Sales Books

You don’t have time to read all sales books? We’ve got you covered! In this list, we’ll show you the very best sales books to read – all available on Amazon.

21st Century Prospecting: The Authoritative Playbook for New Business Development

This is our favourite prospecting book. It takes us through a process of clarifying the characteristics of our clients, the problems our clients have, how they benefit from our solutions. We can then wrap this up to a very effective narrative, so we know how to engage the clients we wish to work with.

This is our current favourite sales books, and one of the best sales books of all time.

Sales Books - 21st Century Prospecting — Sales Books – 21st Century Prospecting

From Amazon – Today’s selling environment demands a change in one’s personal prospecting paradigm. It is about shifting the way one thinks about and conducts one-on-one interactions with prospective buyers across multiple platforms.

In 21st Century Prospecting: The Authoritative Playbook for New Business Development, authors and Sandler trainers, John Rosso and Mark McGraw, provide a guide for sales professionals on how to connect and engage effectively with prospective buyers in today’s complex, multi-platform selling environment.

A must-have book for sales professionals to create enduring success at a high and sustainable level in the 21st century:

A proven action plan for setting up and executing a powerful, personalized prospecting regimen that quickly delivers initial contacts with today’s decision-makers.
Stress-free strategies for dramatically increasing personal referral totals.
Proven strategies for generating positive initial interactions across multiple communication platforms.

Go for No! Yes is the Destination, No is How You Get There

by Richard Fenton (Author), Andrea Waltz (Author)

Go for No! Yes is the Destination, No is How You Get There

I found this a life-changing book; the basic idea is that rejection is a friend; the more we get rejected, the more we learn, and we can’t truly succeed without both learning and sacrifice. They also sell a course on the same subject, which I also like.

From Amazon – Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones but “NO” Can Never Hurt Me!

That’s the lesson twenty-eight year old copier salesman Eric James Bratton is about to learn. And he’s going to learn it from the most unlikely of mentors – himself!

Imagine going to bed one night, then to awaken the next morning in a strange house with no idea of how you got there. Only this house doesn’t belong to just anyone – it belongs to you… a wildly successful future version of the person you might one day become, providing you are willing to start doing one simple thing.

Before the weekend is over Eric will learn…
– What it takes to outperform 92% of the world’s salespeople
– That failing and being a “failure” are two very different things
– Why it’s important to celebrate success and failure
– The five failure levels and how to progress through them
– How to get past failures quickly and then move on
– That the most empowering word in the world is not yes… it’s NO!
… And much, much more!

These lessons are destined to change the way he thinks, the way he sells, and the way he lives forever. And they’ll do the same for you!

Asking Questions The Sandler Way

by Antonio Garrido

Asking Questions the Sandler Way

Asking great questions is one of the key routes to sales success. This books explains a number of approaches brilliantly.

From Amazon – When does the sales process really begin? Some say that sales starts at the very first “hello”. Everything before that first critical opening word, these people say, is marketing; everything after that is sales. Others say that the real work of sales doesn’t begin till the prospect first says, “No”. “Otherwise”, they insist, “it’s just order-taking”.

Antonio Garrido’s Asking Questions the Sandler Way rejects both of those answers. It holds that selling begins when you start asking good questions. This book is about asking the right questions, so that both the seller and the buyer discover the right solution as efficiently and as effectively as possible – even if they discover that the right solution right now is for the prospect to buy from the competition. Although that may be an unconventional selling standard, it’s a powerful and extremely effective one.

This book is about not looking, sounding, or thinking like the average salesperson. It’s about keeping barriers down and communication lines open. It’s about getting to the right solution, faster, more efficiently, and with less stress. It’s about asking the right questions, in the right way, at the right time, for the right reason. It’s about asking questions the Sandler way.

Prospect the Sandler Way: A 30-Day Program for Mastering Stress-Free Lead Development

This is our second favourite prospecting book and was the first until 21st Century Prospecting (above) came along. It’s still one we highly recommend.

From Amazon – Prospect the Sandler Way shares thirty core principles for mastering stress-free lead development by phone and over the Internet, in accordance with the selling system developed by David H. Sandler. Includes updated strategies on 21st century topics like conducting effective on-line pre-call research, and using LinkedIn to generate referrals. John Rosso is an internationally recognized business development expert specializing in executive sales coaching and sales productivity, with more than 20 years in the Sandler Training organization.

Selling Professional Services The Sandler Way

Selling Professional Services the Sandler Way: Or, “Nobody Ever Told Me I’d Have to Sell!”

Our third recommended Sander book (can you tell we like these?!) This one focusses on selling professional services.

From Amazon – Years ago, developing and sustaining a book of business was not as big a problem for accountants, attorneys, financial planners, and other professionals as it is today. Clients were more loyal to the firms they worked with, and unlikely to shop services, compare rates, or jump ship.

Times have changed! And without adapting to the change … well, enjoyment of one’s profession and control of their career will become a thing of the past.

Selling Professional Services the Sandler Way is for business professionals that want to enjoy the process of expanding their client base. How? By taking skills mastered throughout one’s career and deploying them in a slightly different way. Even though most accountants, attorneys, financial planners, or other professionals didn’t go into their career to become a salesperson – repurposing current strengths, along with some easy-to-learn new skills, will help to achieve or exceed business and professional goals.

Simple, low-impact strategies that make it easy to attract and retain a larger base of business
Field-tested action plans for making “free consulting” a thing of the past
Effective, painless networking tools
Communication tips that transform low-margin (or no-margin) client relationships into high-value, win-win engagements
Real-life examples and case studies from professionals who went from being low- or no-revenue players to being rainmakers…and who enjoyed the change!

The New Successful Large Account Management

The New Successful Large Account Management: How to Hold onto Your Most Important Customers and Turn Them into Long Term Assets

This a different sales process, specifically for large accounts, well worth a read.

Sales Books – The New Successful Large Account Management

From Amazon – Whatever a company’s sales revenue, chances are that a majority comes from a few crucial accounts. The New Successful Large Account Management, ideal for sales directors, managers and executives, shows businesses how to protect and develop those critical accounts they can’t afford to lose.

Based on the proven Miller Heiman Large Account Management Process, which is used successfully by some of the world’s largest companies, it is crammed with examples of real success stories and proven strategies to keep customers coming back. By following the clearly defined and dynamic approach to the account planning process, readers will close more business and introduce winning sales systems into their organization.

The Perfect Close

The Perfect Close: The Secret To Closing Sales – The Best Selling Practices & Techniques For Closing The Deal

This is a simple and effective way of navigating a sale through your sales process/your customers buying process. (Of course you need to be clear about your sales process to make work!) Recommended.

Sales Books - The Perfect Close — Sales Books – The Perfect Close

From Amazon –

In The Perfect Close: The Secret to Closing Sales you will learn:

A simple method to closing that is nearly always successful (95% range), is zero pressure & involves just two questions.
How traditional closing techniques damage trust & what you can do remain on emotionally higher ground.
How to close more sales in way that makes clients feel more educated, in control and see you as a facilitator & consultant.
A proven and repeatable process for advancing sales that can be used in any kind of sale at any given stage.
How to add continuous momentum & advance your sales in a way that results in more closed business & faster closed business.
A natural way to close that doesn’t require that you change your personality or become someone you’re not.
How to completely eliminate the stress & tension that some people feel when it comes to asking for commitments.
How to add value on every sales encounter.
Everything you need to know to advance every sale to closure

The Perfect Close represents the best practice in closing sales today. Apply it yourself and discover how this simple technique along with being genuinely authentic creates the highest levels of success and happiness.

This is more than a just a book. It’s a sales training course that outlines step-by-step what you need to do to advance your sales to closure.

If you are new to sales, make this the first book you read. It will teach you how to be effective immediately and will literally teach you the rest of the steps in your sales process.

If you are an experienced professional looking for ways to improve your performance, this book will help take your closing skills to a whole new level.

The One Sentence Persuasion Course

The One Sentence Persuasion Course – 27 Words to Make the World Do Your Bidding

This is (by far!) the shortest book here! (You’ve been warned!) What’s key with rapport? What do we need to do before we convince people?

“People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions and help them throw rocks at their enemies.”

The One Sentence Persuasion Course - 27 Words to Make the World Do Your Bidding by [Blair Warren]

From Amazon – Note: This is the UPDATED and EXPANDED version of The One Sentence Persuasion Course – NOT the free version that was initially released in 2005. The original material was updated and expanded several years later and re-released as a commercial mp3 product. This Kindle version contains all the material from the mp3 and is the only place you will find the expanded version in written form. If you’ve only read the original free version of The One Sentence Persuasion Course, you haven’t read anything yet. (8,500 Words)

Slow Down, Sell Faster!

Slow Down, Sell Faster!: Understand Your Customer’s Buying Process and Maximize Your Sales

This book focused on understanding our customers’ buying process.

From Amazon – Increasing sales is not just about learning more sales techniques; it’s about understanding the buying process—from your customer’s point of view! Slow Down, Sell Faster! focuses on the customer buying processes, so that the salesperson can identify and quantify the customer’s real needs, and adapt the sales pitch accordingly.

Pre-Suasion

Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade

This is my favourire Robert Cialdini book: the sale is often won or lost almost before the sale starts. Closing is important, but what we do first may be more important! Highly recommended.

From Amazon – When it comes to persuasion, success can begin before you say a word.

Sales Manager Survival Guide

Sales Manager Survival Guide: Lessons From Sales’ Front Lines

Managing sales people can be very different from be a sales professional. A great book to help you with that transision (or as a reminder as to what is important).

From Amazon – Finally! The definitive guide to the toughest, most challenging, and most rewarding job in sales. Front Line Sales Managers have to do it all – often without anyone showing them the ropes. In addition to making your numbers your job calls upon you for:

Constant coaching, training, and team building
Call, pipeline, deal, territory, one-on-ones, and other reviews that drive business performance
Recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding top talent
Responding to shifts in the marketplace – and in your company
Dealing with, turning around, or terminating problem employees
Analyzing and acting upon metrics to correct performance
Managing the business and executive expectations
Leveraging sales systems, tools, and processes
Conducting performance reviews and setting expectations
And more

All this and making the numbers! Sales Manager Survival Guide addresses each of these issues, and many others, clearly, honestly, and in-depth. Drawing upon decades of experience in sales, sales management, and sales executive positions from small companies to giant corporations, David Brock gives you invaluable insight, wisdom, and above all practical guidance in how to handle the wide array of challenges and responsibilities you’ll face as a Front Line Sales Manager. If you’re a sales manager, or want to become one, this book shows you how to survive—and thrive. And if you want to be a great sales manager, this book shares the secrets, tools, and best practices to help you climb to the top—and beyond. “This is THE go-to resource for sales management!” Mike Weinberg, author of Sales Management Simplified

The Challenger Sale

The Challenger Sale: How To Take Control of the Customer Conversation

To add value to the sales process, particlarly in consultative and value sales we often have to challenge our clients, particularly if we want them to get the best possible results.

From Amazon – What’s the secret to sales success?

If you’re like most business leaders, you’d say it’s fundamentally about relationships – and you’d be wrong. Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson, and their colleagues at CEB have studied the performance of thousands of sales reps worldwide.

Their conclusion? The best salespeople don’t just build relationships with customers. They challenge them.

Any sales rep, once equipped with the tools in this book, can drive higher levels of customer loyalty and, ultimately, greater growth. And this book will help them get there.

The Challenger Customer

The Challenger Customer: Selling to the Hidden Influencer Who Can Multiply Your Results

For larger sales we need to develop champions that will be our champions within the company.

From Amazon – In The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson overturned decades of conventional wisdom with a bold new approach to sales. Now they reveal something even more surprising: the highest-performing sales teams don’t focus on friendly, attentive customers. Instead, they target challenger customers.

Challenger customers are sceptical, less interested in meeting and ultimately indifferent as to who wins the deal. But they also have the credibility, persuasive skill and will to challenge the status quo that will get a deal to the finish line far more often than customers who are easier to connect with.

Based on new research from thousands of B2B marketers, sellers and buyers around the world, The Challenger Customer shows you how to find these ‘mobilizers’ and equip them with the tools to effectively challenge their own organizations on your behalf. This ground-breaking book is the blueprint you need to make the sale again and again.

How to Acquire Clients

How to Acquire Clients: Powerful Techniques for the Successful Practitioner

Alan Weiss approach to acquiring customers. This book is expensive, but worthwhile!

From Amazon – Follow the expert advice in this book–the fourth in The Ultimate Consultant Series–and you won’t fall victim to the success plateau that undermines many consultants. If you feel that your work has become easier, it may be that you’re not climbing “up” but rather moving laterally. And, sooner or later, your plateau will begin to erode and you’ll find yourself on a decline. In How to Acquire Clients, Alan Weiss, internationally recognized consultant and author of the best-selling Million Dollar Consulting, shows you how to continue to move “up the mountain.”

Value-Based Fees

Value–Based Fees: How to Charge – and Get – What You′re Worth

A great book on ‘value based’ selling and charging. We all ought to understand the value we offer clients.

From Amazon – In the newly revised Third Edition of Value-Based Fees: How to Charge – and Get – What You’re Worth, best-selling author, speaker and renowned consultant Dr. Alan Weiss delivers a thoroughly updated guide to proposing, and receiving, consistently high fees that are based on the value you deliver to each client you serve.

The author walks you through the many reasons that time-and-materials pricing models are outdated and inadequate and how to convert existing clients to your new value-based fee model. He also discusses fundamental new developments in consulting, including the remote delivery of services, the waning market power of the consulting giants, economic globalization, and the shift from project work to advisory work.

Among the step-by-step techniques and strategies provided in the book, you’ll find:

How to establish value-based fees, including determining your unique value and creating a “good deal” dynamic
How to create, capitalize on, and market to trusted advisor relationships
How to implement fee increases immediately, prevent and rebut fee objections, create consulting products, and explore lucrative new fields

Perfect for newcomers to the consulting field as well as time-tested veterans, Value-Based Fees is an indispensable guide for every solo consultant, entrepreneur, and small consulting firm.

The SPIN Selling Fieldbook

The Spin Selling Fieldbook : Practical Tools, Methods, Exercises and Resources

Great work to clarify situation, problem, implication and needs payoff questions. Again, an important part of being able to sell value.

From Amazon – Neil Rackham is founder and former president of Huthwaite, Inc. Huthwaite researches, consults, and provides seminars for over 200 leading sales organizations around the world, including Xerox, IBM, and Citicorp. His academic background is in research psychology. It was at the University of Sheffield, England, that he began his research into sales effectiveness that resulted in SPIN.

Unlimited Selling Power

Unlimited Selling Power: How to Master Hypnotic Skills

How to use hypnotic language to increase your sales results.

From Amazon – Provides salespeople with information on hypnotic techniques and how to use them in sales presentations and script books to win the customer’s trust and make sales.