23 Best Sales Books Of All Time [With Links]

Some are good, some are great, and some are greatest of all time. I personally love reading books of different genres, whenever I want to expand my knowledge, thinking, improve my performance and when I want ‘me time, I always turn to books. 

Like Marcus Tullius Cicero said, “ A room without books is like a body without a soul”.

It’s hard to beat someone who has spectacular knowledge, especially about sales.

Sales is a constantly evolving environment full of obstacles and challenges, and you must continue to learn in order to thrive and outperform your rivals. Many of the finest solutions have already been discovered in some of these highly-rated sales books that may help you broaden your knowledge and sharpen your selling abilities.

Picking up a book might be challenging when there is a lot to choose from but we have curated a list of 23 top-ranked sales books just for you! 

So now let’s dig in!

The challenger sale

Author: Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson 

The Challenger Sale claims that traditional relationship building is losing strategy, especially when selling sophisticated, large-scale business-to-business solutions, based on an extensive study of thousands of salespeople across different sectors and locations. According to the author’s research, every sales rep in the whole world fits into five different profiles, and while all of these reps may achieve average sales results, with one and only sales book- the challenger.

What makes this book stand out from the rest? You can understand the strategy and embed it throughout your sales after you understand how to identify the challenges in your business. The authors show how, with the appropriate tools, nearly any average-performing salesperson can successfully redefine consumers’ expectations and offer a unique buying experience that leads to better levels of customer loyalty and, eventually, greater growth.

21.5 Unbreakable laws of selling

Author: Jeffrey Gitomer

Every discipline has laws, so does the sales. His book delves into the fundamentals of our trade-selling. If you’re just starting out in sales, the laws will come in handy. The laws can either make or break your career whether you learn or follow them. We pay the price when we breach the laws and the sales suffer. It takes a lot of effort to get out of bed and conduct a sales call, let alone to produce our best job- work that is in accordance with the laws. Use Jeffrey’s laws of selling to rekindle your excitement for selling and refocus your attention and efforts on what truly works.

Spin selling

Author: Neil Rackham

Anyone who is interested in selling or managing a sales team should read SPIN selling. The groundbreaking SPIN method is described in detail in this sales book. Readers will be able to substantially improve their sales volume by following SPIN’s straightforward, practical, and easy-to-apply strategies.

In this book, you will discover why standard sales tactics designed for modest consumer purchases won’t work for huge sales and why traditional sales methods are bound to fail in significant sales.

Spear Selling

Author: Jamie Shanks

SPEAR selling is the battle-tested approach for both sales executives and sales professionals to utilize in their quest for better account-based sales outcomes. It is the definitive account-based sales guide for the modern, digital seller. Shanks has taught and coached hundreds of organizations on how to use SPEAR selling to boost sales in a variety of sales roles.

The focus on upfront planning that leverages important competitive differentiators, which is utilized to dramatically increase account activation and opportunity generation, is the key to account-based sales outcomes.

To Sell Is Human

Author: Daniel H. Pink

If you’re in sales right now, you’re undoubtedly aware that the old playbook doesn’t work. Pink provides new and practical ideas on modern selling, such as how to persuade people, make your message more clear and appealing, and get referrals, learn it all in To Sell Is Human.

Getting to Yes

Author: Roger Fisher & William Ury

Getting to yes lays forth a proven approach for reaching mutually acceptable, win-win agreements in negotiations, based on the work and conclusions of the Harvard Negotiation Project. More than 1 million individuals have benefited from Fisher and Ury’s no-nonsense negotiation counsel, which can be applied in both commercial and personal situations since it was first published over 40 years ago. 

This is one of those books where rereading it every and then will reveal more and more of its practical genius. It’s one of the greatest negotiating books we’ve ever encountered. 

Little Red Book Of Selling

Author: Jeffrey Gitomer

The pinnacle of frank, direct, and to-the-point sales advice. The Little Red Book of Selling emphasizes the salesperson’s preparation, drive, and attention, as well as good suggestions for breaking through your personal barriers and attaining sales success. Gitomer, the author of 14 books including the New York Times bestseller The Sales Bible, lays forth methods and solutions gleaned from a career of selling. 

Zig Ziglar’s Secrets of Closing the Sale

Author: Zig Ziglar

One of the best-selling books of all time comes from one of the best-selling salesmen of all time. One of the basic texts on how to be a great salesperson is Zig Ziglar’s secrets of closing the sale. The book contains a wealth of real-world, tried, and tested methods, such as closing techniques, probing inquiries, and expert advice from other great salesmen. Every business executive is also a sales executive, and every sales executive should read this book.

Mastering the Complex Sale

Author: Jeff Thull

You need a strategy to stand out and succeed when the stakes are high. Professional customer advice is essential in this regard. Thull presents a value-based strategy in Mastering the complex sale that positions you as the most credible option and removes internal barriers for consumers to move forward.

Sales Development: Cracking the Code of Outbound sales

Author: Cory Bray and Hilmon sorey

One of the fastest-growing occupations in the United States is sales development. It’s a fast-paced job that’s typically on the cutting edge of technology, and those who work in it may make a lot of money. Unlike accounting, medicine, or law, most salesmen do not go to university to study their profession. Instead, they are thrown into the mix with no training, background, or assistance, and left to fend for themselves. For the person or the organization, this technique is neither efficient nor effective.

Sales development is specially tailored to the job seeker or individual contributor who wants to be successful in sales development and beyond. This is your personal handbook for learning the how, why, and what to do of sales growth. This book, written in a practical and tactical manner, will show you how to acquire the job, perform well, and position yourself for development.

High-Profit Prospecting

Author: Mark Hunter

While search engines and social media have altered the way marketers build prospecting pipelines today, the pipeline’s health has not. Even today, a salesperson’s pipeline of prospects is critical to his or her success. Top producers are still looking for new opportunities every single time. Buyers. On the other hand, have changed, therefore your prospecting must as well. Hunter dispels costly prospecting fallacies and clears up misunderstandings about what works today in this sales book. This is a must-have resource for salespeople in any sector, combining innovative techniques with established practices that regrettably, many have abandoned.

Predictable prospecting

Author:Marylou Tyler and Jeremey Donovan

If B2B sales are the lifeblood of your company, you’ll need to be a master prospector to successfully identify, qualify, and close business opportunities. Whether you’re a sales and marketing executive, team leader, or salesperson, this game-changing guide gives the immediately implementable methods you need to establish a robust, sustainable pipeline. It teaches you how to find and track your ideal prospects, increase contact acquisition, improve performance over time, and meet your revenue targets fast, effectively, and reliably.

With this one of the best sales books, you can convert any B2B company into a high-performance business development engine, diversify marketing lead generation channels, justify marketing ROI, sell into disruptive markets, and create more income than ever before by following this proven step-by-step approach.

The Challenger Customer

Author: Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, Pat Spenner, and Nick Toman

After publishing their findings regarding the Challenger seller, the authors of The Challenger sale did not rest on their laurels. They extended their investigation and discovered that being a challenger is insufficient. In today’s complicated multi-stakeholder transactions, you need to confront the appropriate individuals. This book shows you how to engage and empower them to challenge their company from the inside.

The Go-Giver

Author: Bob Burg & John David Mann

While not strictly a “sales” book, The Go-Giver asserts that giving is the key to success in any endeavor, including sales. The writers, who previously published The Go-Giver Leader, think that focusing on giving and finding solutions for others will lead to success and greater connections. Give and you will get, givers succeed, givers alter the world are all timeless truths that run through this book. This is excellent advice for anybody, especially salespeople.

What Great Salespeople do

Author: Micahel Bosworth & Ben Zoldan

Anyone can learn how to persuade buyers to alter their minds, and What Great Salespeople Do can show you how to do it. Bosworth and Zoldan teach you how to utilize the power of narrative to exact the change you want to see in buyers, using research and evidence from different disciplines be it neuroscience, sociology, or psychology. This book delves into the emotional intelligence of salespeople and how they may utilize it to engage coworkers, prospects, and current customers.

How I raised myself from failure to success in selling

Author: Frank Bettger

This is the ideal book for everyone who works in sales. Bettger recounts his journey from a failing salesperson to one of America’s highest-paid salespeople via personal stories. He discusses the importance of excitement, overcoming anxiety, gaining confidence quickly, and the seven golden principles for completing a deal. 

After 10 months of miserable failure as an insurance salesman, Frank Bettger contemplated leaving. However, by drastically altering his attitude and conduct, he was able to turn his life and profession around, eventually becoming Fidelity Mutual’s top salesman for 20 years. His famous transformation is often cited as a textbook example to motivate salesmen and business professionals to reach extraordinary levels of success.

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

Author: Ram Charan & Larry Bossidy

The title itself is explanatory, that alone should entice you to pick this book and read it. Larry Bossidy has managed extremely successful businesses like Honeywell and GE, while Ram Charan is a business icon who has counseled some of the greatest CEOs of all time. Execution is a discipline that should not only be a fundamental component of companies but also a key component of you. What individuals claim they’ll do and what they really do are frequently contradictory, just get it done!

Active Listening 2.0

Author: Steve Trang 

To learn more about a product, a prospect had to contact the firm, and then the salesman would contact the prospect. Prospects nowadays are more educated than ever before. They can learn 90% or more about the product and industry even before speaking with a salesperson. The only approach to overcome this obstacle is to become a better listener than you have ever been. As a salesperson, your aim is to find out exactly what the prospect wants or needs and then provide it to them. You won’t be able to do so if your listening abilities aren’t up to par. Thus, this book is a must-read. 

Ditch The Pitch: The Art of Improvised Persuasion

Author: Steve Yastrow

Why do we still rely on sales pitches when nobody wants to listen to them? It’s time to toss aside the majority of what we‘ve been taught about selling to consumers. 

Ditch The Pitch is one of the best sales books and is organized into six habits, with each habit consisting of three practices required for mastery. It is meant to educate how to create new, spontaneous, compelling discussions. These new abilities will teach you how to recognize the features that distinguish each customer and then navigate a discussion that focuses on the appropriate message for the right consumer at the right time.

The author references well-known improv comedians and musicians throughout the book. He interprets the strategies used by these artists while improvising in order to generate convincing scenarios with clients. All of this is intended to assist you in mastering the art of on-the-spot, engaging, and productive customer encounters.

How to Win Friends and influence people

Author: Dale Carnegie

It’s one of my personal favorite and best sales books of all time. If it was published almost 100 years ago, you know you’re looking at one of the finest sales books ever written, yet the principles are still applicable to today’s world. Dale Carnegie authored this book in 1936, and it is still relevant today. If everyone read and followed this book, the world would be a better place to live in. 

The Psychology of Selling

Author: Brian Tracy

Brian Tracy was raised with sales training and growth instilled in him. He speaks to thousands of people each year and has published more than 45 books, the most significant of which is The Psychology of Selling. This book will help you get inside your prospects’ heads while also addressing the psychological toll that sales may have on the salesperson herself (self-esteem, fear of rejection). Tracy, who previously penned the best-selling book’s goals and how the best leaders lead, will inspire readers to strive for greater success. 

More Sales, Less Time

Ever felt that you have things lined up but don’t have enough time in the day? If that’s the case, you are undoubtedly a stressed-out salesperson. It’s hardly surprising, given that quotas are increasing and faster turnarounds are required. You’ll discover how to recover your time by removing big-time sinks, streamline your sales process to minimize redundancies and lost time, and remain on top of your sales game in this book. 

Which book made to your reading list?

Without a doubt, these books will improve your sales abilities, increase your leadership presence, educate you toward developing effective teams, provide you with alternative problem-solving methods, and show you how to execute your work better. But each of us has our own set of aims and interests. So, which one do you think is the best sales book for you, or which book wins your vote for the best book?