Books on Persuading Clients to Use Your Services   Persuasion - Turning Interest into Commitment   Sales and Selling Professional Services Let's Get Real - Mahan Khalsa - An exceptional book that puts selling in the right context - win/win. It's a great book for consulting and other service professionals because it's primarily about complex, consultative sales. No gimmicky closing techniques, but approaches for building solid relationships. A good read and also very well designed. If you just don't think of yourself as a salesperson and even hate the idea of selling, this book is for you. You'll never view selling quite the same way again. You'll see it as a process of "helping clients succeed." Highly recommended. Non-Manipulative Selling - Alessandra & Wexler - This is great book about selling professionally. It takes all the hype out of selling and explains a powerful approach to making the sales process effective and non-manipulative. A great book, especially for those scared of or turned off to sales. Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive - Harvey Mackay - Mackay's first book is great. Lots of wonderful and humorous stories on selling and networking. In this book he reveals the famous "Mackay 66" system for keeping track of prospects and clients. A real eye-opener. Another great one is : Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt. The New Conceptual Selling - Miller & Heiman - A very good, very thorough book on the selling process. Removes a lot of the mystery about selling and gives a deeper understanding of what is going on with the buyer and the whole process in general. Excellent. Their book The New Strategic Selling is also a perennial business best seller with more focus on identifying the buyer in a corporation. Somewhat more complex. Selling to Vito - Anthony Parinello - This is a unique book. Parinello lays out a very exacting process for selling to VITO - the Very Important Top Officer. He gives blow-by-blow how-tos on everything from sending an initial letter to following up to closing the deal. A fascinating and powerful book that everyone would read. The Power to Get In - A step-by Step System to Get in Anyone's Door So You Have the Chance to Make the Sale...Get the Job...Present Your Ideas. Using his "Circle of Leverage System" Boylan explains how anyone with something to present, can identify who needs to get the message or information and how to get past personnel, executive secretaries, or other bureaucratic devices in the way. A real hands-on guide, and a step up from Parinello's "Selling to Vito." 203 Ways to Be Supremely Successful in the New World of Selling - John Graham - The author of Magnet Marketing brings the same keen insight and understanding to the sales process as he did with the marketing process. John Graham is a sophisticated thinker and strategist. You'll be able to use the ideas in this book to make more sales. I'll Get Back to You - Robert Shook & Eric Yaverbaum - A terrific little book on how to get people to return your calls and other helpful sales tips. If you've been caught in "voice mail hell" and never get calls returned, this book offers 105 very useful tips, many of them by famous people. Just one tip could get you in for that all-important appointment. The Zen of Selling - Stan Adler - One of the most charming and insightful little sales books I've ever read. It's a series of 17 wise stories about various sales principles. All are written with wit, insight and wisdom. A book that's worth reading and reading. But it's not hard because it's a small but potent volume. Sales Dragon - John Scevola - This is a very different kind of sales book. Not about techniques, systems or even sales stories, it includes over 2,000 aphorisms about life, success and selling - many based on ancient Chinese wisdom. Something to keep by your desk and dip into a page or two at a time.   Mindworks : Unlock the Promise Within : Nlp Tools for Building a Better Life - Anne Linden - Don't be put off that this is an NLP book. It's primarily a book about communication and it presents the material in an easy-to-follow style with great examples and illuminating insights. If you need to tune into your prospects and clients to better understand their motivations, this is the book. Stop Selling - Start Partnering - Larry Wilson - This book will help you to stop seeing selling as a collection of techniques and start to see it as a long-term relationship. Larry Wilson looks at the deeper side of selling and will help you questions your assumptions about what it means to attract and keep clients. The One Minute Salesperson - Spencer Johnson and Larry Wilson - This is a little gem of a selling book that distills some of the most important selling concepts in the world into just over 100 pages. Emphasizes the principle that you can get whatever you want if you help others get what they want. A great selling book to start with - and keep referring to for the rest of your career. Personal Selling Strategies for Consultants and Professionals - Richard K. Carlson - I like this book for several reasons. One is that it's very specifically targeted to consultants and professionals. It's also quite low-key and not what you'd expect in a sales book. It's based on things that really work in the real world. It helps you understand why clients buy and all the things that you can do to move the sale forward. Highly recommended. (currently out of print) The Consultants Calling - Geoffrey Bellman - Not really a book about selling services, this book on the consulting profession nevertheless includes one of the most insightful chapters on marketing and selling consulting services that I've ever read. His approach is very understated but grounded in principles that really work. Sales and Persuasion Psychology Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion - Robert Cialdini - Not technically a marketing sales or marketing book, this may still be one of the most valuable books you can buy on selling. It outlines in great detail exactly how persuasion works. It is easy to apply these concepts to your business to increase response to your marketing, close more sales and gain customer loyalty. The fun part of this book is the brilliant insight into human behavior that are backed up by solid scientific evidence. For instance did you know it is a better strategy to first offer a high priced service instead of a low priced one? You'll get more customers. This book explains this and many other fascinating aspects to selling and marketing. The Tipping Point - Malcom Gladwell - Another fascinating book on how ideas take hold and spread. Similar to the concept of memes, Gladwell uses the "viral model" of ideas rapidly taking hold of a culture. I really enjoyed it for it's exceptional stories and illustrations demonstrating how this phenomenon works. Excellently researched, Gladwell uses ideas as diverse as Paul Revere and Hush Puppies to make his point. Fun to read and very useful for better understanding what persuasion and marketing are all about. Virus of the Mind - Richard Brodie - This is a book about memes. If you've read Rapid Response Advertising you know about how memes are used in advertising and marketing. This book is a broad overview about what memes are, how they work and how you can both avoid being influenced by them unconsciously and how you can use them to improve your life. A fascinating read, written in an upbeat humorous style. Recommended for those who really want to understand more about how people are influenced to to things. The Age of Propaganda - Pratkanis & Aronson - This covers a lot of the same ground as Cialdini's book above but even includes more examples of the psychological underpinnings of persuasion. Somewhat academic but still an entertaining and informative read. A must for any serious student of the sales process. Earning What You're Worth? The Psychology of Sales Reluctance - Dudley and Goodson - If you avoid selling (and marketing activities as well) then this is a very insightful and valuable book. It outlines both the causes and cures for sales reluctance in a most compelling manner. If you are under earning and procrastinating a lot about getting out there this will give you some great ways to take the next step. Have a marketing or selling book that you'd like to recommend? Please let us know, and if we like it, we'll list it here. Just send me an email with your recommendation and books in the subject line.