14 Best Sales Books to Boost Your Sales in 2024

Constantly mastering new approaches and honing your selling skills is a must for any sales person. No matter whether you are a newcomer or an experienced sales rep, you need to get yourself out there and learn learn learn.

Here are 14 sales books from the cult classic to freshest releases that are in our team’s opinion a must-read for any sales expert. We’d be curious to hear which ones are your favorite!

1. “Sell the way you buy” by David Premier (2020)

We frequently forget about how we act being “on the other side”. When it comes to sales, it’s a crucial mistake that prevents establishing the proper connection with clients. In Sell the Way You Buy, Priemer reveals scientifically supported methods of understanding your customer, identifying their needs, and moving them toward the right solution, all while avoiding the behaviors that make the average person dislike salespeople.

Sell the Way You Buy is about much more than putting yourself in the customer’s shoes. It’s about learning how to ask questions, how to listen, how to tell a compelling brand story, and how to talk to customers in a human way that truly connects. In short: to sell the way you buy.

2. “Sales Acceleration Formula” by Mark Roberge (2015)

The Sales Acceleration Formula provides a scalable, predictable approach to growing revenue and building a winning sales team. Everyone wants to build the next $100 million business and author Mark Roberge has actually done it using a unique methodology that he shares with his readers. As an MIT alum with an engineering background, Roberge challenged the conventional methods of scaling sales utilizing the metrics-driven, process-oriented lens through which he was trained to see the world. In this book, he reveals his formulas for success.

Readers will learn how to apply data, technology, and inbound selling to every aspect of accelerating sales, including hiring, training, managing, and generating demand. Use data, technology, and inbound selling to build a remarkable team and accelerate sales.

3. “SPIN Selling” by Neil Rackham (2015)

Published in 1988, the book is hinged on the results of the most extensive long-term study ever conducted in sales. Around 12 years and 1 million dollars were spent by Rachman and the Huthwaite corporation team to study over 35 000 sales calls and come up with the sales framework called S.P.I.N.

SPIN stands for the four different types of questions designed to make leads interested in your product or solution: Situation, Problem, Implication, and Need-payoff. Rackham answers key questions such as “What makes success in major sales” and “Why do techniques like closing work in small sales but fail in larger ones?” You will learn why traditional sales methods which were developed for small consumer sales, just won’t work for large sales and why conventional selling methods are doomed to fail in major sales.

4. “The Challenger Sale” by Matthew Dixon & Brent Adamson (2011)

What’s the secret to sales success? If you’re like most business leaders, you’d say it’s fundamentally about relationships and you’d be wrong. The best salespeople don’t just build relationships with customers. They challenge them. The need to understand what top-performing reps are doing that their average performing colleagues are not drove Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson, and their colleagues at Corporate Executive Board to investigate the skills, behaviors, knowledge, and attitudes that matter most for high performance. And what they discovered may be the biggest shock to conventional sales wisdom in decades

Based on an exhaustive study of thousands of sales reps across multiple industries and geographies, The Challenger Sale argues that classic relationship building is a losing approach, especially when it comes to selling complex, large-scale business-to-business solutions. The authors’ study found that every sales rep in the world falls into one of five distinct profiles, and while all of these types of reps can deliver average sales performance, only one-the Challenger- delivers consistently high performance.

5. “Predictable Revenue” by Aaron Ross & Marylou Tyler (2011)

Discover the outbound sales process that, in just a few years, helped add $100 million in recurring revenue to Salesforce.com, almost doubling their enterprise growth… with zero cold calls. This is NOT another sales book about how to cold call or close deals. This is an entirely new kind of sales bible for CEOs, entrepreneurs and sales VPs to help you build a sales machine.

What you’ll learn from the book: What does it take for your sales team to generate as many highly-qualified new leads as you want, create predictable revenue, and meet your financial goals without your constant focus and attention. How an outbound sales process (“Cold Calling 2.0”), that without cold calls or a marketing budget, can generate a 9% response rate and millions of dollars from cold prospects. The Seven Fatal Sales Mistakes CEOs and Sales VPs (even experienced ones) make time and time again and much more.

6. “GAP Selling” by Keenan (2008)

Why should anyone allow you to “have 15 minutes of their time”? Only if these minutes will improve their lives. Your clients don’t care about you — they care about themselves and their needs. This is the definite truth that Keenan states in his audacious book.

People don’t buy from people they like. No! Your buyer doesn’t care about you or your product or service. It’s not your job to overcome objections, it’s your buyer’s. Closing isn’t a skill of good salespeople; it’s the skill of weak salespeople. Price isn’t the main reason salespeople lose the sale. Gap Selling shreds traditional and closely held sales beliefs that have been hurting salespeople for decades. In his unapologetic and irreverent style, Keenan breaks down the tired old sales myths causing today’s frustrating sales issues, to highlight a deceptively powerful new way to connect with buyers.

7. “Fanatical Prospecting“ by Jeb Blount (2015)

What’s the key to successful sales? The art of convincing or pleading for sympathy? None of those. For Jeb Blount, it’s a continual prospecting.

The author states that, indeed, true sales reps need to be fanatics. Not meaning that they have to sell by all means (well, not without this), but they should continually strive to keep their pipeline full of qualified prospects. Once the pipeline is empty, high performance is unachievable. This sales book describes a balanced methodology that may help to prevent such an outcome. How does a salesperson need to act like? How to activate all the prospecting channels possible? How to reach a consistent filling of your pipeline? All these questions were carefully asked and are worth exploring.

8. “Secrets of Closing the Sale” by Zig Ziglar (1982)