SPIN Selling

Second vote for Spin Selling from me. Spin Selling is a must read for anyone doing long-term sales-- in particular, selling software that has a long sales cycle like a year from the time you get a prospect until you close the sale. But it has other key concepts for smaller software packages too that you'll find useful if you're doing something smaller.

The best book on selling complex items like software that I have ever known, I got from the best salesperson I ever met: the book is Neil Rackham: Spin Selling

I like books that are actionable. Lots of books are inspirational but not that useful (e.g. crossing the chasm). I run a curriculum in my company which uses a few books I have read over the years. emyth revisited (how to think about and structure an org) getting to yes (negotiation) influence the psychology of persuasion (negotiation) spin selling (enterprise sales, supplanted by sandler) You cant teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar (sandler sales) 5 dysfunctions of a team (one of the best leadership books) first break all the rules (management) accounting for dummies purple cow (differentiation) blue ocean strategy (differentiation) traction (strategy/operations) rocketfuel (strategy/operations) for professional services: managing the professional services firm getting naked

+1 for mentioning Neil Rackham's (1988) classic "Spin Selling". Got it recommended from a friend after his exit (and after buying a French mansion from his share of the proceeds) when I asked him what he can recommend on understanding sales, in particular sales of (complex) technology. It's indeed a marvel for people new to selling.

Our selections from The 100 Best Business Books of All Time were: -Selling The Invisible by Harry Beckwith (great look at selling services) -Secrets of Closing The Sale by Zig Ziglar (gets you prepared for objections) -How to Become A Rainmaker by Jeffrey Fox (shortcuts to better sales techniques) -The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer (best first book for first time salespeople) As mentioned in other posts, I would also add SPIN Selling, Mastering the Complex Sale and The Referral Engine. "Smart" books in the sales space include Influence, Made To Stick, To Sell Is Human. For motivation, read more Zig, Tony Robbins, and Dale Carnegie.

SPIN is still great. I've heard about Challenger Sales, I'll read it and should have an opinion in a few weeks.

For books: realize there are multiple kinds of selling. 1) There's things like used cars. Single, moderate sized transactions, one-time. You want to extract the last dollar, force the close, and generally be like...a used car dealer. I know nothing about this. 2) There's consumer products -- worry about the "funnel", advertising, etc. 3) There's the stuff I like -- high dollar, high-complexity, repeated/ongoing transaction. The best books, hands down, are Neal Rackham's SPIN Selling series: http://www.amazon.com/Neil-Rackham/e/B000APLFJK

There are 3 books you should read: SPIN Selling. The Challenger Sale. The Charisma Myth. In that order. You will learn so many jedi mind tricks. Yes, there is such a thing as sales. But do yourself a favor and don't sell shitty products. There's a wide range of incomes among people selling the best products, and the difference is stuff you can at least read about in those books.

I've read SPIN selling and now reading Challenger Sales. SPIN is much easier to read, know and understand while I found Challenger Sales a lot difficult to follow and put into practice. Challenger Sale's major premise is the assumption that SPIN selling doesn't work anymore for some reason because of the 2008 recession. I'm not sure how true this assumption is but I'll leave this up for the real sales people. I'm interested in hacking enterprise sales. ANother HN user's blog on the subject here is excellent as well: http://doanhdo.blogspot.ca/

Im partial to spin selling.

If I had to pick one, I'd pick SPIN Selling as feverishaaron said. It's a lot more how to and broken down into steps. Selling to VITO is also step by step, but SPIN Selling approach makes more sense to me.

I would pick SPIN selling from this list, especially if you are selling custom work in an enterprise software market.

* SPIN Selling by Rackman * The Sales Bible by Gitomer * Selling to VITO by Parinello * Lead Generation for the Complex Sale by Brian Carroll * http://www.marketingsherpa.com/ * http://blog.startwithalead.com/weblog/ * http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=35771&trk=a... (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=35771&trk=anet_ug_hm) This one is a linekdin group that sends out a good email news letter