Bookstore
The University of Innovative Distribution recommends the following books to add to your collection. Please note that you will be directed to another website to purchase these books as we do not fulfill the orders.
The Credit Overlord: A Decade of Credit Advice Unleashed, Volume 1
Thea Dudley
Embark on an insightful journey through the complex world of credit and collections with Credit Advice Unleashed Volume I, the first installment in an indispensable series. This collection brings together a decade’s worth of Thea Dudley’s highly regarded advice columns, showcasing her unmatched expertise and unfiltered insights. With over 35 years of experience in the building materials and construction industry, Thea Dudley has earned her title as the ‘Credit Overlord,’ offering sharp-witted guidance, practical solutions, and an unapologetically candid approach that professionals in the field have come to rely on.
In Credit Advice Unleashed Volume I, readers will find real-world answers to the most pressing credit and collections questions, addressing the challenges and nuances faced by businesses in maintaining financial health and cash flow. Thea’s columns, infused with humor and hard-earned wisdom, provide both seasoned credit professionals and newcomers with the tools they need to navigate this critical aspect of business with confidence.
Whether you’re tackling overdue accounts, negotiating with clients, or streamlining internal processes, this book is your guide to mastering the intricacies of credit management. Experience Thea Dudley’s unparalleled voice and let her years of experience elevate your credit and collections game.
The Credit Overlord's Guide to Credit & Collections
Thea Dudley
Being responsible for the credit and collections function in the construction industry is never any little kid's dream. But somebody's got to do it.
In The Credit Overlord's Guide to Credit & Collections, Thea Dudley presents an honest, open, and often hilarious account of her journey through opening contractors with credit lines, collecting, or chasing the payments, managing sales reps, teams and bosses.
Dudley shares her insights into succeeding in keeping your business cash flow moving while still salvaging the customer. She offers practical advice for protecting and collecting your money — written in plain, straightforward language that helps connects the dots. This is a must-read guide for anyone in the construction and building material industry.
From Status Quo to Status GROW®
Todd Cohen
From Status Quo to Status GROW®” is an engaging and action-oriented book by Todd Cohen. It is the fourth installment in the “Everyone’s in Sales” series of business books. This book emphasizes the “everyone’s in sales” mindset through the perspectives of professional and personal leadership. The fact is that everyone is involved in sales, and everyone has the potential to be a leader—it's YOUR choice! While sales training is designed for the sales team, fostering a sales culture is essential for the entire company, ensuring that it remains competitive and profitable.
Mastering Import and Export Management: Edition 3
Thomas Cook
With billions of dollars generated annually, importing and exporting is a potentially lucrative arena for growthand a bewildering tangle of rules and regulations. Packed with hundreds of cost-effective strategies, ready-to-use forms, and valuable checklists, the 3rd edition explains how to efficiently & legally navigate the complex world of international trade documentation accurately and more.
Value-Added Selling (4th Edition)
Paul Reilly & Tom Reilly
“Value” is about more than just price. Good salespeople understand that and know what differentiates their products from that of competitors. Developments in technology, including price comparison apps and search engines, now provide consumers with more information than ever, making it much harder to value and sell your product. Additionally, millennials, who now comprise the largest population in the workforce, prefer to do things differently than prior generations. This updated fourth edition of Reilly’s classic guide examines the latest trends and technology that have impacted the market and provides expert advice on leveraging current technology to increase sales.
Value-Added Selling, 4th edition offers proven strategies and tactics to help you not only close more sales but improve repeat business without compromising on price. You’ll learn how to anticipate the needs, wants, and concerns of buyers from the very beginning of the sales process. The book shows how to compete more profitably by selling value, not price. Visit www.TomReillyTraining.com for more information on this important message.
Rapid Teamwork
Sean Glaze
In modern organizations, there seems to be a revolving door of new projects and new teammates. The challenge is seldom about strategy. Leaders struggle because they don’t have a process for bringing diverse individuals together as a collaborative team.
Rapid Teamwork tells the story of Greg Sharpe, a manager whose team has been underachieving and struggling with a few issues.
What he and his executive team experience during an unusual rafting retreat is a lesson on how to become a more productive team quickly – creating a more unified workforce.
Your Someday is Now – What are you Waiting For?
Gail Lowney Alofsin, President and Founder, Leadership at ALL Levels
Experience meets the classroom as Gail merges the worlds of work, university, non-profit, personal branding, and work/life integration creating a book that focuses on YOUR best YOU! Jam-packed with practical and inspiring advice from both Gail and over 100 business professionals, she had the privilege of interviewing.
100% of sales are donated. Over $40,000 has been raised for local and international non-profits through sales of the book.
Achieving Effective Inventory Management – 6th Edition
Jon Schreibfeder
Achieving Effective Inventory Management, 6th Edition, based on our most recent research and up-to-date “best practices”, provides a complete guide for managing a large and often troublesome asset: inventory.
The economic challenges facing distributors today have resulted in EIM conducting a thorough review and update of the entire 5th edition. This update, coupled with discussions regarding the impact and adjustments that the current economic challenges have produced in all areas of inventory management, has produced our new 6th edition.
This book helps you achieve the goal of effective inventory management — to meet or exceed customers’ expectations of product availability with the amount of each item that will maximize your organization’s net profits or minimize its total inventory investment.
Selling Through Tough Times
Paul Reilly
As a sales professional, you know that it’s harder to sell in tough times―whether it’s a recession, industry-wide challenge, or global pandemic. You may also have noticed that some salespeople and managers not only survive but thrive through tough times. How do they do it? What do they do to thrive through adversity?
Paul Reilly explains it all in Selling Through Tough Times: Customers buy differently in tough times, so salespeople need to sell differently in tough times. In this eye-opening and indispensable guide, he shows how to develop the right mindset and adapt your skills to prevail in even the most challenging selling climate. His plan includes both immediate, hands-on action plans (including six Daily Mental Flex activities) as well as longer-range strategies to ensure you (and your team) never get caught on the back foot again.
While the principles of selling are constant, Reilly demonstrates how changing your tactics in tough times will not only help you through current difficulties but help you emerge stronger. You’ll discover how to redefine value in customer terms, reposition products and services, and how employ different persuasion tactics. You’ll also learn how to select and pursue the right opportunities, win more deals, and―crucially―protect profit by embracing the “tough timers” mental attitude.
Tough times are inevitable and often unpredictable. But in Selling Through Tough Times, you’ll find the tools and mindset you need to power through them―and come out on top.
Visit www.ToughTimer.com and complete the 30-Day Tough-Timer Challenge.
Manufacturing and Distribution Intel Engine
Sam Richter, CSP, CPAE
To win in business, sales, prospecting, and networking you must do your homework. Yet you most likely waste hours searching online trying to locate opportunities and learn about companies, people, and what they care about. STOP IT!
- Cut your information-gathering time from minutes to seconds.
- Find the right decision maker, at a time when they are interested in hearing your message.
- Discover new opportunities, research competitors and markets, and ensure relevant value in every business meeting, networking event, and sales call.
The Upside of Down Times: Discovering the Power of Gratitude
Lisa Ryan
Harness the Power of Gratitude One of the downsides of life is that we rarely have to deal with an overabundance of gratitude. Most of us tend to focus on the negative. We don't receive nearly as much acknowledgment as we would like, and we don't give as much recognition as others deserve. Now for the upside! When we learn to harness the power of gratefulness, we can make a major positive difference in so many areas of our lives, as well as the lives of those around us-and The Upside of Down Times is your first step toward making that happen. "I highly recommend this book if you want to be happier, healthier, and wealthier. I read this book in one sitting and began implementing some of the ideas the next day. The ideas are easy to implement but powerful in their results." -Jack Canfield, Co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and The Success Principles
Who Comes Next? Leadership Succession Planning Made Easy
Mary C. Kelly
Leaders leave. It's inevitable. It might even happen today. Are you prepared? Every organization needs a plan for leadership succession, but few leaders know how to start the process. WHO COMES NEXT? solves that problem and easily guides you through the steps of creating and implementing a viable succession plan.
This essential guidebook simplifies the process and gives you the tools you need to build and activate your leadership succession. You’ll find a comprehensive action plan, a library of all the tools needed to develop and sustain your plan, and a resource guide. You’ll learn how to:
- Communicate with customers about the change
- Identify talent gaps in your succession plan
- Decide which succession planning model to adapt
- Find the next generation of leadership within your organization
- Handle the unique emotional complexities of succession in a family-owned business
Whether you are part of a small, family business, a Fortune 500 company, or a non-profit, you need to start now by answering the question: WHO COMES NEXT?
Emotional Intelligence for Sales Success
Colleen Stanley
In Emotional Intelligence for Sales Success, you'll learn how to increase impulse control for better questioning and listening, which EI skills are related to likability and trust, how empathy leads to bigger sales conversations and more effective solutions, how emotional intelligence can improve prospecting efforts, which EI skills are most common among top sales producers, and much more.
Customers can get product information and price comparisons online. The true differentiator between you and a bot is your ability to deftly solve problems and build relationships. From business development to closing the deal, emotional intelligence will drive your performance - and your success.
Old Dog, New Clicks: Online Industrial and B2B Marketing Know-How for the 21st Century
Bob DeStefano
Two big, related dynamics are changing the field of industrial and B2B marketing: It's an ever-younger crowd with a penchant for the wired and the wireless, and they don't enjoy phone sales calls. They're likely to Google you first, pop over to your website, then check out your social media accounts. How will they find you? What will they find when they do?
What's Your Plan? Smart Salesforce Compensation in Wholesale Distribution
Mike Marks and Mike Emerson
According to authors Mike Marks and Mike Emerson in their book, What’s Your Plan? Smart Salesforce Compensation in Wholesale Distribution, there is absolutely no relationship between your sales incentive plan and your likely gain or loss in market share.
Working at Cross-Purposes: How Distributors and Manufacturers Can Manage Conflict Successfully
Mike Marks
It takes a long time to develop good distributor-supplier relationships; unfortunately, it only takes a short time to destroy them. Best seller Working at Cross-Purposes, written by Mike Marks, Tim Horan, and Mike Emerson, takes a look at what really drives these relationships, how often they go bad, and why.
5 Fundamentals for the Wholesale Distribution Branch Manager
Jim Ambrose
This 5 Fundamentals for the Wholesale Distribution Branch Manager, Second Edition is the classic step-by-step guide to helping branch managers improve their business and leadership skills. “If winning means profitable market share and profitable market share growth, then developing the branch manager is essential to a company’s success,” he says.
Facing the Forces of Change: Reimagining Distribution in a Connected World
Guy Bissett
Facing the Forces of Change® is the only major research study analyzing the future of wholesale distribution within multiple lines of trade. Since its inception in 1982, the landmark Facing the Forces of Change® series continues to provide insights about the overall future of wholesale distribution and the role of wholesaler-distributors.
The Little Black Book of Strategic Planning for Distributors
Brent Grover
Brent Grover’s latest book on the wholesale distribution industry, The Little Black Book of Strategic Planning for Distributors, is published by Modern Distribution Management. This is a concise book covering the critical pieces of creating a strategic plan for a wholesale distribution company including case studies, exhibits and end-of-chapter questions for your management team.
Strategic Pricing For Distributors: Tools and Rules for Building Higher Margins
Brent Grover
Experience shows that most distributors are leaving at least two percentage points of gross trading margin on the table. This translates into 2% of total sales. Many companies can ultimately achieve more. The improvement is attainable fairly quickly and has proven to be sustainable. Two percent is the difference between mediocre profit results and stellar performance!
