Title: Level Up Your Founder-Led Sales With These 4 Books

Read time: 2 min

Today is a short one, but important, as I’m constantly asked about what books I recommend.

I’m going to discuss 4 books I believe every founder should read, and why.

Those of you who know me know that I am not a big advocate of sales or business books. Most are garbage. However, there are quite a few nuggets you have to sift through, but once you find them, they can have a massive lift on your mental and operational game.

“If you want to make the wrong decision, ask everyone.”

~Naval Ravikant

Let’s take a look at the 4 books. I’m going to classify them into 4 categories.

1. Persuasion

2. Sales/Lead Gen

3. Mindset/Winning

4. Psychology

Persuasion
Hands down, the best book written on the topic is “Influence,” by Robert Cialdini. The book is based on the work of Robert Cialdini, who is/was a social psychologist at Stanford. He did a study over several years on how the best salespeople can influence and persuade people to say yes to buying products and services. He ultimately boiled these influence and persuasion techniques down to six principles. This is a must-read for anyone in the business world. I read this book late in my career and was blown away by how true it was, and how, without consciously knowing, I had incorporated these principles into my sales framework.

Sales- Lead Gen
My recommendation here would be a “$100M Offers, and $100M Leads by Alex Hormozi. These are some of the best books I wanted to hate, simply because of the clickbait / spammy titles, but they are packed with tactical, applicable advice that will immediately move the needle. They were both recommended to me numerous times by people who were very successful and whom I respected, so I took the plunge and bought it. I’m so glad I did. It’s an incredible book filled with nuggets on how to identify problems when thinking about building products, and how to structure offers and sales in a way that eliminates a lot of the friction in the buying journey. Every startup founder, especially at the pre-product level, should read this book. You will learn a great deal and significantly reduce your learning curve.


Mindset / Winning
My number one recommendation here is Winning by Tim Grover. This is what I call the dawg book. This isn’t a “feel-good” book. It’s a manifesto on what it actually takes to be the best, whether that’s in business, sports, or life. Grover, the guy who trained Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan to be savages, lays out the truth most founders don’t want to hear: winning is brutal, it’s demanding, and it doesn’t give a shit about your excuses. This book isn’t about tactics, it’s about mentality. The killer founder mindset. The dog that refuses to quit. The beast who doesn’t just want to compete, but dominate. It’s about living in discomfort, chasing pressure, and taking the hard road when everyone else takes the easy way. What I really love is he doesn’t preach balance. He preaches obsession and sacrifice. If you want to build something real, you have to operate at an unreasonable level and keep showing up when everyone else has tapped out. This book is the wake-up call. You don’t need all the nonsense that’s pitched everywhere or clever hacks and slick marketing; you need steel. The discipline to push when every fiber in you wants to stop. That’s what Winning drills into you.

Psychology
If you want to understand sales, don’t study sales; study human psychology. Understanding why people do what they do is fascinating. Understanding people’s limited beliefs and wrong thinking, and how people justify these limited beliefs, is how you get good at selling. A book that examines this deeply is Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me, by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. The book discusses the psychology of self-justification and cognitive dissonance. The theme is how people tend to rationalize their own mistakes and justify their actions, even when faced with evidence that contradicts their beliefs. The goal of a discovery call is to identify a lot of this and educate them throughout the process, and convey what life will look like after using your product.

All four recommendations aren’t your traditional sales books, but as discussed throughout the issue, sales is not about selling, it’s about studying and understanding human behavior. They’re all terrific at helping you do so. 💪

That’s it for today, folks.

See you all next week!

Darren

P.S. If you’re a venture-backed company interested in coaching, book a call here.