Required Reading for Salespeople

Want to master some of the best sales ideas out there and some of the business concepts that SaaS salespeople need to know?

These digests will get you up to speed quickly.

Where should you start? These my are top three recommendations for sales reps:

1. SPIN Selling

2. The Challenger Sale

3. Strategic Selling

Sales Reading

The resources below will help you master the fundamental ideas of effective selling.

SPIN Selling: Learn the art of effective discovery that helps you uncover needs that motivate purchases. For the P.S.I. Selling take on discovery, check out this video.

The Challenger Sale: Win deals by teaching prospects about their needs and taking control of the process. For the P.S.I. Selling perspective on building sales conversations and running a sales process, check out our article on sales fundamentals.

What Great Salespeople Do: Use storytelling to overcome buyer resistance to change, which is often rooted in emotional factors that are hard to overcome with logic alone. P.S.I. Selling recommends a more logic-focused approach, but this is a valuable perspective to consider. For the P.S.I. take on sales persuasion, check out our video on sales messaging.

The JOLT Effect: Why do customers realize that they need to change but still do nothing? They fear messing up more than missing out. Break through decision paralysis with the JOLT framework. For more on moving deals toward a close, check out our advice for managing the scoping process.

Strategic Selling: Manage complex multi-stakeholder deal processes by building a coalition in favor of a purchase. Click here for the P.S.I. Selling take on managing deals and stakeholders.

Getting to Yes: Negotiate mutually beneficial agreements by looking for ways in which your interests are compatible. To see P.S.I. Selling's take on negotiation, check out this article on the Four Modes of Negotiation.

Obviously Awesome: See how to effectively position your product in the right market. Effective positioning is foundational to sales: It helps you sell to the right prospects and focus on the right messages so you can persuade prospects to buy.

Business Reading

These resources will teach you the business concepts you need to persuade executive-level buyers and give you the wider business context to run an effective team.

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: See how smart businesses focus their efforts on the pivot points that drive results so you can tie your product to those key initiatives and motivate a purchase.

Understanding Michael Porter: This summary of Porter's work shows how effective competitive strategy isn't about being better, it's about being different. Absorbing these ideas will help sales reps link their product to those points of differentiation and persuade decision makers to buy.

The Innovator's Solution: Learn about the threats and opportunities created by technological change so you can position your product as a way for your customers to profit from change rather than being diminished by it.

Good to Great: The factors that make companies outrageously successful are different than you might think. Forget splashy strategy launches and celebrity CEOs. Instead, find curious and humble leaders, build a culture that combines being willing to face the truth with a belief in future success, and focus on a simple vision of what the company can be the best at.

Top Business Blog Posts: This collection will help you understand the challenges that executive-level buyers face, the way they think about technology purchases, and how best to communicate with them.

Leadership Reading

The resources below will teach you the key concepts of effective leadership.

The Sales Acceleration Formula: Discover how process rigor can build an effective team by understanding the formulas for hiring great reps, training them, managing them, and generating demand.

High-Output Management: See how the principle of leverage can help managers decide how best to improve the performance of their team.

The First 90 Days: See how new leaders can approach transitions effectively managing themselves, their team, their boss, and their colleagues.

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If you liked this article, check out the P.S.I. Selling Content Page for more insights on sales communication, strategy, and leadership or our sales training videos to see the basics of P.S.I. Selling.

Want to build a sales process that proves value and a team that can execute? Get in touch.

For more about the author, check out Mike's bio.