Practice is just as valuable as a sale. The sale will make you a living; the skill will make you a fortune. - Jim Rohn, an American entrepreneur

How do you master any art form? Practice. Sales in a business sense, its own art form. Some people can sell, and others become masters. As with any art, there is an entire spectrum of subjectivity on what’s good. Still, mastering the skill is essential if you want to grow your HVACR business. Or as one of our featured authors says bluntly, “If you can’t sell, you can’t make money.” The art of the sale in some ways can be more important than the product. Think about it – if you have a good product, but you can’t sell it, it’s worthless. This month we focus on books that will help you get there – whether that means reading up on what you don’t know about sales and growing your company or practicing becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Selling the Dream - By Guy Kawasaki

This is a blue-chip choice that has retained its value over time. Guy Kawasaki's phenomenal success at Apple Computer and as a start-up entrepreneur was the result of an innovative approach to sales, marketing, and management called evangelism. Evangelism means convincing people to believe in your product or ideas as much as you do, by using fervor, zeal, guts, and cunning to mobilize your customers and staff into becoming as passionate about a cause as you are.

Selling the Dream is a handbook and workbook for putting evangelism into action. Kawasaki charts a complete blueprint for the beginning evangelist that covers such topics as how to define a cause (whether it is a business, like Windham Hill Records or the Body Shop, or a public interest concern, like the National Audubon Society or Mothers Against Drunk Driving), how to identify good and bad enemies, how to deliver an effective presentation, and how to find, train, and recruit new evangelists. One of the highlights of the book is a short course in developing an evangelistic business plan, illustrated by the complete, original Macintosh Product Introduction Plan.

Selling the Dream will teach you how to become a raging, inexorable thunder lizard of an evangelist -- a leader whose words will never fall on deaf ears again.

Find it here.

Home Service Millionaire: How I Went from $50,000 in Debt to a $30 Million+ Business in Seven Years - By Tommy Mello

Already have a home service business but just scraping by? Don’t know how to grow because you can’t possibly work any more hours than you already are? This book may help you change that. Author Tommy Mello, in his own words, says, “Every home at some point requires maintenance. Roofs need repairing, walls need painting and drains need clearing. Your goal is to become the go-to company in your area for whatever home service it is you provide.” And adds Mello, “If I can turn my local garage door service business around from being over 50 thousand dollars in debt and grow it into the millions, so can you — if you are willing to change how you think about achieving this goal.” Mello offers his advice from his own experience of running one of the top home service businesses in the country.

Find it here.  

The 7 Secrets to Becoming a Wealthy Contractor: How To Make More Money, Take More Time Off and Live Your Best Life - By Brian Kaskavalciyan

Celebrated author, Brian Kaskavalciyan, asks in this boldly titled tome, “Are You Ready to Become a Wealthy (or Wealthier) Contractor?” It’s a good option to have on your bookshelf if you are the owner of a home improvement company of any kind and you want to make quantum leaps in the sales of your company. Inside this book, entrepreneur, marketing strategist, and host of The Wealthy Contractor podcast, Kaskavalciyan will share with you the 7 “secrets” that drive the results of every Wealthy Contractor. In a simple, straightforward style, Brian outlines each of the secrets (or principles) and delivers practical advice on how to not only create a more successful and profitable home improvement business using the secrets but how it can make your life richer as well. The “secrets” in this book will help take you to new levels of success.

Find it here.

Whatever It Takes: Master the Habits to Transform Your Business, Relationships, and Life - By Brandon Bornancin

According to Bornancin, no matter who you are or where you come from, your education, or your network, you can defy the odds to create the life you want and build the business you’ve only dreamed about. In this choice, a book about transforming your business, Bornancin tells of his struggles – he graduated college flat-broke. He started a business that was an epic failure. Then he turned it all around – before he was 30 – closing over $100 million in sales for Google and IBM and founding two multimillion-dollar companies, the second named “LinkedIn’s Top 50 Startups.” How did he do it? The book is the answer to the question: By doing Whatever It Takes.

In this no-nonsense guide to success, you’ll learn the empowering beliefs and transformative habits needed to achieve all that you want in business and life.

But adds Bornancin, it’s not an easy fix. It requires that you, “…wake up and do the work." 

And, he says if you do that, you too can defy the odds to get everything that you want in business and life if you are willing to do Whatever It Takes.

Find it here.