Anthony Iannarino's Six Essential Sales and Leadership Books: A Comprehensive Guide to Success

Explore the groundbreaking insights and strategies in Anthony Iannarino's series of six books, revolutionizing sales and leadership.

In the last seven years, I have written and published six books. The distance between these books is more like the distance between chapters. When I began writing them, I planned their publication order, so they flow together if you read them sequentially.

Comprehensive Guide to B2B Sales: The Only Sales Guide You'll Ever Need (2016)

In 2016, I published The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need. TOSG is a success manual for B2B salespeople. The first half of the book covers character traits, such as self-discipline, optimism, caring, initiative, resourcefulness, and a half dozen more traits that make it easier for you to become someone your clients trust to do good work. The second half focuses on sales skills, like closing, prospecting, storytelling, discovery, and three skills that are not typically addressed: change management, leading the clients, and business acumen. People report this book makes them a better person and a better salesperson.

Less than 10 months later, I published the second book.

Innovative Sales Process Strategies: The Lost Art of Closing (2017)

The list of the 10 commitments was included in The Only Sales Guide, but there wasn’t enough room to include the entire framework. I met with my publisher in person to turn in the manuscript for TOSG and, on my flight home, I wrote the first chapters of The Lost Art of Closing. After decades of selling, I had built a list of necessary conversations to have with my clients so they could confidently move forward. Each conversation secures a commitment, which ensures we understand one another.

The 10 commitments are Time, Explore, Change, Collaborate, Consensus, Investment, Review, Resolve Concerns, Decide, and Execute. Rejecting a linear sales process, I published this book to allow flexibility for what the client needs to move forward in the buyer’s journey, regardless of the way it unfolds. This approach improves the client experience.

Users of this framework report: “I make more money.”

Strategic Customer Acquisition: Eat Their Lunch (2018)

My experience in selling staffing required me to take clients from my competitors, while retaining my existing customers. The wolves were always at the door. To execute a competitive displacement (a nicer way of saying “stealing the client”), it is crucial to capture the client's mindshare. You also need a prospecting approach that allows you to play the long game, as every target is already with a competitor.

Eat Their Lunch is a framework for sales organizations that could be perceived as commodities. It covers creating greater value than your competitors, and strategies to take clients from your competition. If you need to differentiate yourself and your company, this is a good starting point.

This book is bought by large sales organizations preparing for a future where capturing market share is essential to reach their goals.

Advanced Sales Techniques: Elite Sales Strategies (2022)

I am pro-salesperson and oppose anything that reduces a salesperson's status, including legacy approaches that fail to create value and diminish the sales conversation.

Elite Sales Strategies emphasizes that salespeople must be One-Up, meaning they possess information and insights to help clients make the right decisions to ensure their companies get the results they need. I noticed most salespeople failed to lead their client, offering no counsel, advice, or recommendations. When I delivered this content at the 2021 Outbound Conference, I worried the audience would see it as manipulation, not the obligation to help clients learn what they need to know to succeed now and in the future.

There is no distance between Eat Their Lunch and Elite Sales Strategies. Both books impose new obligations for B2B salespeople.

Sales Management Mastery: Leading Growth (2022)

After four books for salespeople, I focused on sales managers. Leading Growth is modeled after TOSG, providing a comprehensive plan for generating new revenue. Like TOSG, this book includes traits that speed up revenue and the skills a sales manager needs to lead their sales force.

This book is about implementing structures to make the sales force more effective and better led, ensuring they reach their goals. It is powerful for sales leaders seeking to improve their team's effectiveness and provide sustainable growth.

Overcoming Negativity: The Negativity Fast (2023)

This is my second USA Today bestseller. Concerned about the increasing negativity in our changing environment, I started my negativity fast decades ago, and continue to recognize its importance. The Negativity Fast is about reducing time in a negative state and spending more time in a positive, optimistic, future-oriented state. This is my most personal book, and it differs from my other work because it has a wider scope. Most people say my voice is clear in this book, which was written with no compromises. In the future, I plan to use this writing style more, and take a similar approach. If you are negative, anxious, or stressed, this book will help you reduce those maladies.