We’ve been asked for years: “When will you guys write a book? We read your blogs, download your planning guides, and listen to you speak. Surely you have plenty to put in a book!”
And it’s true. We have been writing and speaking for nearly 15 years and have over a million words we’ve put together in various formats.
We encourage everyone to write. It’s a great way to explore your ideas in more depth, find clarity around a small nugget, and help it grow into a fully formed concept. Everyone on our team writes and contributes to the content we create for Q4i and our clients.
Writing and creating content is not always easy, but you get better at it the more you do it. “Because it’s hard” is not an excuse not to do it. In fact, that’s often our motivation for taking something on. When something is hard, many won’t attempt it, so you’ll be in rare company.
Time to get started
It was mid-pandemic when we decided to start, and here we are at publication! It’s been a journey and took much longer than we anticipated because it was, well, hard. 😏
We started writing, turned in the first few chapters, and got feedback from our book coach. The details of how we wanted the book to feel and flow became evident. Like all the other content we produce, we wanted to create a resource that people would find incredibly useful and return to time and again to help shape how they operate their businesses.
So instead of just ideas and theory, we needed it to be a blueprint for organizing, operating, and leading a business.
A frustration we’ve had for years has been that people like to share theory but don’t take it to the next step and share the “how-to” for putting the ideas into practice. Thus became our mantra of “filling in gaps and taking away excuses.” Don’t tell us you don’t know how to do something we recommend, as either a client or a reader, because we include tools and guidance on how to do everything – right down to the blogs we write.
We knew the book had to incorporate that same practical, tough-love approach. Don’t just read a book and feel good about having read it, never to do anything with it. Reading 30 books a year may be impressive consumption, but how are you using the information? How do you share it with your team and make everyone stretch and grow?
Your guidebook
Our desire to make it as useful as having a personal coach advising you on running and growing a business led us to think of it as a guidebook. We’ve broken the book into the four pillars of our Growth Platform: Marketing, Sales, Service, and Leadership. Each section is then broken down into four impact areas.
- Each impact area chapter ends with a self-assessment to reflect on your situation and see how you are doing in that single area of your operations.
- And then, of course, we needed to share resources for the concepts we were explaining and telling people they needed to begin doing. So, we created a resource library for readers to download tools and watch videos to further enhance the concepts and create practical takeaways for each impact area.
- And finally, to use the information in the chapter effectively, we decided to include getting-started lists so you weren’t left wondering what to do first and next.
Our vision of the guidebook continued to take shape, and as we worked with the cover designer, we explained that we wanted this to be like the little book you stuffed in your backpack or glove box. It’s always within arm’s reach. It’s well-worn from so many references; the pages are marked up, sticky notes are hanging out, and the corners are bent, marking your favorite pages. A well-loved resource that travels with you on many great adventures.
The designer loved this idea and presented us with just that. The interior designer used the same graphical elements, so you’ll see the topographical design repeated throughout the book, along with the directional arrow and scale to guide you on your journey as you explore the Growth Platform.
Writing this book has been a labor of love that we present to you with the hopes that your business will reap the benefits of the knowledge we have accumulated over the years. We wish for you to have a well-worn and well-loved copy of your guidebook that is within arm’s reach and helping you grow your business.
Whether you are a business owner, a formal leader, an individual salesperson, or a supporting team member, everyone contributes, and everyone will benefit from the ideas and hard-earned advice in The Salesperson’s Guide to Growing a Business.
We want to extend a huge thank you for following, engaging, and putting our ideas into practice over the years. Without that, we wouldn’t be here today presenting you with our latest project to help you continue reaching for new levels of success. To #Growth and #Results! 🍻
A favor 🙏
We all know the world now runs on reviews, and we’d love it if you would share your thoughts on the book on Amazon. You don’t need to purchase the book from Amazon; you just need an active Amazon account to leave a review. Thank you!
And an offer 🤲
If you want to buy the book for yourself or a few others, Amazon or any other local or national bookseller will have it for order. If you want to buy the book for a team, a group, a classroom, or an audience, reach out to us, and we’ll get you a bulk discount on orders of 10 or more.
And finally, if you love the idea of having us speak to your group about the ideas in the book, reach out and let us know that as well! We can come with books in hand.
