Career Leadership

How did salesforce.com grow from a start-up in a rented apartment into the world's fastest growing software company in less than a decade? Marc Benioff, the visionary founder, chairman, and CEO of salesforce.com, tells how he and his team created and used new business, technology, and philanthropic models tailored to this time of extraordinary change.

Strong leaders at all levels within an organization are a requisite for business success. Yet the leadership pipeline—the internal architecture for growing leaders—is often broken or non-existent. This updated edition of the best-selling The Leadership Pipeline has been revised to help address the challenges of today’s business environment. Anchored in experience, it offers a tested model for planning leadership succession and development that has proven to get results.

Each year, sales professionals leave billions of dollars on the table because they are out gunned, out maneuvered, and out played by savvy buyers, who have been schooled in the art and science of negotiation. Because today's buyers have more power than ever before - more information, more at stake, and more control over the buying process-they almost always enter sales negotiations in a much stronger position than the salespeople on the other side of the table. The results are sadly predictable: Salespeople and their companies end up on the losing end of the deal.

From technology to business, two (or more) heads often prove to be better than one - but only if those heads are cognitively diverse. Diverse perspectives are a powerful tool for maximizing productivity and enhancing collective performance. Now, in The Hidden Factor: Why Thinking Differently Is Your Greatest Asset, you can learn the strategies that make you a more diverse thinker and position you to break down institutional silos and build robust, effective teams.

As a manager you have to make decisions - from daily choices about team priorities to deciding which long-term innovation projects to pursue. But most decisions don't have a clear-cut answer, and assessing the alternatives and the risks involved can be overwhelming. You need a smarter approach to making the best choice possible. The HBR Guide to Making Better Decisions provides practical tips and advice to help you identify the problem, evaluate your alternatives, select the right path forward, and follow through successfully.

Leadership is the most challenging of human endeavors. It is often misunderstood. It can bewilder, mystify, and frustrate even the most dedicated practitioners. Leaders at all levels are often forced to use theoretical guesswork to make decisions and lead their troops. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THAT WAY. There are principles that can be applied and tenets that can be followed. There are skills that can be learned and maneuvers that can be practiced and executed. There are leadership strategies and tactics that have been tested and proven on the battlefield, in business, and in life.

Whether you are moving up, moving on, or just starting out, America's top career coach, Robin Ryan, offers proven, easy-to-learn techniques for mastering the job interview and landing the job of your dreams. This brief, compact book, newly updated in 2008, is packed with useful tips such as: how to establish a career identity or personal brand in the opening minutes of an interview using the 60 Second Sell¿, answers to more than 100 of the toughest interview questions.

Get out of the firefighting business and into the business of developing the people who develop your profits. Successful salespeople rightfully become sales managers because of superior sales records. Yet too often these sales stars get stuck doing their old sales job while also trying to juggle their manager role, and too often companies neglect to train their sales managers how to excel as managers. That's the "sales management trap", and it's exactly what The Accidental Sales Manager addresses and solves.

Merger and acquisition activity across the globe continues to grow, and is also playing a major role in the development of expanding markets. A well-managed integration effort is essential to success, and failure means a tremendous waste in terms of time and money, as well as the rapid destruction of shareholder value. The Complete Guide to Mergers and Acquisitions: Process Tools to Support M&A Integration at Every Level, Third Edition is an invaluable resource to guide firms in managing M&A integration and maximize the value of their deals.

In The Small Big, three heavyweights from the world of persuasion science and practice describe how, in today's information overloaded and stimulation saturated world, increasingly it is the small changes that you make that lead to the biggest differences. In the last few years, more research-from fields such as neuroscience, cognitive psychology, social psychology, and behavioral economics-has helped to uncover an even greater understanding of how influence, persuasion, and behavior change happens.

In 1999 Joseph Pine and James Gilmore offered readers the idea of the experience economy as a new way to connect with customers and secure their loyalty. As a result, their book The Experience Economy is now a classic, embraced by listeners and companies worldwide and available in more than a dozen languages. Though the world has changed in many ways since then, the way to a customer’s heart has not.

Mastering Business Negotiation is a great resource for any leader or manager who needs practical strategies and ideas when conducting business negotiations. Grounded in solid research, the authors - experts in the field of business negotiation - reduce the huge volume of available information into an important audio for busy executives who need to prepare for everyday negotiations as well as for more demanding and complex negotiation situations.

If you had the opportunity to work where, when, and with whom you wanted - all while getting paid very well - would you take it? Self-made multimillionaire and best-selling author Michael Masterson did, and with Ready, Fire, Aim he'll show you how to do the same.

Small Business for Dummies has been a leading resource for starting and running a small business. Calling upon their more than six decades of combined experience running small businesses, Eric Tyson and Jim Schell once again provide time-tested advice and the latest information on starting and growing a small business.

Managers are judged by results - and as a manager, those results hinge on your ability to delegate and supervise. You’ll be surprised at how efficient your team becomes when you master Brian Tracy’s essential skills. This indispensable guide reveals his 21 time-tested ways to boost performance, including how to: Define work, assign it, and set measurable, targeted standards for performance; Match skills to job requirements....

Carlo Ancelotti is one of the greatest managers of all time, with five Champions League titles to his name. Yet his approach could not be further from the aggressive theatricals favoured by many of his rivals. His understated style has earned him the fierce loyalty of players like David Beckham, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Cristiano Ronaldo.

More than any other practice in your career, your ability to manage time will determine your success or failure. It’s a simple equation. The better you use your time, the more you will accomplish, and the greater your rewards will be. This exceptional guide reveals 21 proven time management techniques you can use immediately to gain two or more productive hours every day. Filled with Brian Tracy’s trademark wisdom, this audiobook will help you get more done, in less time…and with much less stress.

Leadership can be learned: New evidence from neuroscience clearly points to ways that leaders can significantly improve how they engage with and motivate others. This book provides leaders and managers with an accessible guide to practical, effective actions, based on neuroscience.

Are you hungry to help others through leadership but don't feel like you have the authority? One of the greatest myths of leadership is that you must be in charge in order to lead. Great leaders don't buy it. Great leaders - whether they have the official authority or not - learn how to be an influential presence wherever they are. In How to Lead When You're Not in Charge, author and pastor Clay Scroggins explains the nature of leadership and what's needed to be a great leader - even when you answer to someone else.

Whether you’re a seasoned professional, an aspiring entrepreneur, or simply someone seeking to amplify your impact in the world, Do More, More Naturally offers you practical strategies and immediately actionable advice to propel you toward your goals.