Secrets of Closing the Sale
Zig Ziglar
Dated and very salesy, and still full of things that work on people.
Zig Ziglar was one of the most famous sales trainers in America, and this is his big book on the moment a salesperson actually asks for the order. It's packed with closes, dozens of them, each with a name and a script and a story about when he used it.
Under the scripts there's a more generous idea than you'd expect. Ziglar believed selling is helping, and that you should only sell something you'd happily buy yourself. His best known line is that you can have everything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what they want. He spends a lot of time on attitude, on the salesperson's own belief in the product, and on voice and timing, which he treats as seriously as the words.
It's very much a book from its time. The examples are old, the tone is pure motivational speaker, and some of the techniques would feel pushy today.
It's on the shelf because selling is a skill, and I learned it on doorsteps before I read about it. Books like this explain why some of those pitches worked.
