7 SaaS Books To Shape How You Sell

By Taylor Bond
Estimated read time: 3 minutes, 42 seconds

Looking for ‘tips and tricks’ to help sell more SaaS? Although relevant and helpful, blogs and articles can’t rival the in-depth analysis offered in the confines of a timeless SaaS books.

Whether you’re reading to prop your feet up with a good read, make the most of travel time or pile up your bedside table collection, we’ve rounded up our favourite SaaS books that shape how we sell SaaS.

From David Hoffeld’s The Science of Selling to Mark Roberge’s The Sales Acceleration Formula, these reads offer tangible tips, tools and advice that will leave you with motivated and inspired.

Disrupting Digital Business

By R “Ray” Wang

Our ever-changing world does not wait for those who fall behind, and it definitely doesn’t try to help them. How are you supposed to keep up?

Ray Wang has written a book for such businesses. Being able to accept change and ‘roll with the punches’ is a key aspect of building a successful company.

Ray explains that upon getting over the hurdle of acceptance comes the ability to anticipate and react before changes happen.

The Sales Acceleration Formula

By Mark Roberge

What’s the only thing better than making sales? Making more sales. It’s the name of the game.

Although it doesn’t claim to have the ultimate secret to selling more, Mark Roberge’s The Sales Acceleration Formula comes pretty close with an action plan to grow revenue and build a sales team tailored to your company.

As the former CRO at Hubspot, Roberge draws on his experience and outlines how even though sales may seem unpredictable, there is a formula to the madness.

From Impossible to Inevitable: How SaaS and Other Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue

By Aaron Ross & Jason Lemkin

Do the companies Salesforce, Zenefits, and EchoSign ring a bell? They are all prime examples of hyper-growth.

Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin give you the rundown on how these companies did it. How they transformed small ideas into multi-million dollar companies while keeping up with their unprecedented growth.

The title says it all. If you find yourself struggling with the viability of your business, this book is for you. When you properly prepare yourself for what may come your way, making progress will go from impossible to inevitable.

Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking

By Andy Sernovitz

How do you get to the point where you are ready to make a sale? Just think of the biggest companies of today. Where they are now is because millions of people talk about their products.

In this book, you’ll learn how to harness interpersonal communication to drive your business. It includes strategies, rules, and ideas to help you expand and control how (and why) people talk about your business.

Word of Mouth Marketing gives numerous real-world examples of businesses who got people talking and succeeded because of it.

How to Castrate a Bull: Unexpected Lessons on Risk, Growth, and Success in Business

By Dave Hitz

Don’t worry, How to Castrate a Bull does not teach you the nitty-gritty on removing a bull’s business. The title actually refers to taking calculated risks.

A co-founder of NetApp, author Dave Hitz has been through every twist and turn a SaaS business can go through, and he writes about them all in this book.

Whether you’re a startup or a successful company, there have been times where you’ve had to ‘take the bull by the horns’. Reading How to Castrate a Bull will only enhance those risk-taking skills.

The Science of Selling

By David Hoffeld

Our brains naturally form buying decisions; what, when, and where to buy, who to buy from, etc. David Hoffeld says the key to success for salespeople is aligning the way you sell with those buying decisions.

The Science of Selling goes in-depth on buyer emotions, how to guide a customer through their own decisions, being a positive influence, and asking questions based on how the brain (or a particular customer) provides information.

The War of Art

By Steven Pressfield

Lastly, The War of Art is a book about creativity and seizing potential.

Although you won’t find SaaS sales techniques or marketing strategies from multi-millionaire entrepreneurs, this book will change your mindset on the role of creativity in terms of achieving success.

So why is it relevant to selling SaaS? This book centers itself on inspiration, something key to creating a great product. Pressfield teaches that you can’t manufacture inspiration, you have to put the work in so inspiration has the opportunity to present itself.

Taylor Bond

Taylor is an Account Executive at FastSpring and formerly the Co-Founder and the Head of Growth at SalesRight (Now FastSpring Interactive Quotes). He rarely stops talking about pricing psychology, the Canadian 🇨🇦 technology scene, and diversity & inclusion in tech. Outside of work you can find him leading Canada’s largest LGBTQA+ technology community or on the hunt for poutine and bagels.