Top 3 books that changed the way I sell
Sales is a profession that requires assertiveness, confidence and a natural ability to be sociable. This is not a job that can be done by everyone, however, there are certain techniques that can be taught to increase higher sales efficiency. Since there are many internships and entry-level jobs in sales, many graduates follow this path having limited knowledge in the art of selling. It is not unusual for companies that offer sales positions or internships to have outdated sales training or no training at all.
There are a number of books that offer guidance and excellent advice in mastering the ability to sell. I have hand-picked three of them that have helped me achieve higher commission at the end of the month. While I encourage to read the books entirely, I have also highlighted some concepts that offer quick tips and will help you interact better next time you are on a call. Sales is a competition where the winner is not the one who can dial the fastest but the one who dials the right numbers at the right time, so mastering the right techniques is critical for success.
Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross
“Happy employees develop happy customers”
As the name implies, “Predictable Revenue” sets the basics of selling in order to create a reliable process that drives revenue and profit. The author formulated this technique to teach companies how to double or triple new sales. Aaron Ross himself, proved this method to be reliable while working at Salesforce, one of the leading software companies, where he helped the company grow from $5 million to $100 million in three years. The book builds around the idea of “Cold Calling 2.0”, which is an updated selling practice that is scalable and predictable.
The book represents a great guide for people with no experience in sales because it defines key sales terms and has graphs and illustrations of sales concepts for better understanding. It has great TO-DO lists and plans and has an excellent call to action. The book uses examples of Salesforce CRM, a software that many would describe as outdated and some of the techniques have been replaced with automation since the book was released. Nevertheless, the book is a great guide to understanding the basics in sales.
Specialize, specialize, specialize. One of the central ideas is that in order to achieve predictable revenue you need to specialize your four core sales roles. First, Sales Development Reps (SDRs) must prospect new accounts, identify and create new opportunities and pass them to the Account Executives (AEs). Second, Market Response Reps (MRRs) must qualify the incoming leads that reach the company through the website or phone and root the qualified opportunities to the AEs. Third, the AEs (closers) must engage in a first full conversation with the prospect where they connect the key business issues with the dream solution. Last, the account managers nurture the created opportunities. It is very important to keep these roles as they are, meaning that SDRs do not ever close deals and AEs do not prospect new leads. It also means that MRRs have a separate duty and must not engage in any of the roles mentioned above.
Cold Calling 2.0. Sales reps will be happy to hear Aaron Ross arguing that cold-calling is dead. The author advocates his statement exemplifying three major reasons. First, buyers are sick of being sold to and become resilient to classic pushy sales techniques. Second, CRM systems and technologies make it easier to engage in personalized selling rather than taking guesses. Third, marketing budgets require more accountability that is missing with the old way of cold- calling. Instead, Ross suggests a process that fixes the issues mentioned above. An SDR, one must first define the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and create a list of contacts. Then, the SDR must send cold emails to the identified list and follow up with the work responses. Last, the SDR must pass the opportunity to the AEs by setting an appointment. The book further describes exact practices, numbers, and templates that can be used to achieve higher efficiency.
AAA call planning. Cold calling 2.0 does not exclude calling leads. The call is done after the prospect receives a cold email first. It actually offers a list of three questions that the Sales rep must follow before making a call: What Answers do you want to learn in the call? What Attitudes do you wish the prospect to feel? What Actions should occur after the call? It is important to remember that the prospect might already know about your company through a previous email, which puts the SDR at and advantage because there is no need for the “30-second elevator pitch”. Salespersons should use a non-threatening, research-oriented approach when engaging with the prospect. A good tip to start the call is by asking “Did I catch you at a bad time?”, because it shows respect and thoughtfulness from the dialer’s side. Ross further suggests more role-playing and fewer scripts leading to more natural conversations.
The Challenger Sale by Brent Adamson and Matthew Dixon
“Why should your customers buy from you instead of your competitors?”
The Challenger Sale presents the findings of over 6,000 surveys administered in 90 companies coming from various industries. It is believed to be the most complete research done in the field of sales. Its findings are considered a major breakthrough in the way salespeople perform their job because the results presented are counter-intuitive to the human mind.
The book follows the structure and language of a research study, consisting of authentic examples to fortify the concepts described, as well as the advised selling techniques. As a consequence, the book has a blunt wording with little call to action and excitement. Even so, the empirical approach employed in “The Challenger Sale” leads to a better understanding of general sales beliefs and strategies.
Five types of salespeople. One of the main findings of the book is that there are five types of salespeople: the hard worker, the challenger, the relationship-builder, the lone wolf, and the reactive problem solver. The data shows that out of these five types of sales people, only one type is by far a star-performer and is able to out-sell even during economic downturns. Previously, it was believed that the relationship builder brings the highest sales because of his way of nurturing strong personal and professional relationships that sometimes may take years to develop. However, the research shows that it is the Challenger who is the clear winner. The Challenger reps have some unique characteristics: they always have a different view of the world, they understand the customer’s business, they love to debate and they push the customer. To put it in a more straightforward way, the Challenger is “the jerk” who forces people to think about complex issues from a different perspective.
Teach, Tailor and Take control. The Challenger rep exceeds at doing three things well: teach, tailor and take control. Using these techniques the rep is able to build constructive tension with the customer. By teaching, the Challenger rep captures the customer attention and brings in new insights that reframe the way customers think about their business. By tailoring, the Challenger rep is able to deliver a pitch that is specific to the client and the context of their discussion. They lead to the product, not with the product. By taking control, the Challenger rep openly pursues the goal of the sale, meaning that many times the rep will have to tradeoff additional product insights to avoid giving discounts.
Sales innovation. This last finding refers to sales managers rather than to the first-line sales reps. The book finds that the great sales reps do not necessarily make great sales managers. The book identifies 64 skills and behaviors that a manager could be good at and then it selects the ones that matter the most for a manager’s performance. It turns out that the core attributes critical to a sales manager are reliability, integrity and listening skills. Interestingly, these behaviors tend to be binary which means that either you have these attributes either you do not because it is not possible to develop these skills in your staff over time. These attributes constitute about 25% of manager performance. The other 75% constitute skills like selling, coaching and owning. A world class manager must be able to do the job of a Challenger sales rep and be able to guide other reps to sell. The most important aspect that an outstanding sales manager must have is owning. The manager must lead his sales team as if it is his own business. Additionally, he should be good at resource allocation and sales innovation. However, the highest impact on the manager’s job performance is his ability to innovate. That is to generate new ways of solving deal-level problems and innovate new ways to position an offer. This aspect has been often overlooked in organizations, but it is critical to lead performance and growth for any company.
Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz
“It all starts with the universally applicable principle that people want to be understood and accepted.”
“Never Split The Difference” is a negotiation book that disrupts the traditional bargaining techniques. The author is a former FBI agent who was in charge of leading international kidnapping cases. The negotiation concepts described in the book have been field-tested against a range of criminals, including professional robbers and terrorists. However, the general guidelines suggested by the author can be applied in day-to-day life while buying a home, discussing a raise, or negotiating a sale with a client. The book argues that people are irrational beasts who suffer from cognitive biasses, which means that the traditional systematic approach to negotiation suggested by Roger Fisher and William Ury is prone to failure if it separates the emotion from the problem.
Even though the book does not focus on sales techniques and management, it offers great guidance around the psychological process of negotiation. It is very a pleasant and easy read and offers excellent practical advice that can be applicable to any type of sales role. As many other social sciences books, it unlocks human behaviors that were hidden to the readers’ eyes before.
Mirrors work magic. One of the top struggles that sales reps encounter is building trust and credibility with their prospects. Cold-calling, by definition, creates a fight or flight response in the human brain, which is an unfavorable environment for developing trust. One strategy to facilitate the initial interaction is by using imitation techniques. Both humans and animals display this neuro-behavior to comfort each other. Mirroring the person on the other line creates the kind of report that builds trust. The FBI used this technique when negotiating with terrorists by repeating the last three words someone has said. This helped the terrorist to feel listened and encouraged to disclose more information. Sales reps can use the same technique to build trust and collect more information from their clients’ needs. Mirroring can be done with speech patterns, body language, vocabulary, tempo and tone of voice. Imitating any of these behaviors creates more trust and it can be a first step in diminishing the initial fight or flight response.
That’s right! Understanding customer needs is a critical aspect of any sales negotiation. Many sales reps ask directly what the customer wants and many times they get a satisfactory answer. However, the answer they receive covers just the tip of the iceberg, and the sales reps often fail to fully uncover and understand the clients’ true needs, therefore never closing the sale. To avoid getting caught in this trap, Chris Voss suggest triggering a simple “That’s right” every time the other party describes its needs, by paraphrasing what is being said. This involves going a step further to what is seen on the surface by re-stating what it was originally said in a manner that uncovers pain points that were not mentioned before. If executed correctly, the customer should reply with “That’s right”, which means that the summary reflected the real challenges and both parties are on the same page. If however, the triggered response is “You’re right”, then the tactic has failed. “You’re right” implies that the customer is bothered and wants to move away from the conversation. The sales rep must make sure that the conversation does not continue before the response is changed to “That’s right”. Having two or three affirmative responses increases the chances of closing the deal because the customers not only feel listened to but also understood, which is great for building positive leverage.
Black Swans. Black swan theory represents the concept that things that are thought to be impossible happen more often than people expect. The idea goes back centuries ago when it was believed that all swans are white. In the late seventeenth century the explorer Willem de Vlamingh saw for the first time a black swan in Australia. Suddenly, the unthinkable was real. In sales, black swans are caused by a mismatch of expectations between the customer and the sales rep. The expectations are built on three general beliefs. The first belief is the known knowns, which are the things that are known. For example, a sales rep knows that the customer has a certain need that needs to be filled. The second belief is that expectations are influenced by unknown knowns. That is things that are known to be hidden. For instance, sales rep knows that the client has an allocated budget of fill his need but can never know what is the real amount of that budget. This is an unknown known. The last belief that is often ignored are the unknown unknowns. This is factors that are out there but are hidden to people’s eyes, just like a black swan before the seventeenth century. A sales rep must always be aware that there are unknown unknowns that will create a potential mismatch in expectations. To uncover these black swans, the sales rep has to ask open-ended questions and engage in active listening to collect information aside from what is known to be unknown. The author mentions that this is an advanced skill that requires years of practice. Many times, the FBI will have a team of people listening to a phone call with a terrorist just to capture as many unknown unknowns as possible. This could be words, phrases or pauses that a team will take individual notes and then compare with the other members to make sure they have captured the tiniest subtleties. A sales rep, however, needs to capture all this information on the spot by himself, which makes it a very difficult skill to acquire. A simple rule to follow to uncover the black swans is do not treat the client the way you want to be treated, treat the client the way they need to be treated. This involves taking a step forward and seeing oneself in someone else’s shoes.
There are a number of books that offer guidance and excellent advice in mastering the ability to sell. I have hand-picked three of them that have helped me achieve higher commission at the end of the month. While I encourage to read the books entirely, I have also highlighted some concepts that offer quick tips and will help you interact better next time you are on a call. Sales is a competition where the winner is not the one who can dial the fastest but the one who dials the right numbers at the right time, so mastering the right techniques is critical for success.
Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross
“Happy employees develop happy customers”
As the name implies, “Predictable Revenue” sets the basics of selling in order to create a reliable process that drives revenue and profit. The author formulated this technique to teach companies how to double or triple new sales. Aaron Ross himself, proved this method to be reliable while working at Salesforce, one of the leading software companies, where he helped the company grow from $5 million to $100 million in three years. The book builds around the idea of “Cold Calling 2.0”, which is an updated selling practice that is scalable and predictable.
The book represents a great guide for people with no experience in sales because it defines key sales terms and has graphs and illustrations of sales concepts for better understanding. It has great TO-DO lists and plans and has an excellent call to action. The book uses examples of Salesforce CRM, a software that many would describe as outdated and some of the techniques have been replaced with automation since the book was released. Nevertheless, the book is a great guide to understanding the basics in sales.
Specialize, specialize, specialize. One of the central ideas is that in order to achieve predictable revenue you need to specialize your four core sales roles. First, Sales Development Reps (SDRs) must prospect new accounts, identify and create new opportunities and pass them to the Account Executives (AEs). Second, Market Response Reps (MRRs) must qualify the incoming leads that reach the company through the website or phone and root the qualified opportunities to the AEs. Third, the AEs (closers) must engage in a first full conversation with the prospect where they connect the key business issues with the dream solution. Last, the account managers nurture the created opportunities. It is very important to keep these roles as they are, meaning that SDRs do not ever close deals and AEs do not prospect new leads. It also means that MRRs have a separate duty and must not engage in any of the roles mentioned above.
Cold Calling 2.0. Sales reps will be happy to hear Aaron Ross arguing that cold-calling is dead. The author advocates his statement exemplifying three major reasons. First, buyers are sick of being sold to and become resilient to classic pushy sales techniques. Second, CRM systems and technologies make it easier to engage in personalized selling rather than taking guesses. Third, marketing budgets require more accountability that is missing with the old way of cold- calling. Instead, Ross suggests a process that fixes the issues mentioned above. An SDR, one must first define the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and create a list of contacts. Then, the SDR must send cold emails to the identified list and follow up with the work responses. Last, the SDR must pass the opportunity to the AEs by setting an appointment. The book further describes exact practices, numbers, and templates that can be used to achieve higher efficiency.
AAA call planning. Cold calling 2.0 does not exclude calling leads. The call is done after the prospect receives a cold email first. It actually offers a list of three questions that the Sales rep must follow before making a call: What Answers do you want to learn in the call? What Attitudes do you wish the prospect to feel? What Actions should occur after the call? It is important to remember that the prospect might already know about your company through a previous email, which puts the SDR at and advantage because there is no need for the “30-second elevator pitch”. Salespersons should use a non-threatening, research-oriented approach when engaging with the prospect. A good tip to start the call is by asking “Did I catch you at a bad time?”, because it shows respect and thoughtfulness from the dialer’s side. Ross further suggests more role-playing and fewer scripts leading to more natural conversations.
The Challenger Sale by Brent Adamson and Matthew Dixon
“Why should your customers buy from you instead of your competitors?”
The Challenger Sale presents the findings of over 6,000 surveys administered in 90 companies coming from various industries. It is believed to be the most complete research done in the field of sales. Its findings are considered a major breakthrough in the way salespeople perform their job because the results presented are counter-intuitive to the human mind.
The book follows the structure and language of a research study, consisting of authentic examples to fortify the concepts described, as well as the advised selling techniques. As a consequence, the book has a blunt wording with little call to action and excitement. Even so, the empirical approach employed in “The Challenger Sale” leads to a better understanding of general sales beliefs and strategies.
Five types of salespeople. One of the main findings of the book is that there are five types of salespeople: the hard worker, the challenger, the relationship-builder, the lone wolf, and the reactive problem solver. The data shows that out of these five types of sales people, only one type is by far a star-performer and is able to out-sell even during economic downturns. Previously, it was believed that the relationship builder brings the highest sales because of his way of nurturing strong personal and professional relationships that sometimes may take years to develop. However, the research shows that it is the Challenger who is the clear winner. The Challenger reps have some unique characteristics: they always have a different view of the world, they understand the customer’s business, they love to debate and they push the customer. To put it in a more straightforward way, the Challenger is “the jerk” who forces people to think about complex issues from a different perspective.
Teach, Tailor and Take control. The Challenger rep exceeds at doing three things well: teach, tailor and take control. Using these techniques the rep is able to build constructive tension with the customer. By teaching, the Challenger rep captures the customer attention and brings in new insights that reframe the way customers think about their business. By tailoring, the Challenger rep is able to deliver a pitch that is specific to the client and the context of their discussion. They lead to the product, not with the product. By taking control, the Challenger rep openly pursues the goal of the sale, meaning that many times the rep will have to tradeoff additional product insights to avoid giving discounts.
Sales innovation. This last finding refers to sales managers rather than to the first-line sales reps. The book finds that the great sales reps do not necessarily make great sales managers. The book identifies 64 skills and behaviors that a manager could be good at and then it selects the ones that matter the most for a manager’s performance. It turns out that the core attributes critical to a sales manager are reliability, integrity and listening skills. Interestingly, these behaviors tend to be binary which means that either you have these attributes either you do not because it is not possible to develop these skills in your staff over time. These attributes constitute about 25% of manager performance. The other 75% constitute skills like selling, coaching and owning. A world class manager must be able to do the job of a Challenger sales rep and be able to guide other reps to sell. The most important aspect that an outstanding sales manager must have is owning. The manager must lead his sales team as if it is his own business. Additionally, he should be good at resource allocation and sales innovation. However, the highest impact on the manager’s job performance is his ability to innovate. That is to generate new ways of solving deal-level problems and innovate new ways to position an offer. This aspect has been often overlooked in organizations, but it is critical to lead performance and growth for any company.
Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz
“It all starts with the universally applicable principle that people want to be understood and accepted.”
“Never Split The Difference” is a negotiation book that disrupts the traditional bargaining techniques. The author is a former FBI agent who was in charge of leading international kidnapping cases. The negotiation concepts described in the book have been field-tested against a range of criminals, including professional robbers and terrorists. However, the general guidelines suggested by the author can be applied in day-to-day life while buying a home, discussing a raise, or negotiating a sale with a client. The book argues that people are irrational beasts who suffer from cognitive biasses, which means that the traditional systematic approach to negotiation suggested by Roger Fisher and William Ury is prone to failure if it separates the emotion from the problem.
Even though the book does not focus on sales techniques and management, it offers great guidance around the psychological process of negotiation. It is very a pleasant and easy read and offers excellent practical advice that can be applicable to any type of sales role. As many other social sciences books, it unlocks human behaviors that were hidden to the readers’ eyes before.
Mirrors work magic. One of the top struggles that sales reps encounter is building trust and credibility with their prospects. Cold-calling, by definition, creates a fight or flight response in the human brain, which is an unfavorable environment for developing trust. One strategy to facilitate the initial interaction is by using imitation techniques. Both humans and animals display this neuro-behavior to comfort each other. Mirroring the person on the other line creates the kind of report that builds trust. The FBI used this technique when negotiating with terrorists by repeating the last three words someone has said. This helped the terrorist to feel listened and encouraged to disclose more information. Sales reps can use the same technique to build trust and collect more information from their clients’ needs. Mirroring can be done with speech patterns, body language, vocabulary, tempo and tone of voice. Imitating any of these behaviors creates more trust and it can be a first step in diminishing the initial fight or flight response.
That’s right! Understanding customer needs is a critical aspect of any sales negotiation. Many sales reps ask directly what the customer wants and many times they get a satisfactory answer. However, the answer they receive covers just the tip of the iceberg, and the sales reps often fail to fully uncover and understand the clients’ true needs, therefore never closing the sale. To avoid getting caught in this trap, Chris Voss suggest triggering a simple “That’s right” every time the other party describes its needs, by paraphrasing what is being said. This involves going a step further to what is seen on the surface by re-stating what it was originally said in a manner that uncovers pain points that were not mentioned before. If executed correctly, the customer should reply with “That’s right”, which means that the summary reflected the real challenges and both parties are on the same page. If however, the triggered response is “You’re right”, then the tactic has failed. “You’re right” implies that the customer is bothered and wants to move away from the conversation. The sales rep must make sure that the conversation does not continue before the response is changed to “That’s right”. Having two or three affirmative responses increases the chances of closing the deal because the customers not only feel listened to but also understood, which is great for building positive leverage.
Black Swans. Black swan theory represents the concept that things that are thought to be impossible happen more often than people expect. The idea goes back centuries ago when it was believed that all swans are white. In the late seventeenth century the explorer Willem de Vlamingh saw for the first time a black swan in Australia. Suddenly, the unthinkable was real. In sales, black swans are caused by a mismatch of expectations between the customer and the sales rep. The expectations are built on three general beliefs. The first belief is the known knowns, which are the things that are known. For example, a sales rep knows that the customer has a certain need that needs to be filled. The second belief is that expectations are influenced by unknown knowns. That is things that are known to be hidden. For instance, sales rep knows that the client has an allocated budget of fill his need but can never know what is the real amount of that budget. This is an unknown known. The last belief that is often ignored are the unknown unknowns. This is factors that are out there but are hidden to people’s eyes, just like a black swan before the seventeenth century. A sales rep must always be aware that there are unknown unknowns that will create a potential mismatch in expectations. To uncover these black swans, the sales rep has to ask open-ended questions and engage in active listening to collect information aside from what is known to be unknown. The author mentions that this is an advanced skill that requires years of practice. Many times, the FBI will have a team of people listening to a phone call with a terrorist just to capture as many unknown unknowns as possible. This could be words, phrases or pauses that a team will take individual notes and then compare with the other members to make sure they have captured the tiniest subtleties. A sales rep, however, needs to capture all this information on the spot by himself, which makes it a very difficult skill to acquire. A simple rule to follow to uncover the black swans is do not treat the client the way you want to be treated, treat the client the way they need to be treated. This involves taking a step forward and seeing oneself in someone else’s shoes.
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