Survey Results: 15 Most Recommended Sales Books of All Time

Survey Results: 15 Most Recommended Sales Books of All Time

At Scaling Sales community, we surveyed 234 salespeople about which sales books they most recommended. Here are the rankings:

 

RANK #1 SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham.

With an entertaining tone, Rackham explains why traditional sales models don't work. He explains the successful SPIN strategy and uses real-world examples and case studies. 

 

RANK #2 How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Carnegie highlights the use of other's ego against your charm, appreciation and personality.

 

RANK #3 Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson

Based on survey, it says that every sales rep falls into one of five distinct profiles, of which 'the Challenger' always delivers high performance.

 

RANK #4 Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler

Learn the outbound sales process that helped add $100 million in recurring revenue to Salesforce, almost doubling their growth, with zero cold calls.

 

RANK #5 To Sell is Human by Daniel H. Pink

Book has a way to be a best salesperson, the six ways to pitch, the three rules for understanding others, the five frames that can make your message clearer, and more.

 

RANK #6 The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer

It's short, sweet, and to the point. It's packed with answers that people are searching for in order to help them make sales for the moment.

 

RANK #7 Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff

Applying the findings in the field of neuroeconomics, while sharing stories of his method in action, Klaff describes how the brain makes decisions and responds to pitches. 

 

RANK #8 Go-Givers Sell More by Bob Burg, John David Mann

Cultivate a trusting relationship and focus exclusively on creating value for the other person, say the authors, and great results will follow by itself.

 

RANK #9 Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini

The classic book on persuasion, explains the psychology of why people say ""yes""€”and how to apply these understandings. 

 

RANK #10 Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes

The Ultimate Sales Machine shows you how to tune up virtually every part of your business by spending just an hour per week on each impact area you want to improve

 

RANK #11 How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger

Bettger shares instructive anecdotes and guidelines on how to develop the style, spirit, and presence of a winning salesperson.

 

RANK #12 How to master the art of selling by Tom Hopkins

Tom educates on how to succeed in sales, including new information on using the latest research techniques and using e-mail and online resources.

 

RANK #13 Selling 101 by Zig Ziglar

Here in a short, compact and concise format is the basics of how to persuade more people more effectively, more ethically, and more often.

 

RANK #14 Mastery by Robert Greene

By analyzing the lives of masters such as Charles Darwin, Einstein, and Leonard da Vinci, Greene debunks many myths and distils the wisdom to reveal the secret to greatness.

 

RANK #15 Cold Calling Techniques by Stephan Schiffman

Cold Calling Techniques (That Really Work!), provides you with all of the right tools for turning prospects into meetings, and meetings into big sales. 

 

 

Tell us in the comment below if your favorite book is missing out, or you think you agree/don't agree with few of the rankings.


    • Sticky Posts

    • As Sales Person, Here are my New Year Resolutions. What are Yours?

      Being a salesperson, I keep learning from my mistakes and have noted a few changes that I need to make in my approach. I take these resolutions going into 2021, hoping to keep it going for as long as possible :) 1. I will not say "Yes, our product has
    • Once Upon a Sales Meeting!

      It was an awkward silence in the meeting room "Uproar." John Kowalski, the new sales manager, was not happy with the team's performance. After scribbling something in the notepad, he decided to break the silence, John: I cannot believe you guys have been working like this. No reports, delusional forecasting, random targets, and no eye on the ball. Kevin: We followed Richard's orders. John: Well, Richard is not here anymore, is he? John walked up to the whiteboard, and wrote in big bold letters: "TARGET
      • Recent Topics

      • Use Zoho Books to bill for work done in Zoho Desk??

        I'm trying to see if something is possible (and if yes, how). We use Zoho One to manage our business. We have a lot of clients that will put in a ticket (via portal) to have work done. Out techs will pick up the ticket, do the work, and then log the time
      • Get Cliq Meetings in my O365 calendar

        Hi, we are currently evaluating to replace the Teams Messaging and Meetings with Cliq. We currently still have all our email and calendars in O365. What i want to achieve is, to create a (ZOHO) meeting from Cliq and have this meeting added to my Outlook/O365
      • Issue with Zoho Help Portal – Tickets Missing or Not Answered

        Hi, How are you? I think there may be an issue with the Zoho Help Portal. I opened a few tickets directly in the help portal a some time ago but never received any response I also opened ticket 148356451 by email. I did receive a reply to it, but the
      • DUNS & Bradstreet and Credit risk monitoring integration with Zoho books

        Small businesses not being paid by bigger clients and clients of all sizes is a huge problem. It will be nice if Zoho develops integration with DUNS & Bradstreet(D&B) and Credit risk monitoring integration with Zoho books. That have small businesses can
      • Zoho Forms - Form Rules based on attachment fields

        Many businesses use forms to collect documents and images from customers. In many cases, you may want to trigger a notification or other automation based on whether or not an attachment was added. I've noticed that attachment fields do not appear in Rules
      • Add multiple users to a task

        When I´m assigning a task it is almost always related to more than one person. Practical situation: When a client request some improvement the related department opens the task with the situation and people related to it as the client itself, the salesman
      • Can't open draft email for editing

        Last night I started composing an email and I let it save in drafts. This morning I want to continue working on the email. It is in my Drafts folder but it will not open. The only option there is to delete it. This is not the first time it has happened. On previous occasions I have just deleted the draft and started afresh, but I really want this one back. Windows 10 with Pale Moon 28.10.0 browser.
      • Open filtered deals from campaign

        Do you think a feature like this would be feasible? Say you are seeing campaign "XYZ" in CRM. The campaign has a related list of deals. If you want to see the related deals in a deal view, you should navigate to the Deals module, open the campaign filter,
      • Change scheduling emails time

        When sending an individual email there is a great feature to schedule them to send later. I could only use the one time that is suggested. Is there a way to select another time? Regards, Glenn
      • Zoho CRM: how can I control which contacts to sync with Outlook?

        I was just playing around syncing contacts from Zoho to MS Outlook (MS365 account.) The problem is our firm has hundreds of thousands of contacts and I don't want to bury my contacts list in outlook. Any help with this is greatly appreciated.
      • How to overcome limitations in meetings

        As a company, one of our deliverables is a meeting between two other companies, where we act as facilitators. So, if we recorded this meeting  in Zoho CRM, it should be connected to 2 accounts, 2 contacts, and 1 campaign (a campaign, in our use, is the
      • Different MRP / Pricing for same product but different batches

        We often face the following situations where MRP of a particular product changes on every purchase and hence we have to charge the customer accordingly. This can't be solved by Batch tracking as of now so far as I understand Zoho. How do you manage it as of now? 
      • Add a 'Log a Call' link to three dot icon in Canvas

        Hi, There's a three dot element when creating a canvas called 'More'. I would like to modify this to add a link that says 'Log a Call' in order to quickly record the details of a cellphone call. I'd also like this to be a simple 'contact' selection and
      • Syncing Zoho Forms with Bigin - Embedding issue?

        Hello everyone, I created a Zoho Form for a page on my GoDaddy website to collect leads, which then transfers the data to Bigin. However, I'm facing an issue where it doesn't seem to work properly. I've integrated Zoho Forms with Bigin and tried embedding
      • Can not add fields to a Section

        I feel like I'm missing something obvious: I can add new Sections to my form but I can not add fields to the Sections. I've tried fields already on the form as well as dragging and dropping new fields into the Section but nothing will go into it. What
      • Record Logged in User while using CRM lookup field

        Is it possible, while using the Zoho CRM lookup field, to automatically use the user account logged into Zoho CRM in a hidden field? I was hoping to add employee accounts to my current plan. But would like a record on the Form submission of who submitted
      • Form Rules for Suburb Categories to alternate landing pages or Making a Fields Contents ALL CAPS

        I need to send differentform submissions to two to three different thank-you URLs (for Meta/Google pixels) depending on which suburb a user selects in a form. I have ~400 suburbs split into two categories (A and B, based on business value). Current challenges:
      • Collaps Notes

        There are times when long/large notes are added to a record i.e. Accounts or Deals etc. Currently, the full note is displayed in the notes related list section. It would be great if by default only 5 to 10 rows of the note are displayed when the note
      • Zoho Down

        I have a drop in my Zoho One services.
      • Runing RPA Agents on Headless Windows 11 Machines

        Has anyone tried this? Anything to be aware of regarding screen resolution?
      • Problem for EU users connecting Zoho CRM through Google Ads for Enhanced conversions

        Has anyone else experienced this problem when trying to connect Zoho CRM through Google Ads interface to setup enhanced conversions? Did you guys get it fixed somehow? The Problem: The current Google Ads integration is hardcoded to use Zoho's US authentication
      • Why am I getting event Pop-up Notification for events that have been cancelled?

        Why is Calendar Notification still popping up for events that have been cancelled or changed? Each time events are cancelled or changed, I have observed that I am still getting notifications for them. Below is a sample pop-up notification for one of the
      • Whatsapp Limitation Questions

        Good day, I would like to find out about the functionality or possibility of all the below points within the Zoho/WhatsApp integration. Will WhatsApp buttons ever be possible in the future? Will WhatsApp Re-directs to different users be possible based
      • Create a draft in reply to an email via Emails API

        Hi, I’d like to use the outgoing webhook to automatically create a draft reply to incoming mail. How can I use the Emails API to create a draft reply that is linked to an existing email thread? I couldn’t find the relevant method in the documentation.
      • India Tech Support

        Is there no phone tech support number for India? And no chat facility either?
      • Billing Management: #1 Billing a Universal Business Routine

        Hello, As the saying goes, "Do the hardest job first." We started with the complex subject of finance and revenue management, which is considered the backbone of any business. Now, let's shift our focus and take a deep dive into this Billing Management,
      • Show/ hide specific field based on user

        Can someone please help me with a client script to achieve the following? I've already tried a couple of different scripts I've found on here (updating to match my details etc...) but none of them seem to work. No errors flagged in the codes, it just
      • What is a a valid JavaScript Domain URI when creating a client-based application using the Zoho API console?

        No idea what this is. Can't see what it is explained anywhere.
      • 5名限定 課題解決型ワークショップイベント Zoho ワークアウト開催のお知らせ (9/25)

        ユーザーの皆さま、こんにちは。Zoho ユーザーコミュニティチームの藤澤です。 9月開催のZoho ワークアウトについてお知らせします。 今回はZoomにて、オンライン開催します。 諸事情につき、今月の開催回は中止となりました。 次回は10/31(金)14時からの開催を予定しています。 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Zoho ワークアウトとは? Zoho ユーザー同士で交流しながら、サービスに関する疑問や不明点の解消を目的とした「Zoho ワークアウト」を開催します。 Zoho
      • Zoho Calendar not syncing correctly with personal Google Calendar

        Coming to this forum as Zoho Calendar support team is not responding, any more. For the past 8 weeks, I have been having an issue with Zoho Calendar not syncing with my personal Google Calendar correctly. I subscribed to Zoho Calendar iCal in my personal
      • Customer Parent Account or Sub-Customer Account

        Some of clients as they have 50 to 300 branches, they required separate account statement with outlet name and number; which means we have to open new account for each branch individually. However, the main issue is that, when they make a payment, they
      • need a packing list feature

        In our business, goods listed on an invoice are packed in separate boxes and shipped off. for e.g. an invoice may have 10 items. each item could then be packed in different boxes depending on qty of each item. this packing list is as important as the invoice for purposes of shipping documents.  Request you to add this feature asap.
      • Workdrive 5.0 / API Documentation Workflows

        Hi Zoho, When will the API documentation of the workflows be published? We are interested in using it to trigger manual workflows from an external application. Greetings, Justin
      • How to keep track of bags, cans, drums of inventory?

        We buy and sell products that are packaged in bags 🛍️, cans🥫, drums🛢️, etc. with batch numbers. When we get a shipment of one of the products, how do we track we received (say) 10 cans each of 5L of a product and maybe we received 10 cans of another
      • Zoho Error: This Operation has been restricted. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com for further details

        Hello There, l tried to verify my domain (florindagoreti.com.br) and its shows this error: This Operation has been restricted. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com for further details. Screenshot Given Below -  please check what went wrong. Thanks
      • How many ZOHO-Sites does the ZOHO-One Suite allow for?

        The free version of ZOHO-Sites allows for two sites, but it seems that the professional version (which is included in the ZOHO-One Suite) only allows for two websites. Is that correct? How many sites can I have within one ZOHO-One account?
      • Webhook from Zobot to Zoho Flow fails

        I'm trying to connect from zobot to zoho flow. When testing in zflow, I am receiving all entered data from the connector correctly. The SalesIQ connector's "outputreaction" is {} (is this normal or is there a problem?). But as soon as I try my chat bot
      • Transition from Sole Proprietorship to GmbH (Limited Liability Company) – Best Approach in Zoho Books / Zoho One

        Hello everyone, I am currently operating under a Zoho One plan with a sole proprietorship in Switzerland. As of January 1st, 2026, I will be incorporating a new legal entity – a GmbH (Swiss equivalent of a Limited Liability Company). While the business
      • Best way to display complex Bookings Consultation Descriptions on Zoho Site?

        I am a new user so apologies if this has been asked before. I couldn't find any answers in the forum. We offer 18 complex Consultations to our subscribers. Our current platform lets me put detail on these Consultations thoroughly (200-300 words) during
      • DKIM cannot be enabled for the domain as no verified default selector present

        Hi Support Team, For Domain DKIM record trying to enable status. but showing error "DKIM cannot be enabled for the domain as no verified default selector present" So, please resolve the issue. Thank you.
      • Next Page