The 10 B2B Sales Books to Improve Your Selling Skills in 2022

Books improve our knowledge and inspire us to learn new skills. 

Sales is a skill that sales development reps need to learn, develop and implement into practical scenarios to fulfill their goals. Believe it or not, some major B2B sales books are out there to help you sharpen your sales skills and teach you stellar selling strategies. 

We have created a list of 10 outstanding B2B sales books for sales professionals to start and upgrade their selling journey. Without further ado, let’s get started. 

1. The Only Sales Guide You'll Ever Need by Anthony Iannarino

Anthony Iannarino, the author of “The Only Sales Guide You'll Ever Need” is a bestselling writer and blogger. The popular blog “The Sales Blog” is owned by Lannarino, where he talks about sales techniques and training sessions. 

Coming from such a sensation, you can expect some of the best tips and strategies in this sales book. It includes 25 sales lessons that can help the reps to recover from the fear of selling and competition. This book inspires the sales development executives to discover buyers’ needs from the core and plan innovative sales strategies. 

Key Insights 

• Developing self-discipline to achieve sales success 
• Tracking personal growth regularly 
• Mixing knowledge, experience, and imagination to become a resourceful sales rep
• Using storytelling to build a relationship with customers

Goodreads rating - 4.23 

Review excerpt - “ This is a great tune-up on business fundamentals. You cannot disagree with what he has laid out.” 

2. To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink 

In B2B sales, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy. Sales development reps need a personalized sales pitch that is unique and meets the prospect's requirements. Suppose you are struggling with the latest B2B selling practices. In that case, You must read this book where Daniel Pink offers a fresh perspective on B2B selling and how business development executives can develop a sales mindset. 

Key Insights 

• The art and science of B2B selling 
• Six major elements of a perfect elevator pitch 
• Ways to make your core messaging more persuasive 

Goodreads rating - 3.88 

Review excerpt - “ Pink's research and writing style make this an incredibly informative, dare I say groundbreaking, text. I'm not big on sales books, but this one is just remarkable. Get it. Read it. And read it again” 

3. The Sales Development Playbook by Trish Bertuzzi 

The next sales book on our list is - Sales Development Playbook by Trish Bertuzzi. This book highlights various sales growth strategies. It teaches the sales development reps new practices to build their sales pipeline and enhance the existing ones. 

Key Insights 

• Focuses on the six key sections of sales including hiring, retention, specialization, strategy, execution, and leadership.  
• Sales strategy frameworks to help sales teams adapt to their target market 
• Creating buyer-based messaging for outreach initiatives 

Goodreads rating - 4.23

Review Excerpt - “This is the best book about Sales Development in the market! It also has chapters on how to execute sales development, but the most important part for me was how to build a team and a great process to have SDRs in your company. A must read if you have a B2B company!” 

4. Inbound Selling by Brian Signorelli

Inbound marketing is one of the toughest yet most effective selling techniques. It empowers the buyers and shows that they don’t need the assistance of sales reps to choose the required products. Inbound marketing is about creating the power of content marketing to nurture relationships with prospects and simplify their evaluation process. In this B2B sales book, Brian Signorelli teaches the basics of inbound selling and a step-by-step framework to approach this concept. 

Key Insights 

• Executing the sales playbook in the era of inbound marketing 
• Ways to become an inbound seller 
• Inbound seller vs. inbound marketer - the differences 
• The role of leadership in the inbound sales transformation  

Goodreads rating - 3.66

Review Excerpt - “To sell the way people want to buy, you need to do inbound selling!

Brian has written a remarkable resource that will allow you to transform your sales organization! In the 21st century, your business can't do without this handbook!” 

5. Driving Demand by Carlos Hidalgo 

Marketing has gone through rapid changes in the last two decades. Author Carlos Hidalgo of this B2B sales book highlights the rapid transformation in B2B sales and marketing. He also shares some easy hacks to establish a real connection with modern buyers. 

Key Insights 

• A roadmap for B2B companies to generate more demands for their services 
• Real-life B2B selling examples and case studies 
• Latest reports on industry trends 
• Suggestions on organizational models to boost sales success 

Goodreads rating - 3.79

Review Excerpt - “Great demand generation strategy book.

Addresses the benefits and challenges of integrating demand generation strategy into your company. It includes solutions in communicating with stakeholders, the necessary workflows, and what it takes to pull together a working Demand Generation system. Especially find the list of metrics per journey stage to be helpful.” 

6. The Psychology of Selling by Brian Tracy 

Selling is all about understanding the psychology of the buyers. This B2B sales book by Brian Tracy points out the psychological principles of selling to help the business development executives in sales success. 

Key Insights 

• Methods and strategies to achieve a faster sales process 
• Author’s experiments and tests to ensure sales success 
• B2B sales myths and strategies to outgrow those myths with appropriate techniques 

Goodreads rating - 4.12

Review Excerpt - “Amazing book! Tracy helped me embrace the fact that I am a salesman, and to not be ashamed of it. He gives great pointers on how we can be in the top 1%, which I have implemented and found great success in doing so. I think that every salesman should read this book!” 

7. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

The next B2B sales book on our list was published in 1936. Strangely, this book is still relevant for sales teams. Sales reps can use this sales book to learn classic psychological lessons and apply them to improve their sales pitches. This book motivates the sales reps to connect with the prospects to create effective outcomes. 

Key Insights 

• Three principles to change professional interactions 
• Six effective ways to grab prospects’ attention 
• Brief examples of executing the sales strategies 

Goodreads rating - 4.08

Review Excerpt - “I love the book for its writing style. The storytelling is top-notch and it supports the argument very well. Personally I think the principles are a little dated. Some of them still hold, though.” 

8. The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge

This B2B sales book is a must-read for those Sales teams and managers who are trying to boost ROI through distinct selling techniques. The author of this book, Mark Roberge, is an Ex HubSpot CRO who puts together the selling strategies to build a multi-million business in this sales book. 

Key Insights 

• Replacing conventional selling techniques with data-backed, metrics-driven sales strategies 
• An action plan to replicate the selling success of top brands 
• Latest selling hacks to win in today’s digital world 

Goodreads rating - 4.28

Review Excerpt - “This is a must read book for any sales organization, specially startups and B2B orgs. If you want to know and understand the science of sales, please read this book by the Sales VP of HubSpot(a marketing automation SaaS solution).” 

9. The Sales Magnet by Kendra Lee 

B2B sales reps often consider cold calling synonymous with sales. However, B2B selling is much more than cold outreach. Author Kendra Lee explains in this B2B sales book how sales reps should adapt to changing techniques of B2B sales to attract the key decision-makers. 

Key Insights 

• Converting prospects into customers without cold calling 
• Creating demands in B2B industry with innovative techniques 
• Driving sales through building a personal connection with prospects 
• Useful digital approaches to distinguish between high-intent and low-intent prospects 

Goodreads rating - 3.39

Review Excerpt - “Selling without cold calling has always been the holy grail for sales people. No one likes to pick up the phone and get hung up on and the person on the other end doesn't liked to be pitched either. Read Kendra Lee's insightful and actionable book and forget about ever making a cold call again. Her case studies, free supporting toolkit and easy to follow strategies will work for all personality types in all types of sales situations. I love that she doesn't want you to throw away what works for you but rather she shows how by providing value, building relationships and making small shifts you can have clients coming to you. Just implementing one of her strategies can make a difference in the bottom line.” 

10. Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount 

Prospecting is one of the most critical yet tricky aspects of B2B lead generation. Many B2B sales teams and even experienced sales managers dread this. In this B2B sales book, author Jeb Blount explains that consistent prospecting is the key to successful lead generation. The author suggests sales teams target multiple prospecting channels simultaneously to ensure that they don’t miss out on any opportunities. 

Key Insights 

• A step-by-step approach to real-life B2B prospecting 
• Methods to maintain a full sales pipeline 
• 5C’s of social selling 
• A 4-step email prospecting framework 

Goodreads rating - 4.29

Review Excerpt - “Blount provides a comprehensive approach to what works (and doesn't) in prospecting today. He provides specific examples for call and voice mails, breaking them down sentence by sentence, explaining why you should use certain words and phrases. Some may conclude that the information is too simplistic or that there's nothing new--but Blount's breezy style, peppered with his personal examples and case studies, provide a quick overview of prospecting that can help the novice and experienced pro alike.” 

Seamless B2B selling with Salesken 

Now that you have gone through this list of B2B sales books, what’s the next step? 

Well, the next step is the implementation of the sales tactics mentioned in these books. A great tool that helps you in many ways during your implementation is- SALESKEN. 

It helps sales managers to: 

• Coach the sales reps with targeted insights into their selling process 
• Create personalized, automated sales playbooks for sales success 
• Analyze call recordings to identify improvement areas for each sales rep 

Want to know further? Book a demo today!