Looking for the best sales management books? We’ve got you covered.
Managers must continue learning new techniques, best practices and new ways to push their teams to achieve exceptional results. The best sales management books help new and seasoned managers avoid reinventing the wheel.
You can learn a lot from others in the industry, including:
- Best practices
- What to do and not to do
- Insights into different industries
Educating yourself on new management techniques or approaches can elevate your team and sales.
What Are Sales Management Books?
Sales management books provide an inside look into the daily aspects of a sales manager’s life, their techniques, approaches and the way that they solve problems. Each book is different, but they share:
- Real-life results
- Real-life approaches
You can avoid many of the hiccups that sales managers make along the way by learning from others. Books provide the experience and wisdom of others in the industry.
Why You Should Read Sales Management Books
You’ve made it to sales manager: why worry about reading the best sales management books? Industries evolve and change. You can come into the position at the forefront of the industry, but if you fail to adapt, you’ll quickly find that your team will struggle.
Managers, like the sales force under them, must stay on top of the latest industry trends, developments and approaches. You never want your knowledge to become stale.
Books can help you learn, optimize or adjust the way that you:
- Build a culture of top performers
- Create a sense of purpose in the workplace
- Energize teams to push their limits
- Manage the talent that you have
- Assign the right individuals to the correct roles
- Replace underperformers
- Lead sales meetings
- Coach and train salespeople
- Set standards
- Much more
Sales managers have a lot on their plates, and they’re under constant pressure to improve sales, fill pipelines and keep revenue growing. Books can help you remain a valuable asset to a company and even correct some of the weaknesses that you notice within your skillset.
It’s estimated that business leaders read 4+ books a month. Debate on their reading habits remains, but these individuals often try to:
- Scan through books to find meaningful insights about their weaknesses
- Spend 45+ minutes a day reading something and growing
- Drawing parallels in the book to their own business or traits
You can be confident that some of the top sales managers in the world are following this same blueprint to success in their careers.
The Best Sales Management Books To Read
If you want to begin reading through the best sales management books, start with the list of books below.
1. Sales Management Simplified
Mike Weinberg’s Sales Management Simplified is one of the timeless sales management books that are filled with insightful information that pushes you to take action today. Weinberg’s passion for helping sales teams and executives has led him to write multiple bestsellers in the sales industry.
The B2B sales consultant and speaker offers valuable insights into:
- Learning how to avoid distractions and tasks that are unproductive
- How managers must break free from the habits that developed as a salesperson
- How to create the right environment, based on team roles, to promote success
- Training staff and why it’s up to the manager to be the training lead
- Creating a sales culture in the company that extends to all levels of the workforce
You’ll also learn about the four “R’s,” how to hold meetings that are actually effective and create clear goals.
Sales managers can fall into a rut. Sales goals start to pass them by and then it’s an uphill battle to get back on track. The knowledge found within Sales Management Simplified empowers sales leadership to use simple frameworks to find success in their positions.
You’ll find that Weinburg uses a writing style that is easy to understand, follow and implement. He adds a lot of truth in the book that is hard for leadership to swallow, but if you want to be serious and grow as a leader, this is the priceless information that will allow you to reach your goals.
Sales managers will find actionable items in the book’s pages, but you’ll need to:
- Dissect a lot of the “gems” for yourself
- Read through quite a few personal stories
- Deal with some repetitiveness between chapters
If you feel like you’ve been coasting through your position or just haven’t been able to meet your own or the business’s goals, you’ll learn how to deliver better results and stop going through the motions.
You can read the full summary here.
2. The Qualified Sales Leader
by John McMahon
John McMahon penned The Qualified Sales Leader, and as someone who has been a CRO five times, people listen to his advice. He has a wealth of information to share with sales leaders, and his goals for the book were clear:
- Create practical solutions
- Solve real-life issues in sales
The 346-page book is filled with practical advice that sales leaders across industries have leveraged – especially in enterprise software sales.
ICs and sales leadership will take a lot away from this book, including:
- Failing to identify your ideal customer will lead to failure
- Honest accounts in the industry and how to handle them
- What CEOs need to do to help the sales force
- What steps to take when the sales process you have doesn’t scale well with your business
- The importance of training your sales team
- Prioritization of key tasks to help reach sales goals
- So much more
Sales managers that feel like they’re struggling to meet sales goals and are falling off track will find that The Qualified Sales Leader will help get them back on track. A lot of great information about self-awareness and changing your mindset is presented in the book to help you get the best out of yourself.
Leaders walk away from the book with a better understanding of how to manage and increase their performance and control within the sales team. This isn’t your “boilerplate” sales book and reads more like a how-to guide that will help you be an effective sales leader.
You can read the full summary here.
3. Cracking the Sales Management Code
by Jason Jordan and Michelle Vazzana
Cracking the Sales Management Code is a practical guide to overcoming challenges as a sales manager. It focuses specifically on the three fundamental components of sales success: Management, Metrics and Methodology.
The book covers five essential sales processes and how to manage them to achieve your goals. The authors also provide guidance on how to identify which processes are needed to achieve your own strategic objectives.
Sales managers will find the real-world examples of frameworks to be most useful. You’ll also learn:
- How to change the behaviors of your sales force
- How to avoid common pitfalls
- Maximize the benefits of CRMs by defining 3 levels of metrics: those that you can influence, those that you can manage, and those that you can only aspire to change
- How to prioritize sales objectives
- How to choose the right processes for your sales team
Cracking the Sales Management Code is an excellent resource for sales managers of all experience levels and industries. The focus on metrics and reporting is especially helpful in today’s digital world.
Even though this book was published more than a decade ago, it remains a relevant resource and valuable source of knowledge and insight for sales managers.
Managers will find practical tips and frameworks that they can apply right away to start driving results.
You can read the full summary here.
4. More Than a Number: The Modern VP Sales Playbook
by Scott Leese
More Than a Number: The Modern VP Sales Playbook was written by Scott Leese, a seasoned VP Sales. Leese has a reputation for being an expert sales leader and has helped many startups scale their sales teams.
In this book, Leese lends his expertise to help you work your way up to VP Sales, but even those who are already in this role can learn a lot from this book.
Leese covers:
- How directors can prepare for the next role
- How Sales VPs can excel in their roles
- How Founders/CEOs can empower their Sales VPs for growth
There’s a little something for everyone in this book. Leese leans on his decades of experience and knowledge to share effective strategies for driving growth.
Ultimately, that’s the job of sales management – to propel growth.
Busy sales managers will appreciate that this book is just a little over 100 pages. Leese is concise and to the point, allowing you to take away key points from each reading session.
Sales managers will find lots of practical tips from this book. Leese also shares his stance on sales methodologies, which can help managers think outside the box and see things from a different perspective.
You can read the full summary here.
5. The Ultimate Sales Training Success Guide
The Ultimate Sales Training Success Guide will serve as your guidebook for improving your sales training. The book provides an 8-step roadmap for transferring your knowledge into your training sessions to quickly bring your team up to speed.
Training is a part of the job when you’re a sales leader. Finding new and innovative ways to enhance your training and its effectiveness can help your team move forward more quickly and start making sales.
In The Ultimate Sales Training Success Guide, author Miranda Martin covers:
- Effective and strategic methods for improving learning retention rates
- Pitfalls to avoid
- How to provide constructive feedback
The frameworks provided by the author have helped many sales managers provide more effective training. Well-trained employees will do their jobs with greater confidence, use the best strategies for closing sales and will know how to approach the challenges they face.
Training helps foster autonomy, which allows you, as a sales leader, to stay focused on other core tasks.
For many sales managers, this book has been an invaluable resource that they’ve turned to time and time again throughout their careers.
The Ultimate Sales Training Success Guide is a book that should be on every sales manager’s list. The author has an impressive track record of success and has mastered the art of training.
You can read the full summary here.
The Benefits of Reading Sales Management Books
Sales management is a complex role, and it often requires you to wear many different hats. For this reason, mastering the art of sales management is no easy feat. Others who have been in your shoes can offer valuable knowledge and lessons that you can use to avoid making costly mistakes.
This is just one of the many benefits of reading sales management books. Others include:
There is Always Something New to Learn
Even the most experienced and successful sales managers know that there is always something new to learn.
Someone out there has a different perspective or different approach that you never considered. Another sales manager has faced situations you haven’t dealt with yet and can offer invaluable insight into how to handle them.
Someone else may have a process or workflow that will save you loads of time.
There is always something to learn from other people, and this is one of the primary benefits of reading sales management books.
Reading Will Inspire Your Creativity
Sales management books may not be as fascinating as fictional tales, but they can still inspire your creativity.
Reading stories of how other managers effectively handled a situation or about their philosophies on management can spark innovation and help you find creative ways to approach your own role as a leader.
Readers also tend to have more of an open mind and think on a deeper level, which may help you find creative solutions to problems.
Nurturing your creative mind provides many benefits in the workplace.
Creativity can help you:
- Think outside of the box
- Find innovative ways to organize your workflow
- Figure out how to maximize your time and resources
Reading sales management books will inspire you to take new directions and find unique ways to solve problems.
Reading Can Foster Empathy
Successful managers are empathetic. They can see things from different perspectives to better understand their team and each person’s point of view.
Reading can expose you to different situations, approaches and ways of thinking. It can help you become more open-minded and improve your understanding of others.
Ultimately, when you become more empathetic, you have a much easier time working with others.
At the end of the day, sales managers are still managers. It’s your job to lead your team, and you’ll have a much easier time doing that if you can understand other people’s perspectives.
Reading Can Improve Your Communication Skills
Reading sales management books can improve your verbal intelligence, making you a better communicator and leader.
Reading as a whole can help improve your:
- Vocabulary
- Use of special expressions
- Confidence while speaking
- Ability to articulate thoughts and ideas
Sales leaders must have excellent communication skills, and reading can help hone yours.
Conclusion
Reading sales management books comes with many benefits and can help you become a better leader. The five books on this list are highly praised by leaders in sales management. Add them to your must-read list to start improving your leadership skills and methodologies.
