what's up folks my name is Will and in 2022 when I first started working at Sales Feed I set myself the goal to read one sales book every week for a whole year I'm gonna read one sales book every single week in 2022 and just like many sales people I missed that goal quite considerably by about 50% however since then I've continued to pick up read and listen to yes audiobooks count a bunch more books so at this point I've read over 50 different sales books and I've got them all ranked by how much I
enjoyed them how actionable they are how original they are in a secret Google sheet which I will never share of anyone let's start with my top three in the top spot is Gap Selling by Keenan this book is an absolute masterpiece it's engaging to read it uses storytelling and it basically shares the idea that if a customer doesn't have a problem or a challenge that you can help solve and you shouldn't try selling to them Keenan pours a load of passion to his book and basically lays out a masterclass for B2B discovery uncovering pain points
discovering their impact identifying what the root cause of those pain points is so that you can show that your solution will actually help solve challenges that have a meaningful impact the gap after which the book is named is about the distance between their current state and their desired future state and selling to that gap is basically selling to the problem or lack of gain the customer could be having incredible book for anyone who worked in sales as especially those who are Account Executives trying to up their discovery game another one of my favorites The Transparency
Sale by Todd Caponi in this book Todd shares how using transparency and being forthcoming with information that customers don't typically get given by salespeople helps build massive trust and differentiate you against your competitors again what makes this book so fun to read is the storytelling elements Todd pulls so much passion and emotion and analogies into this book a game changing chapter in this was the chapter on transparent negotiations basically Todd shares that instead of trying to make negotiations this Texas hold 'em game of poker hey just tell him the price and then tell him the
four five potential things that you can change that have an impact on that price so if your product cost $10,000 you can be up front about your price and say hey if you are looking to lower that price here are the four things that we can change length of contract volume of the order upfront payment terms that we can use to either lower or raise that total price incredible book great read another one this one I've only got an audiobook version of is exactly what to say by Phil M Jones the audiobook only takes an
hour to listen to and the book itself is only like 100 pages but it is super tactical stuff it gives you 26 magical phrases and words that you can use in sales regardless of what type of sales you're in to influence your customers without being a manipulative sneaky ahole I listened to this once and then I listened to it again and I took notes and then I reverted back to it countless times since delivery of this book especially the audiobook is just exceptional it's short it's sweet you can get done in afternoon and you're pretty
much guaranteed to walk away with at least one thing that you can use in your sales role but let's talk about some books for some specific use cases starting off with prospecting now pretty much everyone under the sun is gonna tell you to read Fanatical Prospecting and it is a good book however I have found that a lot of the templates the frameworks and the scripts shared in this book are a little bit outdated and don't work very well in 2024 that said the mindset that Jeb shares in this book around prospecting is really good
so it's a good book to start with if you're new to prospecting but also a good book to come back to if you wanna get your mindset in the right place to go out there and do outbound sales but the book I recommend for a little bit more of a contemporary approach to sales is Problem Prospecting by Mark Ackers Richard Smith and Stuart Taylor this book is pretty much a playbook on how to do modern B2B sales prospecting writing short concise emails that are personalized how to research prospects how to open a cold call the
questions you wanna ask on that Cold Call it's a really tactical book and one that I wish I had access to far earlier in my career if you're an SDR or BDR and you haven't read this book yet pick it up and now for a book that's for I'd say more advanced sellers those who are closing deals Account Executives those you want to do discovery well The Secrets of Question Based Selling by Thomas A Freese this book is a tactical masterclass on how to do discovery a topic that's quite hard to approach in such a
tactical way even if you just went through this book and read the secrets alone you'd come out of it a better seller for example secret No. 81 asking how do you mean? will give you great insight into what other people are thinking and feeling that's what we wanna do with sales people if you're looking for ways to step up your discovery and ask better questions of your customers get this book and now a book for those of you who are in sales leadership roles a book that I wish my old managers and VP's had a
read themselves Transparent Sales Leader by Todd Caponi again he's on here twice once again Todd smash out the park with an original fresh perspective on sales leadership even though I'm not a salesleader and have no desire to be a salesleader this book had me turning every single page in anticipation it's written so damn well basically tells you how to build trust with those above you those below you hmm it just and then finally my favourite book for sales mindset the Five Second Rule by Mel Robbins it's an anti procrastination weapon the short version of the
5 second rule is that anytime you feel like procrastinating on something that you know you should do or you start overthink something that's gonna make your life better just start counting down from 5 4 3 2 1 and do the thing I found this applies to asking the hard questions in sales doing the extra work rather than slacking off making cold calls it's helping get over phone fear many many times just countdown 5 4 3 2 1 rocket ship let's go here are a few honorable mentions SNAP selling by Jill Konrath Sell The Way You
Buy by David Priemer one that you probably heard of Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss another super famous one How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie most of the sales books that are out there and a lot of the ones I've even mentioned in this video are written by men and that's what makes Heels to Deals such great book it's a collaboration of 33 women in sales and each of the chapters focus on something different in sales from one of the co-authors this one's great if you're feeling a bit burned out
or stressing a lot or just not happy Stress Less Sell More by Jeff Risley and then finally I'll give a shout out Challenger Sale and the Challenger Customer they're very data focused books but they're very interesting nonetheless to better understand b2b buying behaviour and the dishonourable mention The Visual Sale by Tyler Lessard... Pink? really Tyler comment below what's your favourite sales book that you've read? also consider hitting the like button helps the video and the channel out a ton and allows us to keep making helpful and fun sales content
