Sales Training Books
Shortening the learning curve when training your sales team is a key element of a successful sales organization. Identifying a few expertly written books to use during sales training will offer your team the benefits of personal experience quickly and directly.
If you’re looking for some sure bets that cover the basics of sales training, here’s a list we consider to be some of the best:
- Smart Calling by Art Sobczak
- Secrets of Closing the Sales by Zig Ziglar
- Inbound Selling by Brian Signorelli
- The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need by Anthony IannarinoThe TOP Sales Leader Playbook by Lisa D. Magnuson
- Own Your Niche by Staphanie Chandler
- Spin Selling by Neil Rackham
- Agile Selling by Jill Konrath
- Insight Selling by Mike Schultz and John E. Doerr
- The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffreey Gitomer
The Sales Development Playbook by Trish Bertuzzi
In addition to these more general sales training books, you’ll find other valuable reads in these specific sales related categories:
Entrepreneurial and Sales Mindset
- Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck
- Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
- How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger
Business and Sales Management
- The Sales Development Playbook by Trish Bertuzzi
- Dare to Lead by Brené Brown
- Cracking the Sales Management Code by Jason Jordan and Michelle Vazzana
Behavioral Psychology and Persuasion
- The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy
- The Science of Selling by David Hoffeld
- Influence: Science and Practice by Robert B. Cialdin
Sales Leadership
Sales and sales leaders need to overcome several obstacles to achieve their main goal: maximizing their company’s revenue potential. With buyer expectations at an all-time high, sales organizations need to focus on increasing both productivity and effectiveness.
A great buying experience helps sellers win the deal. Ensure that your salespeople are both confident and knowledgeable about the product they’re selling, know which content is best at each stage of the cycle and only share content that makes a difference.
Through Showpad’s in-depth seller analytics dashboard, sales leaders gain visibility into reps’ engagement with prospects, potentially uncovering risks with forecasted deals. Identify what your top performers are doing differently, and implement best practices accordingly for the rest of the team. Based on individual results, provide your team with targeted coaching to equip them with the necessary skills to handle every conversation.
How can you improve your team’s results?
Increase active selling time.
• Establish a single source of truth for all sales collateral. This reduces the time sellers spend looking for content, or even worse, creating their own content because they couldn’t find what they were looking for.
• Link your CRM with Showpad to automatically log all sales activity for you. You’ll have full visibility on what your sellers have been doing, the content they’ve shared so far, and how engaged buyers are.
• Showpad provides recommendations for content to share on an opportunity-level and provides insights into content that buyers are actively engaging with.
Boost seller readiness.
• Showpad allows your marketing and enablement teams to add context to the content they’re providing, like when and how to use a specific asset.
• Use engagement metrics to identify forecasted deals at risk of not closing. For deals in a crucial stage,investigate how many interactions your sellers are having and the buyer’s interest levels during those interactions.
• Before launching a new asset, product or messaging, marketing and enablement can assign interactive courses to your team ensuring that everyone has the necessary training and practice before going in front of a buyer.
Cultivate a culture of coaching.
• Providing feedback is important, but it needs to remain manageable. Track your team’s progress and results in a dedicated manager hub, Identify areas of improvement to give targeted feedback on customer meetings, practice pitches or product courses in a matter of minutes.
• Deal reviews have never been easier. Instead of dialing into every conversation, listen to your team’s conversations when you have the time. Scan through call keywords to uncover where your sellers need feedback.
How to succeed in sales
While these training books can give your team a huge head start on the sales journey, there are other components to successful selling. It’s universally agreed that there are 4 top principles to consider. In simple terms, those 4 principles are: know your customers, know your products, know your solutions and build long-term relationships.
To know your customers, you need to research the marketplace and your customer, of course. Even more importantly, you need to experience your customers’ products and services. All the reading and research in the world won’t match actually experiencing your customers’ products and services.
To know your products requires focus and effort. It’s imperative that you understand the features and functionality of the products you’re selling. This can be especially challenging as the product you’re selling may evolve over the course of the sales cycle. Don’t rely on others in your organization to explain the value of your product to your customer. You must have this knowledge and the ability to expertly explain the features, benefits, and unique advantages of your product.
Beyond knowing your products, you must know how your products can become solutions to your customers’ needs. It’s not up to your customer to connect the dots for you. You need to be able to articulate how your product delivers solutions to real business problems. Often this means being able to provide relevant case studies and success stories at the right time and in the right words.
Ultimately, successful enterprise selling requires the building and nurturing of strong, long-term relationships.
Want to learn more about Showpad?
Contact us for a personal assessment of your enablement journey.