As automation gathers pace, a people-first philosophy is more important than ever for thriving businesses.
getty
Across industries, businesses today are more automated and productive than ever. At least, the ones that have survived up until this point. Yet it’s increasingly clear to me that sales, revenue and market-share growth still depend on forging lasting bonds with humans inside and outside the organization.
These four books recognize this new, contradictory reality: To thrive in a world defined by rapid technological progress, where humans may feel like onlookers in core business processes, effective storytelling is critical to enterprises’ success.
But these books are not simply about effective leadership in uncertain times. The world has plenty of those already. These titles all focus on results: improving internal culture, winning new customers, closing sales and growing market share. Each emphasizes the value of storytelling in deepening relationships with customers and employees, then leveraging those connections to build value. Ultimately, they’re about business transformation — in the true sense of the term rather than its shallow, “refresh the org chart” meaning.
1. Collin Stewart — The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers
One of North America’s top sales development executives has written a book for startup leaders looking to land their first critical customers.
The Terrifying Art of Finding Customers author Collin Stewart is the founder and CEO of Predictable Revenue, a company dedicated to helping founders find their first customers and build their first sales teams. His subtitle — “A Sleep-Deprived Founder’s Guide to Revenue” — speaks to the chaotic, high-pressure reality of early-stage startups, where progress depends on identifying an unmet need, solving it, and turning customer development conversations into customers.
What Stewart makes clear is that early sales can’t be automated or delegated — they depend on founders talking directly to prospective customers. Those conversations are where you uncover the real need, test whether your product meaningfully solves it, and refine the story that makes people care. This work is the path to product-market fit, and nothing in your go-to-market motion will work until you’ve earned those insights firsthand.
Stewart cuts through the noise with a simple truth: the strength of your product-market fit determines how effective every go-to-market effort can be. Before founders invest in sales or marketing, they need validation that customers truly want what they’ve built; that the product is a step-change better than what exists today. With that foundation, early sales feel less forced, and scaling becomes a matter of amplifying what’s already working rather than pouring money into what isn’t.
2. Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic — Storytelling With Data
In Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals, data scientist Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic shows business leaders how to tell their story and sell their products using hard data.
Knaflic begins with a truth most leaders already know: that numbers alone don’t move hearts and minds. Using real-world examples, he shows how important it is to understand your audience and context, to choose the appropriate visualization, to eliminate unnecessary information and to guide your audience through the essential ideas you want to emphasize.
Used consistently and effectively, Knaflic’s ideas sharpen data-driven sales strategies on both sides of the customer relationship: giving sales professionals the tools they need to sell more effectively while creating compelling, customer-centered narratives that melt away indecision and inspire loyalty.
3. Nicholas Webb and Thomas Nelson — What Customers Hate
Customers like certain things and hate others. Getting rid of the things they hate eliminates a massive brake on growth.
It’s all right there in the title of What Customers Hate: Drive Fast and Scalable Growth by Eliminating the Things That Drive Away Business. Authors Nicholas Webb and Thomas Nelson explain that while no product — or sales process — is perfect, companies that focus relentlessly on improving the customer experience do better than those taking a “just good enough” approach.
The key, they say, is to listen to customers’ complaints about specific aspects of the relationship, then turn those complaints into action. This strategy achieves its greatest leverage when customers are prepared to walk away: By acting on in-the-moment feedback, sales leaders can turn would-be “haters” into lifelong fans.
4. Siegfried Tiegs and James Thornton — Life on Offense
In Life on Offense: Do HARD Things; A Tactical Guide to Dominate Life and End Mediocrity, Army veterans and endurance athletes Siegfried “Jay” Tiegs and James Thornton offer a road map for high achievers who feel like they’re out of ideas.
At its core lies a four-pronged “HARD” framework, encompassing health, affluence, relationships and development. Drawing on real-world adversities Tiegs and Thornton have overcome and their combined decades of experience in the military, HARD is an objective system that empowers business leaders to focus on their personal needs while maintaining a connection with their employees and their customers. At its core is the recognition that no matter how tough life gets, we’re all in it together.
Keep Sight of What Makes Us Human
The throughline for all four of these books is our shared humanity. To succeed in a world dominated by AI FOMO and insider jargon, business leaders must refocus on (and work to deepen) the essential characteristics and connections that unite us all.
This work begins with your employees and co-leaders. It often starts small, with a rock-solid culture that allows a handful of key people to build something much bigger. It flows out from there to encompass prospecting, sales, customer relationship management and business development without ever losing sight of the vitality of human connection.
These four books each offer tested, real-world strategies to leverage this connection for growth. Their visions are complementary but not always aligned, emphasizing that what works in one context might be less than ideal in another; that there’s ample room for leaders to chart their own course toward human-centered success.
