5 min readThe 8 best sales books to read over the summer

With the sunny weather here to stay for the next few weeks, it’s time to grab a book, lie down on a sunbed, and tear through some pages of the books you haven’t had a chance to peruse this year.

Great Sales People Behave Like doctors.

It’s no longer about interrupting, pitching and closing.

It is about listening, diagnosing and prescribing.

Mark Roberge – Author of ‘The Sales Acceleration Formula’

Chief Revenue Officer of HubSpot Sales Division. Sales scientist.
Inbound Marketing pioneer. MIT quant. Family man.

Dexem has selected for you 8 Must-Have Sales Books to help you sell more. Have a wonderful time reading!

1- Predictable Revenue : Turn Your Business into a Sales Machine With the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com, By Aaron Ross

Good practices for enterprise sales pipelines – definitely worthwhile reading if you’re CEO/VP Sales.

Predictable Revenue comes from a man who started his way bottoms up at Salesforce – and created sales prospecting pipeline that resulted in $100mm recurring revenue for Salesforce.

The book focuses on what Aaron Ross calls – “Cold Calling 2.0”, and refers to a new enterprise sales paradigm. Buyers are sick of being sold to, and become more resistant every year to classic sales and marketing methods, such as pushy cold calls or generic marketing materials.

2- Social Media for Salespeople: A Step-by-Step Guide to Increasing Your Leads & Sales, by Alice Myerhoff

This little book will be a smart salesperson’s bible in years to come!

Whether you’ve been using Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook for 5 minutes or 5 years, in this book you’ll find dozens of a-ha moments, new tactics and proven tips for using these platforms to fuel your sales pipeline.

The best part – Social Media for Salespeople shows you how to do all of the above in less than 30 minutes a day!

3- Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness, by Jeffrey Gitomer

A fast read and an inspirational motivator for salespeople who need a powerful spark to ignite their passion for selling!

This book addresses sales with a lively combination of humor and professionalism to help salespeople get their feet in many more doors.

If you are running into dead ends, stale leads, price objections, and unreturned phone calls, Gitomer will show you how to get past the usual obstacles and sell your products and services with new zest and vigor.

4- Secrets of a Master Closer: A Simpler, Easier, And Faster Way To Sell Anything To Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere, by Mike Kaplan

A must read for anyone who wants to know how to smoothly walk anyone from being a skeptical prospect to a happy customer.

This book bills itself as a “simpler, easier, and faster way to sell anything, to anyone, anytime, anywhere.” This book teaches an easy-to-understand method for moving customers through the sales cycle. Mike Kaplan outlines eight distinct steps in every sale that, if avoided, can get in the way of closing deals.

This book gets you directly to the point and provide practical examples/techniques of each concept.

5- Growth Juice: How to Grow Your Sales, by John A. Weber

Get an intimate knowledge of the solution selling process that will transform your company’s sales!

The Growth Juice Book was written to help companies realize continuous growth of sales and profits. Enter “Solution Selling” – an ultra-effective selling system used for training more than a million sales professionals in large and small companies around the globe.

It goes in-depth into the sales process, from the very beginning until the deal is done and beyond. A must-read for anyone pursuing a career in sales!

6- The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million, by Mark Roberge

An Engineer’s Formula for accelerating sales – and it works!

The Sales Acceleration Formula provides a scalable, predictable approach to growing revenue and building a winning sales team. The author Mark Roberge, an MIT alum with an engineering background, shares his methodoly with us.

You will learn how to apply data, technology, and inbound selling to every aspect of accelerating sales, including hiring, training, managing, and generating demand.

7- Whiteboard Selling: Empowering Sales Through Visuals, by Corey Sommers

A great book that teach you how to design your visual presentations.

This book offers a step-by-step approach in order to transform your message and selling style by using powerful visual stories.  You can free your sales team from over dependence on slides during the sales process.

Through technology and effective storytelling, you and your team can create and deliver effective presentations that engage your customers, hold their attention and win their business.

8- Never Be Closing: How to Sell Better Without Screwing Your Clients, Your Colleagues, or Yourself, by Tim Hurson

A book to show you how to access your creativity to establish and maintain relationships that will be truly useful for both you and your clients over time.

Written by Sales Speaker and consultant Tim Hurson, this book presents 12 techniques that benefit both the seller and the client. Moreover, it teaches salespeople how to improve their strategy and sell anything using a simple, organized and repeatable framework.

With their Productive Selling Model, authors offer business people a set of 15 practices to pull up their current techniques, analyze them and re-organize them in a dynamic way.

Reading is precious. Whether you are a sales development rep, or account executive, there are always ways to improve. Reading will give you actionable tactics that you can use to achieve success.

"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body."

~ Joseph Addison 1672-1719 pic.twitter.com/Y9Xx7j5Jf4

— Marsha Collier (@MarshaCollier) February 19, 2015

Let us know in the comments below any other books you think belong on this list. Your opinions are always welcomed! Enjoy your reading & your Summer holidays!