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Hitting the pools and beaches this season? Take along some reading material to get motivated and brush up on sales skills and regulations in the process. These reads — recommended by fellow advisers and industry insiders — range from new thinking to classic, tried-and-true strategies.
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1) Cabbage Requiem

Don Goldmann, vice president at the Word & Brown General Agency in Orange, Calif., says he is spending his summer reading “the hundreds of pages of governmental regulations related to the Affordable Care Act plus legislative materials from California.” Goldmann, president of the National Association of Health Underwriters, also plans to read Cabbage Requiem by R. L. Paul because it is about a fictional character dealing with the end of his family and the end of his career. The book discusses how the main character emotionally deals with it and translates the character’s love of gardening into relating to people outside his career and family. “He is reinventing himself in a manner of speaking and since I am approaching that time of my life, the story intrigues me,” Goldmann says.

Publisher: Helm Publishing (December 2009)

[Photo: Amazon.com]
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2) You are not so smart

According to Lifehacker.com, you are not so smart is the “go-to blog for understanding why we do silly things.” An offshoot of the blog, You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney, is on Rae Shanahan’s, executive vice president of engagement and excellence at Des Moines, Iowa-based Businessolver, reading list. Why this book? “It goes through all of the biases we carry with us everyday,” Shanahan says. “Confirmation bias, Texas sharpshooter [fallacy], the misinformation effect, dunbar's number and 48 other biases.”

Publisher: Gotham.

(Reprinted November 2012)

[Photo: Amazon.com]
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3) Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts

Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts — Becoming the Person You Want to Be by Marshall Goldsmith examines the environmental and psychological triggers that can derail us at work and in life. For Matt Robinson, an employee benefit consultant at Charlotte, N.C.-based Benefit Controls of the Carolinas, the book provides “powerful tools for making lasting changes to behavior patterns.”

Publisher: Crown Business (May 2015)

[Photo: Amazon.com]
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4) The Innovator's Dilemma

The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Cristensen is “compelling now to producers who developed innovative, successful business models in the pre-Affordable Care Act insurance market,” says Michael Keegan, senior vice president of Baton Rogue, La.-based agent lobbying group Health Agents for America. “With subsequent Supreme Court decisions and the increasingly remote possibility of a legislative repeal in the foreseeable future, agents and brokers will be forced to explore new markets and new technologies to thrive in the post-ACA world. What worked before will not necessarily work in the future, and sticking to old ways of doing business could very well result in your getting left behind.” The book is based on a “truly radical idea — that great companies can fail precisely because they do everything right,” its description on Amazon.com says.

Publisher: HarperBusiness. (Reprint October 2011)

[Photo: Amazon.com]
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5) DOL regulations

Brian Graff, executive director of USA Retirement, formerly known as ASPPA, in Arlington, Va., is spending the summer reading the fiduciary regulations written by the Department of Labor. That “book,” Graff says, has “heroes and villains, conflicts, a compelling backstory and — hopefully — a happy ending.”
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