I firmly believe sales is the important skill you must learn in your life. Even if you never plan to take a sales position in your life – you will have to continuously sell a lot of things including your skills. Learning about sales gives you an upper hand over people who rely on instincts to navigate through life as you can easily sell your ideas to people.

I have listed five books below which have implications for people beyond the ‘sales’ position. Read these even if you don't intend to make a career in sales as this is one skill which will help you no matter what you do in your life. 

Predictable Revenue Are you the person in your team who has to do tons of cold calls to generate the leads. Do you need to increase the hit rate of your cold calls? Read this book to understand how you can make your calls go from cold to warm. This even have practical tools such as email templates you could use.

Predictably Irrational Sales is nothing but a ping-pong between the salesman and the prospect.  This is an amazing book on the psychology of the decisions we take – and be prepared to be surprised by what you read. The quicker you understand the perspective of the prospect the quicker you can close the sale. An absolute gem this book is the Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics of sales.

Give and Take  This is one of the books which teaches you what every religion tries to teach you – humility. The book proposes that one of the most basic tenants we forget is that sales is a two way process and in life you need to give, before thinking of receiving something. It lays out evidence wrapped in beautiful stories of hugely successful people. This is a book which has succeeded to show up in most must read list for sales and business.

The Psychology of Selling Another book on the psychology of selling. It is interesting that while at work we often forget about the human element. We sell to human beings and not to robots, and this book talks about the fundamental motivations of both buyers and sellers. Deeply insightful.

The 4-Hour Work Week Last but not the least, a life altering book. This book will change the way you look at work. This book is full of practical and implementable tools for hiving off your work and simplify your life. This contains real world people like you and me and studies what they have done in order to change their lives. Full of life hacks to concentrate on things which really deserve your attention.

This is my list? Have I missed out any important book which you thought has changed your perspective? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

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