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Ask HN: Any great books on Sales and Marketing?

10 points by GroupRefer ↗ HN
Over the years, I've been lucky enough to find mentors in various fields, Warren Buffet and Joel Greenblatt for Stocks, 37 Signals for Company and App building, Michael Lewis for spending money (Money Ball). Zappos for Customer Service. I haven't found great books on Sales and Marketing, I was wondering if there are any great mentors out there that you guys know of or any great books?

8 comments

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fbnt
Influence, the psychology of persuasion by Robert Cialdini. An oldie, but a goodie.
sganesh
Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive : by Noah Goldstein & Robert Cialdini - Short Read.

Your Marketing Sucks - Mark Stevens - Short Read.

Persuasion Mastery: 500 Practical Lessons In The Psychology Of Sales - Stephen Thieme - Long One:)

mattgratt
Influence by Cialdini

4 Steps to the Epiphany is a phenomenal book on selling new b2b IT products.

Secrets of Question-based Selling is the best consultative sales book

SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham is also quite good

Tested Advertising Methods and Scientific Advertising continue to be two of the best books on copywriting, despite being very old.

ryanfitz
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.
hga
While it's broader in scope, I found the marketing lessons in Walking the High-Tech High Wire: The Technical Entrepreneur's Guide to Running a Successful Enterprise to be very valuable: http://www.amazon.com/Walking-High-Tech-High-Wire-Entreprene...

By now they could well be subsumed in e.g. Steve Blank's work, but it's not a long read and the price is right. And they walked the walk: they developed a device that the could fabricate on a lab table top, but it required different thinking from hardware designers. That plus their quasi-pivot (actually just doing the numbers and figuring out which of the two businesses they were doing (selling parts and consulting) they should focus on) are also worthwhile, even or especially if you're in software.