The Best Books for Modern Sales Professionals

The Best Books for
Modern Sales Professionals
@PersistIQwww.PersistIQ.com

If you search for sales books on Amazon,
over 100,000 titles come up. I’m a big
believer in education, and books are the
best way to develop your craft. But where
should you start?
@PersistIQ
Books Book Books!
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
I’ve put together a list of my top sales 25
book, broken out into categories.
• Sales Process & Pipeline Generation
• Sales Strategy & Frameworks
• Sales Management
• Cold Calling & Phone Prospecting
• Account Based Sales
Top Books by Category
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Let’s dive in!
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Sales Process & Pipeline Generation
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• Fanatical Prospecting
• Amp Up Your Sales
• New Sales. Simplified
• SHiFT

@PersistIQ
“There is no easy button in sales.
Prospecting is hard, emotionally draining
work, and it is the price you have to pay
to earn a high income.”
www.PersistIQ.com
-Jeb Blount
Fanatical Prospecting

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Author: Jeb Blount
Amazon Rating: 4.8 (from 169 reviews) Best Seller
Hardcover: 304 pages
Date Published: October 5, 2015
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Why You Need To Read This Book
I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeb for the podcast that we host with
Datanyze, and he was one of my favorite guests. He also happens to
have one of the best books I’ve read recently for sales reps who need to
prospect more effectively and generate more pipeline.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
What This Book Covers
In this book, Jeb covers how to leverage the Law of Familiarity to reduce
prospecting friction and avoid rejection, how to use social selling to build
relationships with prospects, a more effective script for cold calling, how to get
more replies with cold emails, and some of the hottest new tools in the space.
Read this book if you’re a sales rep responsible for creating your own pipeline
or an SDR looking to up your game.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Author: Andy Paul
Amazon Rating: 4.9 (from 39 reviews)
Paperback: 240 pages
Date Published: November 26, 2014
Amp Up Your Sales
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@PersistIQ
This is another highly tactical sales book for reps who want an edge in
selling, or for entrepreneurs setting up their own sales process. Andy,
another good friend of PersistIQ and a guest on our podcast, explains
that in order to get the edge in sales today, it’s not about what you sell.
It’s about how you sell. Another sales veteran with years in the trenches,
he uses his own experience to illustrate some of the points in the book.
www.PersistIQ.com
Amp Up Your Sales

@PersistIQ
Andy breaks his book into 8 parts: 1) simplifying your sales 2) accelerating
your responsiveness 3) maximizing value 4) growing through follow up 5)
amp up your prospecting 6) Qualification: doing more with less 7)
mastering stories that sell 8) selling through customer service.
This is another must read if you’re looking to create more qualified pipeline
or refining your own sales process. It’s also a good read for SDRs.
www.PersistIQ.com
Amp Up Your Sales

@PersistIQ
Author: Mike Weinberg
Date Published: September 4, 2012
New Sales. Simplified
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@PersistIQ
Much like his book Sales Management. Simplified., Mike’s writing is very
easy to read, and the concepts are further illustrated with stories and
examples. I put this book in the same camp as Fanatical Prospecting and
Amp Up Your Sales in terms of the problem it’s helping solve. The main
differences are Mike provides more compelling stories (in my opinion) but
covers less on social selling and tools/technology (a lot has changed in
the 4 years since this was published).
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
This is a great education on strategies for finding more and better
prospects, creating your “sales story”, honing your cold calling skills,
perception management, building rapport, managing your day, getting more
meetings and having more productive and effective conversations.
Buy this book if you’re a rep looking for ways to differentiate in starting
more conversation and closing more deals. SDRs will find value in this
book too.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Authors: Craig Elias and Tibor Shanto
Date Published: June 28, 2010
SHiFT
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@PersistIQ
If you’ve been at any sales conferences and seen a guy wearing a bright
orange shirt, that’s most likely Craig! His book is dressed in the same
bright orange. This book is all about using Trigger Events to close more
deals. I was really impressed with the level of thought that the authors put
on defining, identifying, and leveraging trigger events. Selling is all about
timing, and this book breaks down everything you need to know about
timing around major events.
www.PersistIQ.com
SHiFT

@PersistIQ
Craig and Tibor cover everything from conducting a Won Sales Analysis, to
identifying trigger events that cause people to enter the window of
dissatisfaction, how to become the emotional favorite to buyers, how to get
more referrals, and how to gain more credibility.
Pick up this book if you’re on the front lines and need to break into larger
accounts.
www.PersistIQ.com
SHiFT

@PersistIQ
Sales Strategy and Frameworks
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• SPIN Selling
• The Challenger Sales
• Agile Selling

@PersistIQ
“Successful people ask a lot more questions
during sales calls than do their less successful
colleagues. We found that these less successful
people tend to do most of the talking.
www.PersistIQ.com
-Neil Rackham
SPIN Selling

@PersistIQ
Author: Neil Rackham
Amazon Rating: 4.2 (from 289 reviews) Best Seller
Date Published: May 1, 1988
SPIN Selling
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@PersistIQ
This may be the oldest book on this list, but that speaks to its
timelessness. Personally, I believe this book should be the cornerstone of
all sales reps training. Huthwaite and Dr. Rackham’s research was the
first real in-depth scientific look into the non-scientific art of selling, which
forever changed the way we sell. Every sales rep must memorize chapter
4 of this book, then start to build out their own methodology as they take
bits and pieces from other books and frameworks.
SPIN Selling
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@PersistIQ
By investing in this book, you’ll learn the stages of a sales call, a
breakdown of classic closing techniques and their effectiveness, the right
way to obtain commitment from buyers, how to uncover and develop
needs, the SPIN framework (Situation, Problem, Implication and Needs-
Payoff), and handling objections.
You MUST read this book if you are in sales. Period!
SPIN Selling
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@PersistIQ
Author: Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson
Date Published: November 10, 2011
The Challenger Sales
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@PersistIQ
All good salespeople are aware of the consultative sale, but this takes it
to the next level, adding a little more data and another layer of
sophistication. The sales is not just about building a relationship and
getting a buyer to like you. The most successful sales reps — the
challengers — are able to push their prospects to think (usually contrary
to their normal beliefs, hence the challenger) in a new way and teach
them something new.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
The Challenger Sale will teach you the different types of sales reps, how
Challengers will teach, tailor and take control in a sales situation, how to
lead with your strengths while tactfully challenging the prospect’s
assumptions, and how managers can be better coaches.
This is the perfect book if you’re in a closing role and frequently on the
phone or face-to-face with prospects.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Author: Jill Konrath
Date Published: July 7, 2015
Agile Selling
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@PersistIQ
Jill’s book SNAP Selling gives sales reps tactics and methodologies to
keep up in the rapidly change sales space. Today’s best sales reps are
flexible, adaptable and, well, agile. This is not a new, ground-breaking
methodology, but the tips and tactics are still highly valuable. Chapters
are broken into small, easily-digestible pieces, so there are many of them
(over 60).
Agile Selling
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@PersistIQ
Diving into this book, you’ll learn about time management tools, tactics to
keep personal motivation high, how to gain creativity and break the
monotony of your day, and gamification strategies for modern reps.
This book is perfect for reps who have been selling a while but need to get
caught up with the modern time.
Agile Selling
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Sales Management
www.PersistIQ.com
• The Sales Development Playbook
• Sales Manager Survival Guide
• Sales Management. Simplified
• Sales Acceleration Formula
• Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions

@PersistIQ
“Your career, your culture, and everyone
else’s livelihood is depending on you. Let’s
not waste one more minute.”
www.PersistIQ.com
-Trish Bertuzzi
The Sales Development Playbook

@PersistIQ
Author: Trish Bertuzzi
Date Published: January 15, 2016
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
It’s been called, “The sales development Bible” by numerous sales
leaders, and I won’t argue. Sales development may be one of the biggest
innovations in the sales space over the last decade, and Trish is the
perfect person to be writing the book on it. This is a true playbook with
step-by-step tactics and strategies for building, managing and leading a
modern sales team. This gets my award for the most actionable sales
book that I’ve ever read.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
At a high level the 6 sections that Trish covers are 1) Strategy: A framework for aligning
your sales model with market dynamics 2) Specialization: How to segment your
prospect universe 3) Recruiting: How to find, hire and compensate good sales talent 4)
Retention: How to engage, develop and motivate reps 5) Execution: How to properly
conduct outbound sales 6) Leadership: How to be a good sales team leader, from
establishing quota to performance metrics to building out our sales stack.
You especially need to read this book if you’re scaling or restructuring your sales team.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Author: David A Brock
Sales Manager Survival Guide
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@PersistIQ
This book is pure gold. It came across my radar after talking with and
hearing only positive praise from other top sales professionals. I’ve dog-
eared, underlined, and scribble more notes in this book than I have in any
book for a while. It’s a rather lengthy book (358 pages in 66 chapter) and
pretty dense, but the content is timeless. He writes from experience, and
his stories are short and to the point. The lessons are very
comprehensive and thoughtful.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
He breaks the book up into nine parts: 1) The New Sales Manager; 2) Coaching is
Your Job; 3) Accelerate Your Coaching Impact; 4) Recruiting, Interviewing, Hiring,
and Onboarding; 5) Performance Management; 6) Tactical Business Management
— Managing the Business Week to Week, Quarter to Quarter; 7) Sales
Enablement: Equipping Your People to Sell; 8) Term Sales Management Issues,
9) Your Future as a Sales Manger
If you are in sales managing at any level (from new, 1st time managers to
seasoned veterans), I highly recommend this book.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Author: Mike Weinberg
Amazon Rating:
Date Published: October 21, 2015
Sales Management. Simplified
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
This was one of those books that I just couldn’t put down, which is
especially impressive because it’s a sales management book, not a
graphic novel about vampires or wizards (I actually read zero fiction). It
was very easy to read with advice and anecdotes all along the way.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Some of the main topics that Mike covers in the book are implementing a
simple framework for leadership, fostering a healthy and high-performing
culture, conducting productive meetings, establishing an effective
compensation plan, finding the right people for the right roles, retaining top
talent, telling your sales story and mastering your calendar.
Buy this book now if you’re in a sales leadership role managing a team of
more than a handful of reps.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Author: Mark Roberge
Date Published: February 24, 2015
Sales Acceleration Formula
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Mark’s book is required reading for our new sales reps because it’s that
good. The engineering degree from MIT was the perfect background for a
leader who challenged the conventional methods of selling by utilizing
metrics and processes to build a sales machine that sent the Hubspot
team on a rocketship to the top. He literally engineered sales success at
Hubspot.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Mark breaks down his book into sections: 1) The Sales Hiring Formula 2)
The Sales Training Formula 3) The Sales Management Formula 4) The
Demand Generation Formula and 5) Technology and Experimentation.
If you’re building your sales team, this book is another must-read.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Author: Keith Rosen
Date Published: March 14, 2008
Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
The first of two books on this list by Keith Rosen is all about taking your
existing sales force and coaching them into sales stars, along with some
solid advice on how to cut the underperformers. What I love about Keith’s
approach is that he doesn’t believe that Sales Champions are made
using pressure and fear to perform better. If you’ve read management
theory by Drucker or Carnegie, some of the concepts here won’t be new,
but they’re always worth a refresher.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Some of the most valuable takeaways from this book are universal
principles of coaching, the biggest mistakes coaches make and how to
avoid them, different styles of managing for different types of managers,
how to conduct an effective coaching session, and how to turn around or
let go of underperformers.
This book is perfect for any manager or coach of a sales team.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Authors: Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
First, Break All the Rules
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@PersistIQ
This book came on my radar over 5 years ago, and it’s always been on
my reading list. But when I finally read it, I regretted not reading it sooner.
Based on findings from their in-depth study of great managers across a
wide variety of situations, industries, and company sizes, the authors
have delivered one of the most important books on people management.
The management principles shared in this book are timeless and will help
you build strong foundations for a healthy culture with your sales team.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
In this book, you’ll learn how to find and keep the top talent, leverage
compensations, benefits and promotions in the right way, the most
efficient way to train employees and what to look for beyond hard skills in
predicting success.
Every manager and HR personnel needs to read this book.
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@PersistIQ
Author: John Wooden
Date Published: April 26, 2005
Wooden on Leadership
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@PersistIQ
Being a huge sports fan, there are several other great books written by
top sports coaches that I was tempted to include in this list — books from
Bill Belichick, Bill Walsh and Phil Jackson. In this book, Coach Wooden
outlines the mental, emotional, and physical qualities that are essential to
building a winning organization, which are applicable to whether you’re
building a basketball team or a sales team. Both professions require you
to work hard in developing your skills, confidence, and competitive fire.
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@PersistIQ
The book is organized into 3 parts: 1) The Foundation of My Leadership,
where the Coach explains his pyramid of success 2) Lessons in Leadership,
in which he offers lessons and anecdotes from his professional career and 3)
Lessons From My Notebook, which is filled with “notes, observations,
reminders, suggestions, and lists of relevant goals and how to achieve them.”
This book is for you if you’re leading a team, need to motivate the troops,
and/or love sports.
www.PersistIQ.com

Training doesn’t stop after onboarding.
Exams and certifications add predictability to sales trainings.
Establish this culture early on during your onboarding, and do not
deviate from the plan.
@PersistIQ
Ongoing Training
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@PersistIQ
Cold Calling & Phone Prospecting
www.PersistIQ.com
• Smart Calling
• The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cold Calling
• Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling

@PersistIQ
“Businesses that react… are not nearly as
successful as those who employ proactive
hunting, or telephone prospecting, as part
of the mix.”
www.PersistIQ.com
-Art Sobczak
Smart Calling

@PersistIQ
Author: Art Sobczak
Date Published: April 8, 2013
Smart Calling
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@PersistIQ
When I was an SDR, I was on the phone for 6+ hours per day. That
wasn’t time blocked off for calls, that was actual talk time. I would have
killed for this book. This is not a book where you can sit down and breeze
through it in one reading. It’s a book where you need to read one section
at a time, then go apply it, them come back later.
Smart Calling
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@PersistIQ
Art covers areas like creating a value proposition, gather intelligence to
make your calls smart, using “social engineering” to get insight on your
prospect, how to work with screeners, gatekeepers, and assistants,
perfecting opening statements, minimizing resistance, getting a
commitment for the next action, and stay motivated
You need this book if you’re an inside sales rep constantly on the phone.
Smart Calling
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@PersistIQ
Author: Keith Rosen
Hardcover: Paperback: 336 pages
Date Published: August 3, 2004
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Cold Calling
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@PersistIQ
This book pairs well with Art Sobczak’s book Smart Calling if you just
getting into sales and cold calling. While Art’s book is more situational
and practical, Keith’s book is more process oriented. There’s not a whole
lot of new information in this book, so if you’ve been on the phones for
years, this may not be for you.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Section one of his books covers preparation and the inner game of
prospecting. Section two is about generating new business with systems
and proper planning. Section three is about having better conversations.
Section four covers getting returned calls and getting past the gatekeeper.
And the final section is about how you can continue to refine your process.
Pick this up if you’re new to calling and need to hit your dials for the day.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Author: Sam Richter
Date Published: July 9, 2009
Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling
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@PersistIQ
Don’t judge a book by it’s cover, literally. Once you get past the ugly
cover and slightly misleading title, Sam Richter dives into how to prospect
for cold calling. He doesn’t dive into how to call at all, but rather how to do
the right research on prospects so that they’re warm and receptive once
you do call them. Though it was written 7 years ago and the online
landscape has, much of what Sam writes about is as valid today, if not
more so.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
You’ll learn ways to access highly qualified lead lists, tips and tricks for
leveraging search engines to prospect, use social networks to get more
sales insights, how to access premium information resources at no or very
low cost, how to massively increase your credibility with prospects and
existing clients, and expert “Warm Call Scripts.”
Read this if you’re in inside sales and need to do a lot of outbound
prospecting on your own.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Account Based Sales
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• Account-Based Sales Development Playbook
• Whale Hunting
• Selling to Big Companies
• Dealstorming

@PersistIQ
“A new trend is emerging and changing the way B2B
sales teams operate and individual reps sell. It’s time
we start leveraging different technologies across the
stack and strategically hunt target accounts.”
www.PersistIQ.com
-Megan Tonzi
The Account Based Sales Development
Playbook

@PersistIQ
Authors: Brandon Redlinger and Megan Tonzi
Amazon Rating: Just published
ebook: 43 pages
Account-Based Sales Development Playbook
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
A new trend is emerging in the sales space, a trend that is changing the
way B2B sales teams operate and individual reps sell. It’s not actually an
entirely new concept, but the language and implementation have
changed. It’s called Account Based Sales Development (ABSD). Yes, this
is shameless plug since I’m a co-author, but I honestly believe this is
valuable knowledge that people need when implementing an account
based sales development model.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
This is ebook a strategic overview of ABSD that will teach you what account based
sales development is and why it matters. It provides criteria on whether or not
ABSD is the right approach for your team. Next, it covers how to prepare and align
your organization. Then, the next section is about how to create, clean up and
manage your database and track performance (KPIs and benchmarks). And the
final section provides methodology & best practices for ABSD.
If you are getting started with Account Based selling, this is for you.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Author: Tom Searcy and Barbara Weaver Smith
Date Published: January 2, 2008
Whale Hunting
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@PersistIQ
Some people criticize the title, but the authors draw the analogy of the
Inuit people hunting a whale being like a sales team going after a large
account. Not just any account, but an account that would dramatically
impact the bottom line for your business. There’s a lot written out there
about how individual sales reps can increase sales, but this book shows
you how a team can collaborate and work together.
Whale Hunting
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@PersistIQ
The phases for hunting whales are: 1) Pre-Scouting 2) Scouting 3)
Planning 4) Hunting 5) Capture 6) The Big Show 7) Servicing 8)
Understand the process.
Pick this book up if you’re selling to large enterprise accounts that require
team collaboration.
Whale Hunting
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@PersistIQ
Author: Jill Konrath
Date Published: December 1, 2005
Selling to Big Companies
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Having read her other books, I almost skipped over this one because I
thought it may be outdated, but I’m glad I picked it up. It focuses on a very
specific problem that sales reps and teams face — how to get
conversations started with these big companies.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Part one covers what is required of those who attempt to sell to “big(ger)”
companies. Part two expands on building a foundation for what eventually
should become a cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective system for
effective selling. And part three is all about executing and launching your
campaign.
Read this book if you’re a rep or a manager deploying an account based
sales model.
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Author: Tim Sanders
Amazon Rating: 5 (from 21 reviews)
Pages: 242
Date Published: February 23, 2016
Dealstorming
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
Although Tim never explicitly states that this book is for people going after
larger deals, the reason I put this under account-based sales is the general
principles align very closely with how a sales team operating in an account
based approach works. Dealstorming is a problem-solving technique helps
position organizations as trusted advisors and can deliver high-value
solutions. This book offers great insight into how a sales rep can create a
structured, scalable, and repeatable process that can break through any
sales deadlock.
Dealstorming
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
This book is broken up into 3 sections: 1) The Case for Sales
Collaboration, where the issue of how large, more complex deals are
currently handled 2) The Dealstorming Methodology of organize, prepare,
convene, execute, analyze and report 3) Tools for Innovation, where he
outlines some useful tools for building a process and nurturing
relationships.
This is great for reps dealing with large, complex sales.
Dealstorming
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
“Read 500 pages ever day. That’s how
knowledge works. It builds up like
compound interest.”
www.PersistIQ.com
-Warren Buffett

@PersistIQ
This list is only valuable if you do something with
it!
If you want to learn how to read this entire list in
the next 6 months, start by reading this blog post
on the PersistIQ blog.
Start Reading!
www.PersistIQ.com

@PersistIQ
PersistIQ
#MeasuringSalesMetrics @PersistIQwww.PersistIQ.com
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