The Best Sales Books Ever Written
I’m a huge fan of reading. No surprise to anyone here I bet.
I think it’s very important for us to constantly expand our horizons. I titled this as the best sales books ever written but what I’d like to do is share with you the five most influential books when it comes to personal success that I have ever read.
You may feel differently and that’s perfectly ok. In fact, we’d all love to hear your thoughts over in the Sales365 community. What are your considerations for the best sales books? It’s free to join! You’ll find this article, along with many others, and also where you’ll be able to share your comments and feedback with me and the entire community of sales professionals.
For me, there are a couple of rules in order to make the list. One is, it has to be a book that I’ve read multiple times. If I haven’t read it multiple times, then it doesn’t count. Secondly, it has to age well. So the books that I want to share with you are all 10 years old or older. Some of them you probably already know, some of them you might find interesting.
I have to start with an honorable mention to one book because it’s not yet 10 years old. It’s only about five or six years old. Cal Newport’s Deep Work is about the way we work. How to find focus success in a distracted world. He shares a powerful message about how to get rid of the distractions around us. Cal has other great titles for sure but Deep Work is my favorite.
Drumroll, please.
The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. It’s all about energy management. How you manage your energy in all kinds of different areas of your life. Physical, mental, relational, spiritual whatever it happens to be. We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how we manage our energy, but as it turns out peak performance happens when we are managing our energy well. The authors took what they learned from working with top-level professional athletes and how they manage their energy and gave it to what we might call the corporate athlete. You. What does that look like? Super powerful. I’ve read the book many, many times.
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. This is a book about the hidden forces that shape our decisions. This is a book all about the way we make decisions and how we’re not always as rational as we think we are. Dan Ariely is a researcher, he’s a professor and a really interesting writer. You can also go to YouTube, just type in Dan Ariely, and you’re gonna see all kinds of cool TED Talks that are all absolutely fascinating.
You probably knew this one was coming. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by the late Dr. Steven R. Covey. Just an incredible book. It’s not a book that you read. It’s a book you do, but, it really gets you thinking on a very deep level. One of the first exercises that you’ll do is write your own eulogy and then compare what my life looks like today versus what do I want people to say down the road? Very powerful. It is a book that everyone should read at some point in their life. Don’t rush it, take your time. Do the exercises. Read this book over the course of a year. It’s that powerful.
The fourth book, from one of my heroes Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow. This is all about how our brain works, about how we make very quick decisions that are frankly made on a subconscious level. Fascinating principles here about the way that our brain is wired. You will never see things the same way. I just absolutely love this book. I’ve quoted it many times. It’s the underpinning of much of what I’ve extracted from this and brought it into the world of sales.
And then finally Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. This is the new and expanded edition signed as it were by Robert Cialdini. Thank you to my friend Mike for that. This is my third copy of this book. It is one of the most well-marked books in my library. My wife, who really isn’t into sales all that much, loved the book because the case studies alone are absolutely fascinating. Six key principles of influence here that will help you, for sure, in the sales world.
So there you go. The five best sales books that have had the greatest influence on success, in my opinion. What are yours? Join us in Sales365 today and share your feedback. We’d love to hear from you! I’m on a journey to read a book a week so I’d welcome your suggestions as well.
You have to read. Whether you’re reading full books, whether you’re reading the shorter trades. Whatever it happens to be, you have to read.
Expand your mind because you know what happens. When you learn more, you earn more.
