Here is Cydcor's review of Start with Why by Simon Sinek

About Start with Why: Author Simon Sinek studied leaders all over the word, researching how they thought, worked and communicated. With this information, he wanted to determine how these leaders were alike and different. Drawing upon a wide range of real-life stories, Sinek weaves together a clear vision of what it truly takes to lead and inspire, using such examples as Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Wright Brothers.

Why Cydcor recommends Start with Why for future leaders: Simon Sinek's Start With Why is a must read for any entrepreneur or leader struggling to create a long-term vision and guiding principles for their company or cause. Sinek’s book helps provide inspiration that one needs to get started in the right direction. He teaches important lessons on what future leaders need to figure out in regards to their company, and why such lessons should be meaningful.

Start with Why provides great insights for developing long-term strategies to combat issues such as price-wars, customer churn and competition. Sinek also talks about how important it is to understand that your product and its features might be replicated by others. He explains that no one can copy your confidence and customer service style or how your clients feel about you and your organization. Those feelings come from intangible values and beliefs that only you share with your customers.

While several moments in the book feel a tad repetitive, it’s an easy read—and sometimes great points need to be repeated to be ingrained into our minds.

Our favorite part: Sinek’s Golden Circle Concept is an interesting notion to help ask us “why?” This line of thinking can be applied to multiple facets in life, whether personal or customer relationships, business decisions or career choices.

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The overall consensus when meeting someone new is that you have thirty seconds to make a good impression. From the handshake to your following conversation, it can feel like a lot of pressure to nail such an interaction on the first try. But what can you do if you make a poor first impression? Whether you forget their name or a joke falls flat, top networkers say there are ways to bounce back.

“It is much easier to turn a good first impression into a bad overall impression than it is to turn a bad first impression into a good one,” said Anna Musson, an etiquette expert. When we meet someone new, our sensitivity and guard levels go up. "We like to think that we're right and once we've made up our mind about a person we need to be persuaded otherwise.”

Sometimes our insecurities get the best of us, and it’s easy to assume that others might think the worst of you. However, what we imagine is often far worse than reality. Own up to your feelings, and don’t make assumptions. Time is of the essence when it comes to damage control, but take the time to formulate your next interaction to address the issue.

Acknowledging where the breakdown might have stemmed from –-a joke or a curse word, for example— can be cleared with a simple, “I apologize for how I behaved and I realize I might have offended you.” Don’t over-apologize; so keep it polite and concise. Don’t put the other person in the uncomfortable position of having to reassure you.

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Be sincere, and own up to any breakdown during an impression without blaming others or circumstances. Depending on the situation, self-deprecating humor can really help you. Be mindful that it’s only directed at yourself, and does not make others uncomfortable. This can provide an opening for you to recover, but remember that too much humor can have the same effect as over-apologizing.

Every impression you create is a learning experience and can help you improve your body language and communication skills. Overcoming a poor first impression requires total ownership of your behavior and adds to your confidence and ability to learn from such mistakes. It’s also an opportunity for you to be mindful of appropriate interactions, and to monitor your behavior to make the best impressions possible in the future.

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November marks the start of the holiday season for many businesses, and there’s no better time than now to begin preparing a holiday strategy. Be sure to take into account that in 2014 there is a shortened selling season, with only 26 shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, so planning is key. Here are some tips to help you boost your online and sales presence during the biggest retailer and sales months of the year.

Research

During the holidays, everyone is vying for attention from potential consumers, so how do you get yourself to stand out from the rest? Start internally, by determining what message you want to send, what products you want to focus on, and what your customers have been interested in in previous years during similar time periods. Are you aware of online social trends? Where do you find the most social engagement, and what hashtags and images are doing the best in your sphere?

Decorate

Decorate your brand with the holiday spirit! Use fall or winter themed cover photos, profile images, backgrounds and the like. A few falling leaves or snow covered logos and images can really refresh your social pages and show customers you are doing proper upkeep on your assets and are on point with trends.

Traditional

A shout-out to a user via Twitter or a tag on Facebook is what’s popular these days and is certainly a quick way to reach out, but don’t undersell the value of the traditional approach. A handwritten holiday card to your key clients or circle figures can go a long way. In such a digital age, don’t neglect the small, personal touches that others can see going above and beyond to reach them.

Head to Cydcor Reviews for reviews of books regarding business, leadership, and productivity.

A business is nothing without the customers it serves. Truly great businesses also understand that it is important to foster rapport with clients to ensure that you can do business more than once—the key is to have an ongoing relationship with your client instead of just a one-time business dealing.

Clients can provide your business with so much more than money. Happy clients act as advocates, spreading the good word about a business on their own. If done correctly, you might even find fulfilling, long-term partnerships with some clients.

Here are some vital ways to turn your contacts into clients, and clients into trusted friends/partners.

Networking the right way

You are probably familiar with the idea of networking: connecting with a large group of people (business colleagues, business partners, acquaintances, past and current clients) in the hopes of helping each other in some way. The problem is that sometimes it is easy to forget that networking is a two-way street. If you use your network the right way, you can add value to the connections you make instead of only worrying about the value others give to you.

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Keep in contact

Networking is wonderful, but it must be nurtured to survive past the short-term. No matter how engaging or memorable you are when meeting a contact for the first time, you’ll have to remind them that you exist or inevitably they will forget you. Even if your contact is uninterested in what you have to offer at the current time, that might change—and you’ll be there if it does.

Add value to the relationship: reward your returning customers

As mentioned above, be sure to add value to the relationship. This might be in the form of tangible rewards like coupons, discounts, or free merchandise—or it could be something a bit more abstract like passing along useful information or sending friendly messages about new products, services, or deals that they might be interested in. The goal is to not only receive from your clients, but to give back in the hope that they return the favor. This is crucial because, as many studies have found, returning customers spend more on average than first-time customers.

Care about your clients

Care about your clients as both important business transactions (by providing them the best of your services as possible) and as people. Be honest with them at all times and keep your word: it might seem like a no-brainer, but you are dealing with people, so you should treat them with the respect they deserve. They will appreciate it!

The final step: from client to partner

If you do everything right, you can begin forging a partnership with your clients. They will grow in value for you today and in the future—and you for them. They will add value to the relationship as advocates of your business wherever they go. View this partnership like a great friendship, and you will both be very happy.

In March of this year, Cydcor volunteers went to San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, thanks to our Operation Smile fundraisers—which have raised over $480,000 for the children’s medical charity to date. Helping to fund cleft palate surgeries for needy children around the globe, Cydcor has previously volunteered in Brazil in 2012, where more than 600 surgeries were provided to children.

Cydcor is proud of this partnership with Operation Smile, and with the great success of our Week of Smiles campaign, we are funding another medical mission trip to Guatemala in November 2014. Spending a week in Guatemala, our volunteers will support the screening process, helping families through the procedure and entertaining children while they wait for their procedures.

The mission involves sending doctors, volunteers and equipment to an area where access to healthcare is difficult, providing screenings and surgeries for children. Cleft palates often result in complications to eating, drinking, speaking and even breathing, and many infants do not survive. Operation Smile and Cydcor hope to restore millions of smiles and give those children a better chance of thriving.

One of the most rewarding aspects is our chance to spend time with the families of the children being operated on and see them through the transition of surgery. A large part of Operation Smile’s strategy is to assist facilities in the field, helping enable them to provide treatment of cleft palates and other facial deformities.

You can make a donation to Operation Smile today and support this great cause!

Here is Cydcor's review of Business @ The Speed of Thought by Bill Gates:

About Business @ The Speed of Thought: Microsoft founder Bill Gates is the author Business @ The Speed of Thought, which focuses on the importance of technology.  In the book, Gates shows how technology can help businesses better today and gives predictions on how that technology could transform the nature of business in the future.

Gates speaks to the business managers reading and stresses the importance of viewing new technology as a strategic asset, not as overhead or something to be dismissed. He gives detailed examples from Microsoft and Dell, among other successful companies, who have taken the latest technology and used it to their business advantage.

Why Cydcor recommends this book to future leaders:

Bill Gates is essentially the definition of “successful business person,” and he does a fine job explaining how the new digital age can impact all offices across the world. While the book itself might be more interesting to IT folks, as Gates goes in-depth into technology, he does speak to business strategy. In regards to technology, he doesn’t delve too deeply into the pitfalls and problems that can arise from depending too much on such tech.

However, for those who believe that technology will continue to grow and intertwine with business and those who believe it will play an increasingly significant role in the marketplace, this is a must read.

Our favorite part: Gates provides a 12-step program to implement a “Digital Nervous System,” which is a useful guide to integrating IT with existing business resources. Business @ The Speed of Thought also gives detailed case studies of large companies such as Microsoft and other businesses outside of the tech industry, making the “Digital Nervous System” relevant to a broader audience.

Check out Cydcor's YouTube page for a re-cap of our recent R&R 2014 event in Nassau, Bahamas!

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Communicating in a clear and effective way is always important, both in real life situations and especially in business communications. We converse so much that we often forget to stop and think about what we are saying. When communicating in a professional context, you need to be aware of the little nuances that are held in your words and actions.

Here are some tips for becoming an influential communicator:

Have a clear goal and benefits for all parties.

Transparency is important. The worst thing that could happen is having your conversation be misunderstood. Therefore, you will want to make a clear goal when talking with a client, or potential client. It also helps to make sure that you frame your message in a way that presents the benefits for that party.

With that said…

Know your audience.

Your audience is whomever you are communicating with. Who are they? What do they want? How do they speak? What do they know? Understanding your audience is incredibly important because it provides you all the information you need to tailor your communications to be the most effective for that specific person or group of people.

Knowing your audience makes it less likely that you will waste time explaining things that are already known, glossing over important details that you assume are understood.

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Be sure to ask the right kinds of questions

Learn to strategically drop “leading questions” that prompt longer answers than “yes” or “no.” This will help guide your conversation in a productive direction.

Ask important qualifying questions to ensure that your leads will turn into a prospect. Largely, you’ll be asking questions that are focused around answering these key questions: Can and will you be able to authorize on the sale? What can I do for you to close on this sale?

Naturally, you should take information you learned from your audience and tailor the question accordingly for them, but these simple questions capture the essence of what you need to find out from your prospect.

Here is Cydcor's review of Cutting Edge Marketing Analytics: Real World Cases and Data Sets for Hands On Learning by Rajkumar Venkatesan, Paul Farris, and Ronald T. Wilcox:

About Cutting Edge Marketing Analytics: Cutting Edge Marketing Analytics calls itself a practical guide to modern marketing analytics. It looks to introduce today’s most valuable marketing methods and tools by introducing case studies that apply analytic techniques to real problems.

Each chapter of the book provides technical notes that look to show statistical background as well as case studies. All the case studies provided are accompanied by real date and used by the protagonists to make decisions. Methods and tools provided by the author include product analytics, customer analytics, and the effective implementation of such analytics into your business or organization.

The authors look to help people identify the right data and analytic techniques by conducting the analysis and obtaining the insights from those data points. They also look to connect those insights to strategic decision-making.

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Why Cydcor recommends this to future leaders: This book is an excellent roadmap for managers looking to make the most out of marketing resources. The material presented strikes the right balance of rigorous analysis and strategic relevance.

Our favorite part: Cutting Edge Marketing Analytics takes an excellent look into how the Internet and mobile technologies available have combined to create an unprecedented level of insight into consumer behavior and customer preferences. This mastery of marketing and customer analytics has become the ‘table stakes’ for understanding and pleasing the customer. This is a great book for practitioners looking for real world applications.

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Here is Cydcor's review of Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors by Michael E. Porter:

About Competitive Strategy: Published in 1980, Michael Porter’s book still resonates with many individuals today and is the basis for much of what is taught in MBA programs regarding Business Strategy. In fact, the author himself is a professor at Harvard Business School and is a lead authority on the subject. The book has nearly sixty printings in English, has been translated into nineteen languages, and has transformed the theory, practice and teaching of business strategy throughout the world.

Why Cydcor Reviews recommends this to future leaders: Competitive Strategy is fantastic in its simplicity, and the analyses provided can be used as powerful competitive tools and examples on how one can being structure to the task of strategic positioning.

Porter provides the framework for predicting competitor behavior and has given rise to the newer discipline of competitor assessment. It’s a must read for managers, consultants, students and those in business who wish to take up leadership roles in businesses—big or small.

Our favorite part: While the first chapter alone is worth the cost of this book, Cydcor recommends it for the wisdom contained in its entirety. The chapters are organized into three parts: General Analytical Techniques, Generic Industry Environments, and Strategic Decisions.

Porter, being an expert on competition, analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of businesses in the very first chapter. His focuses are the threat of new entrants, pressure of substitute products, bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers and the intensity of rivalry among existing competitors. These five forces are the roadmap for determining the competitiveness of individual companies, and are truly eye opening.

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Cydcor is gearing up for our annual R&R event, and this year we are looking forward to several days off for fun in the sun for attendees from the network of independent sales companies!

This year’s R&R Owners Weekend is being held in late October  in Nassau, Bahamas, at the beautiful Atlantis Paradise Island. Our primary focuses are on rest and relaxation for the hundreds that will be in attendance and celebration of the successes of the past year.

Sales company owners will enjoy a weekend full of events, including themed meals, a Junkanoo-themed dinner, our 3^rd Annual Talent Show, a private pool party with a DJ, and our 7^th Annual Charity Tournament and Carnival! There will also be a beach volleyball charity game, which will fundraise for Operation Smile, an international children’s medical charity treating cleft lips and clef palates around the world.

We’ve already kicked off R&R 2014 with a Bahama-themed postcard caption contest, with the winning entry from Ryan Caugherty. Ryan won $100 toward food and fun by participating in our Facebook contest. Thank you to all who entered!

With water parks, nightclubs, “Paradise” beaches and dolphin swims, there’s no lack of fun options for our owners and their friends and families. We can’t wait to start packing!

For more information about Cydcor, head to our page on CareerBuilder.

Head to LinkedIn to find out more information about Cydcor, located near Los Angeles, CA in Westlake Village.

Here is Cydcor's review of Quiet: The Power of Introverts In a World That Won’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain.

About Quiet: The Power of Introverts: This book looks to explore the “Quiet Revolution” by explaining how one-third of people we know are introverts. Introverts being the ones who prefer listening to speaking, who love being creative and innovative but dislike self-promotion and who favor working independently than in a team.

In Quiet, the author explains how we dramatically undervalue introverts and evidence she provides shows how much we lose in doing so. Cain shows the rise of the “Extrovert Ideal” as it expanded throughout the twentieth century, which praised witty, high-energy public figures. Often the world repeatedly overlooks the quiet introvert, that the author demonstrates through excellent research, and relatable stories of real people in history who were well-known introverts.

Why Cydcor recommends this book to future leaders: A large reason for our selection of this book is to acknowledge that the concept of a ‘leader’ doesn’t always mean someone who is brazen, bold or loud. It can be the quiet ones who offer a game-changing idea or a unique perspective in a team approach.

The author describes herself as an introvert, and when an interviewer asked why she wrote this book, she answered, "For the same reason that Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Introverts are to extroverts what women were to men at that time—second-class citizens with gigantic amounts of untapped talent...Our bias against introversion leads to a colossal waste of talent, energy, and, ultimately, happiness."

Quiet is filled with well thought-out research and interesting case studies, and services as a refreshing corrective to decades of unfamiliarity with introverts.

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Our favorite part: It may seem at first that Cain is trying to say that introverts are better than extroverts, but reading through the whole work she does a wonderful job of challenging introverts to grow in certain areas. She also challenges extroverts to consider the benefits that introverts are able bring to the table.