Hacker News Reader

As a programmer doing sales, this is really informative albeit abit short. Does anyone have a good book to recommend on sales?

View on HN

It depends on which part of sales you want to focus on. I've yet to find a good book which covers the discipline as a whole. Many seem to either focus on the psychology, prospecting or just closing of sales.

I'm part way through "New Sales. Simplified" which seems heavily based on "prospecting" which a lot of books seem to neglect. I've also got Dan Pink's "To Sell is Human" lined up next which is more about the psychological aspects. Many of the classic sales books by Zig Ziglar or Brian Tracy seem, IMO, to be more closing focused.

I haven't finished it but "Secrets of Master Closer" seems good and covers the whole of sales, encouraging the reader to learn sales from first principles and then apply it in their own domain.

Another one that is excellent is called "the challenger sale".

Here it is on amazon, I bought the audible version.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Challenger-Sale-Customer-Conversat...

A further one to look at is the maverick selling method. Corny name but good content:

http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Selling-Method-Simplifying-Co...

If you are selling something complex, enterprise software, software development, etc. you can not go wrong with Spin Selling and its companion book, Major Account Selling.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com