Our Books

"This book is different. It is firmly rooted in how people buy, and so it works." —Neil Rackham

In 1998 we started interviewing c-suite executives in partnership with Target Marketing Systems, the University of North Carolina, Georgia State University and Hewlett-Packard. This was the first major study conducted to learn how executives make buying decisions, and what they look from the salespeople who call on them.

After 10 years we had conducted 90-minute interviews with more than 1,500 executives from 500 companies, in 25 countries, through boom and bust economies, and found a series of clear universal trends. In 2017 we updated the study to explore the impact of Gen X & Y digital natives now being in charge of company buying decisions, how social media is changing the cadence of B2B buying and selling, and how modern sellers can utilize these tools to stand out against the noise.

Now in its 2nd Edition in print, Kindle and audiobook, this book remains the most empirically accurate study on how to gain access to executives and become a trusted advisor. The practical real-world examples in SELLING TO THE C-SUITE make it a modern sales classic, and essential reading for anyone in the B2B sales profession.

Buy It Now

"An incredibly useful framework for 21st-century value creation." —Professor Andrea L. Dixon

While researching SELLING TO THE C-SUITE, it was an inescapable outcome that we would uncover the SalesDNA of how the world's top salespeople operate. We tested these findings by spending the next decade running more than 20,000 hours of interviews, analyzing 2 million minutes of live sales call recordings, and completing live ridealongs to customer meetings where direct observation was made of how the best salespeople open, navigate and close major sales in all industries and cultures. TARGET OPPORTUNITY SELLING is the result. It remains the best researched, empirical study of selling skills mapped to sales cycle sequence and end results ever conducted.

We learned the top 5% of sellers follow a sequential logic to selling that the majority of sellers don't. It's what we now call the 'Sales Expansion Loop' (SEL), a 21st century alternative to the 19th century 'sales funnel' most sales training and CRM is still based on. This framework is a revolution as it treats selling as a cycle that never ends instead of a linear pipeline that has an exit point. Each chapter in this book breaks down how to apply the SEL steps and skills, and shows how elite sellers create, win, retain and grow new and established business. It's full of insights, anecdotes and practical tips to lift your game, go from good to great, and jump from great to 'wow!'

Buy It Now

Edward Elgar Publishing (EEP) is a leading independent academic and professional publisher with a strong focus on the social sciences and legal fields. It publishes 600 book and journal titles annually and has a prestigious list of over 10,000 titles. The firm also publishes the world's most respected encyclopediae used by business schools and corporations worldwide.

EEP approached Nicholas Read at SalesLabs in 2023 to develop the world's first authoritative Encyclopedia of Sales and Sales Management. This will become the global industry foundation text and ready reference 'how to' guide for all topics related to B2B enterprise selling and the disciplines required for managing a salesforce.

Expert practitioners and academics from all major economies and cultures have been invited to submit entries in an alphabetical master list that already features 800 different subject titles.

SalesLabs CEO, Nicholas Read, says of the project:

"It's time for enterprise selling to become a true profession, and for education in this profession to emerge higher than a cottage industry of niches training firms. That's not going to happen without university Bachelor courses, or ISO-grade sales compliance Standards, no matter how enthusiastically various sales associations try to promote membership, conferences and newsletters dedicated to best practices.

"Over the past 25 years SalesLabs has talked with many universities, which tell us there are no globally-recognized university courses for Selling because there's no official foundation text agreed across the profession as 'the gold standard' upon which a Degree course can be designed. Authentic professions have foundation reference texts, qualifications and membership in a professional industry body. Law has it. Medical has it. Finance has it. Even blue collar trades have it.

"But the profession most responsible for creating the revenue streams upon which companies are valued and invested in has no foundation text or professional body to promote its standards. Therefore many are not prepared to regard selling as a profession at all, but more an ad hoc trade of amateur enthusiasts encased by a corporate sheen.

"Because of this absence, selling becomes an elective module in Marketing and Economics courses, which reference various books on selling, but result in a Bachelor of Marketing, or Management, or Economics, but not a Bachelor of Enterprise Sales Management.

"When we've talked to the ISO Certification companies, they see a lot of merit in there being a Standard for Sales Governance, but cite the lack of formal qualifications and official 'how to' guide for the profession as a barrier to curating a list of what salespeople and their managers must be seen doing or not doing for any Standard to have efficacy. Without this, they question if selling can be actually terms a 'profession'.

"When we talk to the big accounting and advisory firms, they like the idea of consulting and auditing on a company's Revenue Assurance (as SalesLabs operating for a time in the EY Revenue Growth Risk Services practice proved abundantly), but these firms are also quick to point out that a lack of tertiary qualifications and internationally-agreed Standards for the profession makes it a minefield for non-sellers like accountants and consultants to document and advise on.

"So we welcome this opportunity with EEP to create the definitive guide on all the moving parts that go into business-to-business selling, as a resource for sellers, entrepreneurs, sales managers, educators, standards bodies, board-level executives of every company that sells, and the shareholder associations that invest in them."

Co-editor Richard Owers adds:

"This is a major undertaking, so we're enlisting subject experts in various countries to make their mark. They are writing entries for the fields in which they are regarded as undisputed masters. The result will be a comprehensive compendium of sales topics listed A-Z, from which any standards agency, company Board, or shareholder investors association will be able to develop governance oversights from.

"For the first time they will be able to hold Boards accountable for their financial success by citing an authoritative source on how selling is meant to be managed, and holding up a magnifying glass to ensure the companies they place their money in are having their forecasts and revenue outcomes underpinned by teams of people who actually know what they should be doing to drive growth, and can be observed and measured doing it.

"Any academic will be able to develop tertiary-level education from a literally encyclopedic source of citable content; and every entrepreneur, sales and management professional will have a library that explains the what, why and how of every aspect of the sales sciences, in one reference guide. It's about time this happened for the profession, and SalesLabs with its partners is honoured to be trusted with the task."

Editing will be completed in August 2024. EEP will publish the Encyclopedia of Sales and Sales Management worldwide late 2024 or early 2025.