Presales professionals: sharpen your pencils and brace yourselves for knowledge overload! We’re about to embark on a literary odyssey that will lead you to unprecedented sales prowess and career-defining wins.
Let’s paint a presales picture: Companies that optimize their presales strategy see a five-point boost in conversion rates, a 6% to 13% improvement in revenue growth, and a 10% to 20% shorter sales cycle. How can you reach this presales success? Start with this list!
This updated list is your secret weapon to raise your game and propel you to the top of the presales ladder. These handpicked books contain an arsenal of insights and strategies from the industry’s brightest minds.
Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or looking to start your presales career, these gems will polish your skills, ignite your passion, and prepare you to take on anything your customers, competitors, or collaborators can throw at you.
The Best Presales Books
It’s time to learn from the best of the best. These top presales books were written by industry experts and will help you sharpen your skills, from improving your presentation and communication skills to helping you get into more buyer-centric thinking.
1. Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo
Ted Talks are the new gold standard for presentations, and there’s plenty you can steal from that format for your own presentations. Experienced public speaking coach, Carmine Gallo, broke down hundreds of TED Talks and interviewed popular speakers and top researchers to find what makes these presentations so unique. He discovered nine elements every successful TED Talk has, and now he’s sharing them with you.
- Release Date: March 4, 2014
- Where to Buy: Amazon, Bookshop, or Barnes & Noble
- Why Sales People Love It: Not only does this book help you hone your presentation skills, but it also teaches readers how to truly connect with their audience—a necessary ability for presales professionals.
2. Naked Sales: How Design Thinking Reveals Customer Motives and Drives Revenue by Ashley Welch and Justin Jones
If you’re using traditional selling techniques, you’re leaving a big chunk of money on the table, even if you’re successful. But with a simple shift in perspective from thinking like a sales rep to thinking like a designer, you can rejuvenate your process creating new opportunities and building indestructible customer relationships. Thinking like a designer creates a naturally customer-focused approach that reduces sales cycles and creates more stratified buyers. Stop using Sales Thinking and start using Design Thinking.
- Release Date: September 26, 2017
- Where to Buy: Amazon, Bookshop, or Barnes & Noble
- Why Sales People Love It: This book gives readers the tools to connect with their buyer better by introducing more buyer-centric thinking. As David Lewis, Vice President, Client Management, at Ellie Mae, notes in his review of the book, “If you don’t connect with your customer in a genuine way, you will lose out to someone else.”
3. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
Public opinion will tell you that if you didn’t master something as a child, you’ll never be able to excel in that area later in life. While we can’t all be Tiger Woods, we can still be successful in our chosen fields even if we start much later in life. Range details exactly why those who dabble in many focuses excel in many areas where super-specialized individuals struggle. Having many interests, being unafraid to fail, and keeping yourself open to new experiences is the true key to success. We can’t all be child prodigies, but we can all be lifelong learners.
- Release Date: May 28, 2019
- Where to Buy: Amazon, Bookshop, or Barnes & Noble
- Why Sales People Love It: In a world where specialists are often more celebrated than generalists, this book helps us all reach greatness. Range is a particularly great pick for presales coaches, as it offers them the tools to get the best out of their team of generalists.
4. Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences by Nancy Duarte
Does your audience leave presentations feeling inspired or just feeling tired? Unless you can get your audience to resonate with your message, they’re going to ignore what you have to say. Resonate explains how making a deep connection with your audience is simple if you treat it like a documentary. Documentaries are the perfect format for delivering information in a captivating and persuasive way. Leave behind boring presentations and make your next presentation resonate.
- Release Date: September 28, 2010
- Where to Buy: Amazon, Bookshop, or Barnes & Noble
- Why Sales People Love It: Resonate offers sellers a new perspective on presentations, one that can help them overcome public speaking challenges, build on their communication skills, and, overall, become more effective in their roles. Turn your presales team into storytellers, and you’ll reap the rewards.
5. Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal by Oren Klaff
There’s a science to crafting a perfect pitch. In Pitch Anything, Oren Klaff shares his tried and tested formula for delivering a great pitch every time. Become a pitching master with the latest research in neuroeconomics and the STRONG pitching method. Stop using outdated methods and start using tactics that work.
- Release Date: January 26, 2011
- Where to Buy: Amazon or Bookshop
- Why Sales People Love It: You only have eight seconds to grab your audience’s attention, so your pitch really, really matters. This guide helps presales teams craft a pitch that’s scientifically proven to capture someone’s attention.
6. Digital Body Language by Eric Dhawan
Humans rely on body language for context and understanding, so what do we do now that we’re all online? Communicating through a screen might have added some additional complexity to how we understand each other, but that inherent understanding isn’t lost completely. Digital Body Language breaks down the new social cues that have popped up in our now virtual world. Turn miscommunications into real communication.
- Release Date: May 11, 2021
- Where to Buy: Amazon, Bookshop, or Barnes & Noble
- Why Sales People Love It: Digital selling requires sellers to engage three senses: sight, sound, and feel. And the only way we understand how to target these senses is if we understand our buyer’s digital body language. This guide helps us decode our buyers’ signals to better address their needs and wants.
7. The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
Our culture influences the way we communicate. Americans tend to be overly nice before delivering negative comments while Germans and Dutch are known for being brutally honest and getting right to the point. Knowing someone’s background and how they approach certain situations can help avoid misperceptions and confrontation. The Culture Map provides a tested model for decoding different cultures and having more productive conversations.
- Release Date: May 27, 2014
- Where to Buy: Amazon, Bookshop, or Barnes & Noble
- Why Sales People Love It: Miscommunications can knock a sale off course quickly. This book keeps those sorts of mishaps at bay, allowing presales professionals to essentially become translators, learning to speak the language of their audience all around the world.
8. Think Like Your Customer by Bill Stinnett
To win customers, you have to think like your customer. Bill Stinnett found the biggest complaint he heard from clients was that the people selling to them just didn’t understand their business. Think Like Your Customer breaks down why it’s so critical to understand the inner workings of the industries you sell into and how you can use that information to create a winning strategy.
- Release Date: October 29, 2004
- Where to Buy: Amazon, Bookshop, or Barnes & Noble
- Why Sales People Love It:Customer-centric companies grow their revenue 4% to 8% higher than their competition. Studies show that when you think like your customer, you boost customer retention, loyalty, and confidence.
9. Selling Is Hard. Buying Is Harder: How Buyer Enablement Drives Digital Sales and Shortens the Sales Cycle by Garin Hess
Selling Is Hard. Buying Is Harder. is the definitive work on buyer enablement, a strategy that sees revenue teams give buyers the information and tools they need to decide to make a purchase on their own time and at their own pace. Essentially, your buyer sells themselves on your product. Put buyers in the driver’s seat and help solve today’s problem with overly complex sales cycles.
- Release Date: June 8, 2020
- Where to Buy: Amazon, Bookshop, or Barnes & Noble
- Why Sales People Love It: Nearly 80% of B2B customers say that their last purchase was way too difficult. It’s true that buying has gotten so much harder, which is why presales professionals need this book to help them give buyers what they really want: self-service tools that let them explore at their own pace and unpack how your product solves their particular use case.
10. Ask More: The Power of Questions to Open Doors, Uncover Solutions, and Spark Change by Frank Sesno
The New Solution Selling by Keith M. Eades
It’s not just what you tell your customers—it’s what you ask them. Asking questions will help uncover information about your customers, but only if you ask in a systematic way. Ask More gives you insights into asking the right questions in any situation. With real-world examples from The Gates Foundation, Anderson Cooper, and Uber, you’ll master the art of asking the right questions.
- Release Date: January 10, 2017
- Where to Buy: Amazon, Bookshop, or Barnes & Noble
- Why Sales People Love It: Today’s buyers expect personalized sales interactions—but you can’t personalize toward what you don’t know. Asking more systematic questions helps you learn about your customer’s needs, wants, and use cases, all essential to ensure you’re personalizing their entire product experience.
11. The New Solution Selling by Keith M. Eades
The New Solution Selling is the groundbreaking sequel to Solution Selling. Expanding on the successes of its prequel, you’ll get updated philosophies, tools to increase pipeline, and management systems. This book is applicable to any industry and is performance-focused to help you achieve the best results.
- Release Date: December 5, 2003
- Where to Buy: Amazon, Bookshop, or Barnes & Noble
- Why Sales People Love It: This book makes presales teams more solution-oriented, offering answers to how to solve today’s biggest selling problems. This mindset enables them to help sellers get unstuck during sales cycles and move buyers down the pipeline more efficiently.
12. Lifescale: How to Live a More Creative, Productive, and Happy Life by Brian Solis
Lifescale is all about self-discovery and growth, filled with scientific research and tools to help people overcome distractions and become happier and more productive. Discover techniques, exercises, and thought experiments that help you keep the chaos at bay and learn to embrace each day.
- Release Date: March 6, 2019
- Where to Buy: Amazon, Bookshop, or Barnes & Noble
- Why Sales People Love It: Not all presales books are about, well, sales. Presales is also about giving sellers tools, strategies, and training that help them become better in their roles. This book is a perfect addition to sales training.
13. UNLOCKING PRESALES SUCCESS: The Insight Selling Methodology for Solution Engineers by Sherri A Mazza
Digital selling today doesn’t look like how it did 10 years ago—or perhaps even just two years ago. This book introduces the concept of Insight Selling, allowing sellers to tap into their analytics and expertise to learn to not just sell a product but to provide value to buyers. Learn to navigate changing technologies, identify shifting market trends, and target customer needs.
- Release Date: May 11, 2024
- Where to Buy: Amazon
- Why Sales People Love It: Insight Selling goes beyond traditional selling. It’s not about selling a product as much as it is about selling the “why” of the product. Why was it made, and why is it the right product for you? This type of selling is more impactful and engaging, with 89% of B2B buyers saying that the vendors they decided to buy from provided information that built a business case for their purchase. This book helps presales pros guide their sellers into adopting Insight Selling.
Expand Your Presales Knowledge With The Top Presales Books
Effective presales strategies boost everything from revenue to seller retention to customer loyalty. With these books, you’ll learn how the pros find presales success, giving you the insider knowledge you need to drive that success in your own company.
You might notice that many of these books talk about learning to think like a buyer. If we could impart one additional tip regarding presales, it would be this: buyer enablement should always be at the core of your presales strategy. In a world of increasingly more complex buying journeys, buyer enablement gives your customers everything they need to make it simple.
That drive is at the heart of Consensus. Consensus is the world’s first Product Experience Platform, offering buyer enablement tools that give your customers everything they need to have a stress-free buying, customer, and overall product experience.
Learn how Consensus can help you boost your presales buyer enablement.