As the new year gets into full swing, you may already be thinking that your schedule is far too busy to put time aside to read a good book. However, making time to read will make your life better, not more hectic. "No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance." ~ Confucius The more you read the more you learn, and in order to stay ahead and thinking clearly in both your personal and professional life, you need to be a ceaseless learner. However, it's startling that about a quarter of American adults (24%) say they haven’t read a book in whole or in part in the past year, whether in print, electronic or audio form, according to PEW Research. As sales and marketing professionals, there’s constant pressure to be creative. For most of us, the problem isn’t that we aren’t reading. The problem is we spend our time reading blogs, tweets, infographics, and other short forms of content. Sure, that’s great for staying up-to-date with trends and current events, but it doesn’t work our brains the same way. When you read a book, it forces you to focus and eliminate the distractions around you. It's this focus that acts as a catalyst for the many perks that come from reading books, not the least of which is an increase in creativity. With this in mind, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best sales and marketing books to encourage you to step away from the short form, digital content and take hold of the possibilities and perspectives of a new book.

As a sales and marketing professional, you’re probably constantly looking for just the right ingredients to achieve success -- but what does this entail? Are there certain components that every salesperson should include in their formula for success? While there’s no magic recipe that works everyone, and every sales rep has their own approach and personality, there are three fundamental ingredients to use as your guide: time, testing, and tenacity.

On our mission to help you gain a better understanding of the digital media landscape in general, and ad fraud in specific, we had another sit down with Rich Kahn, the CEO and co-founder of eZanga and Anura.io, who shared his exclusive new ad fraud report with us. And it's packed with interesting new findings!

Competition, love it or hate it, is an essential part of being in sales. Whether you’re dealing with internal competition from fellow sales reps or an external threat from competitor companies in your industry, competition drives us to be the best we can be. But when it comes to winning new business and increasing market share, what are you doing to differentiate yourself from the competition? If you’re not already testing new and different strategies or tactics, here are 5 ideas to consider as you position yourself against the competition.

It’s amazing how far a simple “thank you” can go.

As soon as you close a sale, what should you? Hopefully you’ll give yourself a moment to celebrate and give yourself a pat on the back. But the most important thing to remember is that your work isn’t over, but rather it’s only just begun.