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Ask HN: Sales book recommendation?

25 points by sdragon ↗ HN
I've been working as a freelancer web/software developer for almost a year now; however, I feel that my sales cycles are long-stretched at best. I have no intention whatsoever to "blame the economy" (as it seems to be fashionable nowdays); I'll take full responsibility for this, and thus turn to the entreprenour culture blooming around here:

What books, blogs, or fundamental understanding has made the biggest impact on your sales, and bottom line?

(No cliches, please.)

26 comments

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melvinram
* SPIN Selling by Rackman

* The Sales Bible by Gitomer

* Selling to VITO by Parinello

* Lead Generation for the Complex Sale by Brian Carroll

* http://www.marketingsherpa.com/

* http://blog.startwithalead.com/weblog/

* http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=35771&trk=a... This one is a linekdin group that sends out a good email news letter

ericb
If you had to pick just one?
feverishaaron
I would pick SPIN selling from this list, especially if you are selling custom work in an enterprise software market.
melvinram
If I had to pick one, I'd pick SPIN Selling as feverishaaron said. It's a lot more how to and broken down into steps. Selling to VITO is also step by step, but SPIN Selling approach makes more sense to me.
mooders
Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm

Bosworth/Holland's Customer-Centric Selling

davidw
Crossing the Chasm is a good book, but as a sales book for a freelancer?
mooders
Definitely - if you don't understand the market, the motivations for purchasing, the product development lifecycle and so on, how can you possibly sell anything beyond brute force and willpower?
davidw
If you're selling your time, you are pretty much selling 'brute force' by definition, rather than a product.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
dangoldin
Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat by Michael Masterson is pretty good.
sachinag
Are your rates public on your site? If not, I'd start there. If your sales cycles are long, there's nothing that will qualify leads faster.

If Brian Fling can do it, so can you: http://www.flingmedia.com/contact/ (drop-down under New Project Request)

kashif
Highly recommend - Selling the Wheel!
oomkiller
Be sure to keep your mentality, don't adopt the sales mentality where you just try to make as many sales as possible. If you're not making enough, maybe you should charge more for services, while at the same time improving the quality of work. In web design and programming, I always put quality above quantity. If you do a great job, your service will sell itself by word of mouth.
iainduncan
This is totally true, with one giant caveat: how much you are worth will not sell itself. You will get referrals, but you need to make sure that you are negotiating properly or you can wind up swamped with work that you aren't charging enough for. Sooo, even if you feel like you have all the work you need, you owe it to yourself to do some sales reading. ;-)
iainduncan
I'm a freelancer in web dev and show biz and have done a lot of sales in that area. Brian Tracey's "Advanced Selling Strategies" is probably the best single book out there for individual one-on-one selling, especially if you also read "How to Win Friends and Influence People" 80% of reviewers on Amazon gave it 5 stars, and the rest 4. That's saying something for a business book!

I would also highly recommend finding good books on negotiation too. Balancing relationship sales with negotiation and estimation is IMHO the hardest and most far-reaching aspect of being a freelance web dev.

Iain Duncan

antiform
If I could choose one book on sales, it would be

Non-Manipulative Selling by Tony Alessandra.

This is a diamond in the rough among sales books. Many other books on sales, at least in the few that I've read and others I've skimmed, seem to be full of subtle and not-so-subtle psychological manipulation that always gave me an uneasy feeling in my gut once the conversation ended. This book is different. However, even if you believe in the "hard sell" philosophy, you should read this, since at the very least, you learn many tips to prevent negotiations from getting hostile.

farout
I have been sales for years - the books mentioned are good not great. If there was one that was my favorite out of the 200+ ones I read, "let's get real or let's not play" by khalsa. It is good for you for several reasons: 1. based on consultative services not product sales 2. the audio is hands down the best. It brought tears to my eyes that I had to learn by hard knocks what he shows you to do. 3. it is greared to setup a win win situation and define precisely the value you are providing at the core of the business.
thehickmans
I'll second a few that have been mentioned already:

* http://blog.startwithalead.com/weblog/ (Brian Carroll's blog) * http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Get-Real-Not-Play/dp/1883219507

you can read more from Mahan Khalsa at: http://www.ninetyfive5.com/default.aspx

I found both of these very helpful in building my understanding of the sales process and for the tools they provide you with. The biggest shift in thinking they provided for me was that selling is about asking questions, finding a connection between what you're offering and what your customer is looking for and then asking for the business. They also showed me that selling is about focusing your activities on the right things to meet your goals, not just spending time "busy" selling.