To Sell is Human

The little red book of selling

Challenger Customer (now that they know about the Challenger sale)

Fanatical Prospecting

Something like "major account sales"

To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink
Getting To Yes by Roger Fisher & William Ury.

I bought To Sell is Human, thank you for that one.

Daniel Pink's latest book To Sell is Human helped brings up another interesting aspect of this. He highlights a study in the book where people were able to get more things, I believe it was puzzles, accomplished when they got themselves into a questioning mindset.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0087GJ8KM/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

It focuses on selling as a means of convincing people of your argument, whether a monetary transaction is the goal or not. I really enjoyed it. A company I used to work for offered a small bonus for having read the book inside a month. I figured if it was that important to them, I'd read it. I was glad I did! Plus I got a few bucks extra. That really sold me on the idea.

I've been paying the bills with my startups for over 7 years, and I still drown in self doubt.

A technique I've used to short circuit that thinking is simply this: Ask yourself every day, "How can I accomplish this?"

For some reason, forcing myself to ask the question How, crowds out the doubt. My mind starts cranking on solving problems rather than worrying about my ineptitude.

I'm always impressed by how well just putting myself into a problem solving mood works.

It was awesome to see Daniel Pink's most recent book, To Sell is Human, explore this. He showed studies of how a group of people who were put into a "self-questioning" mindset solved 50% more puzzles than a rather than folks in a "self-affirming" mindset.

"The Mom Test" by Rob Fitzpatrick will teach you how to figure out what your customers really want, because it is almost certainly not what they are asking for.

"How to Make Sense of Any Mess" by Abby Covert. How to organize and present information.

"To Sell is Human" by Dan Pink. This is how you should look at sales and marketing.

Assuming you are going to be building software:

"Seductive Interaction Design" by Stephen P. Anderson.

"Planning Extreme Programming" and "Extreme Programming Explained" are must-reads for working with software teams.

I've worn both product and engineer hats on my path to being a sort of rentable CTO, and am always happy to help out people that are getting started as a PM -- email is in the profile.

Good luck!

In general, sales is something you need to practice every day. Like Sam mentions, it's about being able to convince other people of what you believe and you have an opportunity to do this in your every day life, from convincing your kids to clean their rooms to convincing your reports to adopt a new process.

The first step is to look for opportunities in every interaction to practice sales. Sales starts by listening, so try to understand the other person's point of view and why it's different from yours. Really step into their shoes and see things from their lens.

Once you identify where the difference is, ask questions to learn more. Why do they think that way? Why do they prefer the current process? Why are they hesitant to change?

Again, they key here is to listen. Once they list the reasons why they believe differently, summarize what they said. Then start to work through each difference together.

This is important. You're not competing with them. You need to work together to arrive at a common solution. If they say adopting a new process is a waste of time, then calculate with them how much time it will take and then work to reduce that time by offering help in some area.

In the end, you should both walk away having achieved something together without one person browbeating the other into it.

Books:

- The Challenger Sale

- Crossing the Chasm

- To Sell is Human

- The Little Red Book of Selling

Videos:

- https://www.heavybit.com/library/ has some videos that are relevant after making a few sales.

Product Description:

- https://www.cortes.design/post/saas-conversion-rates (generally good content, not sure if it's geared towards marketplaces)

What problem are you solving? Who's the niche? Are you speaking to one of their top three pains?

Look at sales as another thing to be mastered, be proud of your product and ask for the money, start the money conversation early on. Don't forget why your doing this.

This gives a logical framework for presenting people with new information - starting with a 10,000 foot view of how ‘the world has changed’ and gradually going into more detail about how this change will impact them before providing a solution. [1]

Where it really excels is enabling you to ‘bundle’ ideas into a larger trend, which others may not have seen as connected in the past. Depending on your background, using a sales framework may seem ‘icky’ but it’s a fairly tried and true method of presenting information.

In terms of books, other than Challenger Sale and Challenger Customer I can recommend To Sell is Human by Dan Pink, Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath and How to Deliver a Ted Talk.

An area where you can get a huge leg up over others is in use of PowerPoint / Google Slides. Most people are terrible at it, so if you can deliver a presentation which is 15% better than most you will be at a huge advantage also. The key here is not to see PowerPoint as a tool for conveying information, but as a tool for creating pitches. If you treat every new idea you present as a ‘pitch’ it will transform your effectiveness.

In the same way as gift wrapping a gift ‘elevates’ the gift, wrapping an idea or proposal in a presentation means it’s automatically taken more seriously.

[1] https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/insight-selling-better-pitch

Hey, I'm reading that same book! It is very fascinating so far, and I recommend it to, um, pretty much everybody.

makes the point that many people who do not think they are working in "sales" actually are. It sounds trite, but he does go into a lot of useful detail and advice from there

Yes, exactly. The premise might not exactly be an earth-shattering revelation, but the book is fascinating nonetheless.

-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.

Book: To sell is human. Daniel Pink

Daniel Pink - To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others http://www.amazon.com/Sell-Human-Surprising-Moving-Others/dp...

Dale Carnegie - How to Win Friends & Influence People http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/06...

As you understand the macro details of sales, the more micro things (tactics, strategies, best practices) are probably best served by specific industry or specific aspects of sales. For example:

http://www.amazon.com/Behind-Cloud-Salesforce-com-Billion-Do...

http://www.amazon.com/Sales-Acceleration-Formula-Technology-...

http://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business-Practices...

I also really like Jason Lemkin and his SaaStr blog: http://www.saastr.com/ Loads of SaaS sales practices on there.

I'm part way through "New Sales. Simplified" which seems heavily based on "prospecting" which a lot of books seem to neglect. I've also got Dan Pink's "To Sell is Human" lined up next which is more about the psychological aspects. Many of the classic sales books by Zig Ziglar or Brian Tracy seem, IMO, to be more closing focused.

The FCC -- as is common in regulatory agencies releasing proposals with a call for comments -- specifically wants impacted parties to detail how they are impacted (including financial impacts), because the FCC is tasked to take those impacts into account.