Hacking Sales: The Playbook for Building a High Velocity Sales Machine

by Max Altschuler

The world of sales is a $500 billion industry that employs over 15 million people in the US alone. However, only a handful of colleges offer degrees in sales and most MBA programs don’t offer a single sales class.

Business executives and investors have realized that a good sales team will make or break your business. As data and technology become cheaper to access, and more Well-educated people choose careers in sales; the world of sales is undergoing a massive transformation. Consider this book your degree in modern sales. I call it Sales Hacking.

In Hacking Sales, you’ll learn how to build a fully streamlined sales engine using new technology built for salespeople along with innovative new techniques. I showcase over 150 tools throughout the book, as we walk through the processes behind building an fully efficient sales machine. Some of them

-Building your Ideal Customer Profile
-Finding theses Ideal Customers by the thousands
-Getting Contact Info at Scale
-Different Strategies for Targeting Prospects
-How to Properly Segment Lists for Mass Emailing
-Building, Testing, Measuring, Optimizing Email Campaigns
-Hiring, Training, Managing Outsourced Sales Development Teams
-Best Practices for Nurturing Leads
-Negotiations, Objections, and Closing the Deal
-The Art of Getting Referrals During the Honeymoon Period
-Plus Bonus Material and Much More

Genres: Business, Startup, Buisness, Nonfiction

149 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 2, 2015

Reviews

[Foad Ansari · Rating 4 out of 5]

چهار ستاره به خاطر معرفی بیش از 100 نرم افزار و سرویس اینترنتی که میتواند آمار فروشرا بالا ببرد و راه فروش را هموار سازد. حتما باید نسخه انگلیسی این کتاب رو بعدا بخونم. چون ترجمه مناسبی نداشت و حروفچینی آن در فیدیبو بهم ریخته بود.

[Jose Papo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice book collecting different sales, CRM and Marketing tools to help startup and Lean sales teams.

[Zack · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an introductory book that overviews the modern day sales process it is an interesting read. Informative and filled with lots of insights into approaching and developing a sales pipeline. As it’s a 2016 book and the sales technology market is constantly evolving it’s already becoming slightly outdated. If you are reading it for specific service recommendations, I would steer clear and do your due diligence online. However if you are looking for a holistic approach to developing a modern and scalable sales plan, I would highly recommend.

[Logan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Author Altschuler has taken the popular “growth hacker” term and given it a more sales-oriented bent while sharing some of its same principles. Primarily this revolves around using data and tools to quantify and operationalize the sales process. This is also the book’s weakness: It’s so tooling-centric that it’s almost certainly going to be deprecated in five years, and the abstract ideas that might hold up over time are only briefly highlighted.

[Siim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Practical, geared towards sales development and web tools to use. Can be used as a recipe book for creating a sales organisation quick, while going into enough depth on the principles - worth to read from time to time.

[Ian Hsiao · Rating 2 out of 5]

The basic axiom of this book is, “sales determines the winner, not the product alone”.

A ok-ish introduction to building sales funnel, the concepts etc; but most workflow is outdated in AI era; tools are mostly outdated too; I believe there are more relevant books in 2025/2026

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short and tactical - just the way I like business books. It's not definitive, but he links out to enough resources to keep you busy. It would be hard for me to imagine someone finishing this book without at least one nugget to take away and try out.

[Oleh Mykhayloych · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read one!

[Ricardo Pineda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente

Un libro con sugerencias y herramientas muy prácticas para Startups . Lo importante es implementar las recomendaciones según el tipo de empresa y vendedores

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sales 101 stuff. Trying to pick up some basic tools.

[STEFANO NEVA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book, must be read with a notebook on the side...

[Justas Šaltinis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collection of different sales, marketing and CRM tools + practical advice for sales hacking.

[Abdellah Amine · Rating 5 out of 5]

كتاب يستحقوالقراءة..

[Scott Rhoades · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found several helpful take-aways. The book is presented in a clear up front way.

[Jelena Roksandic · Rating 2 out of 5]

Since the book is written in 2015 most of the tools are outdated and some of them don't exist anymore.

If you are reading this in 2021 I wouldn't recommend it.

Search on the Google insted.

[Mario Hevia villajuana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muy buena guía pero para aplicar creo que se necesita un resumen de todo dsl

[Harry Harman · Rating 5 out of 5]

#1 book on building a sales team.

[Mike Koenigs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written, easy to read with lots of resources

This book is packed with usable, timely resources, links, tools and services that can be implemented immediately. I'm inspired to start using some of the scripts and recommended sites to build and grow my business and automate more of my lead gen and follow up.

I'd say the only drawback to this book is some of the companies that are being referenced will likely go out of business or get sold in the next couple of years so it needs to be updated regularly.

I'm going to recommend this book to everyone who purchases our product the "You Everywhere Now Consult and Profit" system - it's a training program for consultants, coaches and advisors who want to get and close more deals by learning influence, persuasion and powerful techniques for selling big-ticket advice.

Nice job, Max!

[Ben Nash · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had a few gems but could have been compiled into a few blog posts. He recommends about 120 software tools which gets confusing. He recommends certain ones, but then suggests another tool but doesn't say anything about it. If you don't want to sell me on a tool, don't tell me about it.

The last half is better than the first as it relates to customer service.

His recommendations for emails are simple, but his book is not.

[Korey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the original and now the updated 2016 version. Actionable insights with overdone software recommendations. Feels like an expanded, quickly written eBook. Needs polish and all it would take is a $1k editor review.

[Vik Venkatraman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent list of tools, but less than impressive techniques/philosophy of sales.

[Stephen Gonzalez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book but I think he “hacked” the book writing process by getting others to basically write most of it for him. Also quite light on content and heavy on 2016 sales tech product advertisements.