Sales Coaching Essentials. How to transform your sales team. Mark Garrett Hayes. 2022. ISBN 9781788603324. A very clear and well written guide to sales coaching. The author makes a clear distinction between training (teacher led) and coaching (partnership). In the sales environment coaching is a must-do for sales leaders. In my practise I see it as a journey of the sales leader and the sales team together toward better practices in their market. Your clients can help you find what works. Thus book touches all the bases in sales and gives you approaches, questions and concrete examples on what to do in any sales situation. Buy this book, read it, make notes and ensure it is on your desk for when you need it.

The Undoing Project. A friendship that changed our minds. Michael Lewis. 2017. ISBN 978039324594. A story by the author of Moneyball. The story of the work by Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky. These two genius psychologists have affected so much of our daily decisions by relating psychology to economics and dealing with real situations. For example, they discovered that our fear of loss is so much larger than then the appreciation of gain. Something used by every successful sales person and politician. The work (and there is a lot of it) now permeates so much of our perceptions of the world and how items are framed to us. Man is fallible and not purely rational and these two found numerous insights into our fallibility. Prior to these two, economists were stuck in believing in the rational man. Making this shift took a long time. After Tversky passed away, Kahneman went on to so any plaudits ( Nobel Prize) and recognition. Lewis does a great job of showing us their humanness and their powerful synergy with the work they did together. Every sales manager needs to read this one.

Leading Growth. the proven formula for consistently increasing revenue. Anthony Iannarino. 2023.

ISBN: 9781119890348. One of my favorite writers on sales has done it again. This is the book on sales leadership, just like his first book “The Only Sales Guide You “ill Ever Need” is for salespeople. I was honored to just get a pre-release copy to review. I read it in less than a day as it is so well laid out, real, and worthwhile. You will cover the essentials of sales leadership and see all the various ways you can be sidetracked. It is a book of best practice of effectiveness, while being uplifting on every page. He makes clear distinctions between strategy and tactics, and does not shortchange either topic. In my present sales coaching role, I see the value of this book for managers and directors. It will be my recommended sales book of the year. Buy it, read it and read it again. It is that useful.

Pickup the Phone and Sell. How proactive calls to customers and prospects can double your sales. Alex Goldfayn. 2022. A very useful boon for today’s SDRs. This book is full of tactics and tips for outbound selling. Also, it has a lot of motivational material for sales managers to use with their teams. I found it easy but detailed enough to read that the material can be immediately useful. His website goldfayn.com has good free resources for the sales teams. You need this on your shelf to read through the year.

Strikingly Different Selling. Dale Merrill & Scott Savage. 2022. ISBN 9781642504873. The two authors are two high performing experienced sales people with the Franklin Covey organization. The book is very useful to all levels of B2B sales people, marketers and managers. They layout very different ways of selling which complement good practise. The first part of the book shows good ways to capture the reader’s attention using metaphors of billboards, movie trailers, flashbacks and flashforwards (I.e. present status and future status). There is one of the clearer statements of differentiation (How does your client see that you are different, since they buy on differences?) with good examples and ideas. This is well worth getting the book for this. They go on to show good selling practices during all parts of the sales. Excellent resource and well worth the read.