens will improve your work. At a minimum, it will develop your empathy for other departments and their challenges. 

The commercial funnel runs across the entire go-to-market (GTM) motion, and all should support revenue. GTM is product, marketing, sales, operations, strategy, team development, and leadership. GTM is revenue.

So far, I haven't found a recommendable operational, RevOps or finance books that could fit into this list. Though there are plenty of great courses on these subject areas. 

Similarly to you, I enjoy reading. I find books a slow-thinking resource. Books give your brain time to consider new perspectives without requiring an immediate response or answer.

Often, the writers go to great lengths to ensure you have added value. These include great resources, templates, additional processes, or data you maybe would not find yourself. 

Over time, I grew a list of key books that I return to frequently. I wish I could retain all the data and knowledge. To help improve my retention I mind-map, write out, and form templates of the learnings. In addition to testing out those learnings in real life as soon as possible.

I'm still uncertain if I retain as much information through digital books as paper. I will happily tab and highlight in my Kindle. Yet, I would not dare touch a paper copy similarly. 

Below, I've separated the books into their respective go-to-market areas (some cross-over). Hopefully, you'll see some that you've already read. Please do share any worthy book suggestions, it would be great to hear your thoughts. 

Marketing & Sales

As GTM areas, sales and marketing are frequently the most siloed business areas. It isn't a myth. The lack of cohesion exists in reality.  

This past year, all levels of business, especially SaaS, are struggling to maintain or pursue growth. Many Chief Revenue Officers are struggling to hit their forecasted numbers.

More sales reps aren't reaching quota and are losing out on commission, which often makes their salaries. Sadly, even more are losing their jobs with little notice.

Others are on performance improvement plans even when the failure to hit quota was a complex business challenge. 

On the bright side, revenue is becoming a team sport. As it does, the silo between marketing and sales should erode. In EMEA, the SaaS industry is still maturing its understanding of revenue architecture and how that can benefit everyone.

Chief Marketing Officers' challenges are similar. They also include the move towards demand generation, account-based experience, and co-owning revenue numbers. 

Chief Customer Officers are often in the middle, and that position worsens as the metrics lose momentum. 

In a separate list, I deal with leadership and team development reads. Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is worth reading on aligning the C-Suite. 

The following books helped me strengthen my understanding of how to be an effective customer advocate, marketer, and salesperson. 

My aim is to improve your understanding of how your GTM efforts can improve your profit margin. Both teams should learn how the other thinks to minimise blame and shame between the teams. Also it will help improve your customer understanding.

For those small businesses, you or a small team are likely both marketing & sales. The books are still relevant to you, but some are more relevant as you scale.

My aim is that they will help you understand how to improve with limited resources. How can you be an effective marketer with limited knowledge? How to understand your customer base. To help you understand your target market, potential customers, and customer experience.

Marketing

Building distinctive brand assets (Jenni Romaniuk) 

How Brands Grow (Byron Sharp)

Difference (Bernadette Jiwa) 

Meaningful (Bernadette Jiwa) 

Talking to humans (Giff Constable)

Science of storytelling (Will Storr) 

Marketing playbook (John Zegula) 

Buyer Personas (Adele Revella)

Loved: How to rethink marketing for tech product (Martina Lauchengco)

Making websites win (Karl Blanks and Ben Jesson)

Mastering in-house SEO (Schnieders) Product-led SEO (Eli Schwartz) 

Trustworthy online controlled experiments (Ron Kohavi) 

End-to-end sales

Strategy

Often, strategy becomes far more complex than needed. There are a lot of misconceptions about what strategy is. In particular, the role that data plays in developing a strategy. What types of data should be helpful? 

I should put strategy first on this list, but I feared people would stop reading. If I called it growth strategy, you would maybe read on?

Smaller businesses do not have access to enough data. It takes time for your processes and data to build out. Ensuring those processes and data are accurate is important. More so as you scale.

Data is important. However, you cannot undervalue instinct or intuition. 

As companies grow, there can be pressure to rely upon data over common sense and qualitative understanding. This can be true in companies, even though they acknowledge they have mediocre data. Often at best, it is directionally accurate with an inaccurate understanding of the misalignments, errors, and issues. 

I believe strategy is the first step. I do understand why everyone wants to start selling and making money. For smaller businesses, the strategy does not need to be complex. You have the space to test and try new things.

For those that don't believe me, I direct you to Alex Smith's short book, no bullsh*t strategy. He's also a fan of the one-page strategy, which might be a good place to start. 

Strategy

Hacking Growth (Sean Ellis & Morgan Brown)

Calling bullsh*t, the art of scepticism in a data-driven world (Carl Bergstrom & Jevin West) 

Good strategy Bad strategy (Richard Rumelt)

Customers know you suck (Debbie Levitt)

Black Swan (Nassim Taleb)

Data Science for Business (Foster Provost & Tom Fawcett)

No bullsh*t strategy (Alex Smith)

Product & Service

Product is my weakest out of the GTM areas. Working on improving my product knowledge is one of my goals. Though I've built products alongside engineers and owned a product's lifecycle, but never been in a full-time role. I'm incredibly lucky to have a Chief Product Officer as a mentor whose book is on the list (shameless plug). 

There's a mix of product-led growth, sometimes known as PLG, understanding human behaviour, and product lifecycle management. 

Product

Product-led growth (Wes Bush)

Product-led onboarding (Ramli John)

Predictive analytics (Eric Seigel)

Predictably irrational (Dan Ariely)

Hooked (Nir Eyal)

What makes great products great (Jeff Callan)

The Great Mental Models (Farnam Street)

Thank you for reading!

Frequently, I read so I hope to change this list over time. I am always on the lookout for more books! I'd like to know if this list was helpful to you. I'd love to know if a book helped with existing customers, marketing campaigns, and conversion rates leading to revenue.

There are other posts that I'm building out that cover podcasts, presentations, scaling teams, and leadership. I find GTM strategy requires a 360 understanding of a business. In the ever-changing business and economic environments this is a journey. 

If you want to talk in more detail, then please don't hesitate to reach out. I love a debate, especially about GTM. Also, networking in the industry is key and I'd love to hear your perspective. 

Claire Cooper

Lead consultant at CGTM Consulting

Please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

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