Life is a journey where we should aspire to learn something new every day. And, as constant learners, the best bits of learning we can get are from books. Books are an excellent tool to help you deepen your knowledge and upgrade your skills.
Reading then applying the proven sales methodologies written by successful sellers is a great way to upgrade your skills. However, with tons of sales methodology books available on the market today, it’s hard to know where to start.
The thousands of sales books out there are each designed to serve different audiences, businesses, industry niches, and mindsets. This article explains why it’s important to continuously optimize your sales process and recommend the best books on B2B sales that you should get your hands on today!
How You Can Excel in Sales and How a Sales Book Can Help
The very essence of sales is influencing or moving others to buy. As you know, a lot of people, especially those who don’t like the very idea of influencing others, are not comfortable with identifying as a salesperson.
They believe that it isn’t fundamentally right to persuade or push someone to buy something. That is why they tend to hold salespeople in very low regard. At a time when consumer control is at an all-time high, trying to convince someone to buy something is dangerous.
There is one way we can change the perception of the sales though. We can transform the sales process so that sellers become enablers of the buying journey. Rather than try to convince companies and people to buy unnaturally, sellers can shift their mindset and focus their efforts on making it easier for prospective customers to find, evaluate and buy the right solutions for their business.
The best B2B sales books will teach you how to shift your mindset and provide you with sales strategies proven to be effective in today’s customer-centric selling environment. With the best B2B sales books, you will learn to think from a buyer’s perspective, create opportunities for the buyer, create a more custom approach for the buyer, and deliver a compelling reason to buy.
The books rightfully argue that old-world selling techniques don’t work anymore, so, instead of walking the obsolete path, learn the art of selling the right way.
1. Gap Selling: Getting the Customer to Yes
The writer Keenan is a best-selling author and CEO of A Sales Guy Inc., which deals with Sales Consulting. In this book, he says that by following some detrimental sales tactics and belief systems over a long period, the salespeople have themselves created some of the problems they were trying to avoid in the first place. This includes long sales cycles, price issues, prospects going cold, and last-minute feature requests.
Therefore, before you try to influence others, you first need to understand what’s going on in the buyer’s mind as they decide whether to buy the product or not. This will raise your sales IQ and show you a completely new way of connecting with buyers.
While the world is overcrowded with over celebrated order takers, the truth is that they get orders at the expense of frustrated buyers. This book helps you change that by putting the power of influencing in your hands at every stage of the buying process. This translates into happy and content customers.
Learnings
- Sales IQ improvement leads to better buyer connect
- Reducing the sales cycle
- Elevating deal value
- Higher winning rate
- Lessening the number of no-decisions
- Generating more leads
- Better selling means happier buyers
- Turning sales order takers into sophisticated sales influencers
Pros
- Gives an innovative thought process of how to understand the buyer’s mind
- Advice on how to have shorter sales cycles
- Explains positive revenue impact
- Offers quick decisions from the buyer’s side
- Focuses on how to increase the number of leads
- Advice on how to reach a better conversion rate
Cons
- The ideas are mostly basic with no customized solutions
2. The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation
What sets this book apart is the fact that they researched sales representatives across different industries around the world to find the sales models that worked the best. Unlike other research and books that just conclude with a generalized, ambiguous psychology theory, this book actually cites real research each step of the way.
This study reveals that all salespersons fall under five distinct categories. While all the five categories can deliver average sales performances, only the challenger can deliver consistent superior performance.
The theory says that instead of just listening to the client’s requirements, you need to present the client with a strategy on how they can save and make money at the same time. You don’t need to simply listen to the client’s demands. Instead, be assertive, push back if required, and take control of the sale.
The best thing about this book is that it’s practical. It teaches you how to pinpoint the challenger in your organization and replicate his or her model for all sales leaders.
Learnings
- See and understand research-based findings
- Sales rep categorization
- How to take control of the sale
- How to create a custom sales pitch
- Replicable for any organization
Pros
- Supported by one of the biggest companies
- Provides practical advice
- Applicable for different industries and countries
- Reframes customer expectations
- Teaches how to identify the challenger and successfully replicate their model
Cons
- There are no provisions for complex sales that require trust
3. Virtual Selling: How to Build Relationships, Differentiate, and Win Sales Remotely
Post-2020, most meetings are scheduled over Zoom or Skype. When the aspect of being physically present is removed, body language, smiles, and emotions matter significantly less. Moreover, customers are now more easily distracted. While sales do require physical meetings, we have to adapt to the new normal and whatever comes with it. Now, to adapt to virtual selling, you need to change the existing sales model.
This book trains you how to excel in virtual i.e. online professional selling and stand out from the competition. It suggests ways to conduct effective virtual sales meetings and deliver powerful, convincing stories online, all while constantly engaging the client. You will also learn certain habits that will increase the productivity of your B2B salespeople almost exponentially.
Learnings
- How to capture a client’s attention online
- How to conduct a successful virtual sales meeting
- Ways to increase the productivity of your sales team
- Research on how to influence a buyer’s decision
- How online influencing is the future
- Maintaining engagement in the virtual arena
Pros
- A simple way to learn about virtual selling
- Offers practical steps to take when switching to online meetings and sales pitches
- Teaches new collaboration strategies
- Offers best practices for setting up technology-oriented medium mechanics
Cons
- Doesn’t mention any fundamental revolutionary theories
4. Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling
Unless there are enough prospects, even the most positive conversion rate will not yield much result. So, before you even talk about the conversion, you need to create a prospect. And, a lot of businesses fail because they don’t have enough prospects.
In this book, Blount shares an innovative approach for outbound prospecting that will ensure business success with almost any real business under the horizon. You, as a sales professional, will learn how to beat sales slumps by filling your sales pipeline with prospects. Learn to approach the funnel with combo prospecting! Moreover, with its voicemail techniques, you will get more callbacks than ever.
This book focuses on the best strategies for cold calling, voicemail, and text message that will generate the desired results and fill your pipeline with quality prospects.
Learnings
- 30-day rule for keeping the pipeline full of prospects
- 5 C’s of social selling
- 5 step telephone frameworks to get appointments
- 4 step email prospecting framework
- 7 step text message prospecting framework
- Law of replacement
Pros
- High-powered strategies, techniques, and tools for better prospecting
- Multi-channel prospecting approach
- Learn to avoid the sales slump
- Addressing the exponentially growing social selling
- Step-by-step guide of frameworks
Cons
- Emphasis on cold calling could give the business a bad reputation
5. Selling Is Hard. Buying Is Harder: How Buyer Enablement Drives Digital Sales and Shortens the Sales Cycle
When the buying process is straightforward and your organization provides quality products and services, your customers will naturally want to stay loyal to you. This leads to better customer retention. This book, written by Garin Hess, emphasizes a new framework to help buyers succeed in today’s world.
Hess emphasizes the DEEP-C (Discover, Engage, Equip, Personalize, Coach) buyer enablement framework, which can help the front-end salespersons reduce the sales cycle by as much as 68%.
This practical guide will help you successfully move from a sales-bound approach to a buyer enablement strategy and improve your customer success and conversion rate.
Learnings
- Buyer enablement for better customer experience
- DEEP-C (Discover, Engage, Equip, Personalize, Coach) framework
- Equipping the sales expert
- Technology-supported buying
- Problem-solving approach
Pros
- Great for both sales and presales
- Valuable insight into the buyer’s journey
- Builds on other B2B marketing books
Cons
- Narrative seems more appropriate for the author’s own business products
Final Verdict
That was our list of the best books for salespeople, all handpicked according to how well they explain business sales strategies and prospecting. While each book is centered around sales and conversion, any single one of them will deliver value to you, it all just depends on what you’re looking for, your product, service, and the capability of your sales team. To see a quick summary of our recommendations, refer to the information below.
- If you want to learn the best problem solving techniques, the first book is your best bet, i.e. Gap Selling.
- If you want to better your entire team’s sales performance, pick the second book, i.e. The Challenger Sale.
- If you want to learn more about post-2020 sales techniques, including virtual selling, opt for the third book, i.e. Virtual Selling.
- Go for the fourth book, i.e. Fanatic Prospecting, if you’re not getting enough prospects for your viable business model.
- Choose the fifth book, i.e. Selling is Hard. Buying is Harder, if you want to emphasize the buyer’s journey and ease their buying process.
We hope that this guide has helped you decide which sales approach you want to take. For more marketing-related information and book advice, keep reading at BetterMarketingHub.com.