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What Great Salespeople Do by Michael Bosworth and Ben Zoldan — Cliff Notes Summary

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Direct Answer

What Great Salespeople Do: The Science of Selling Through Emotional Connection and the Power of Story by Michael Bosworth and Ben Zoldan (McGraw-Hill, 2012) is the obscure but essential pivot book from the creator of Solution Selling. After 30 years teaching diagnostic, logic-driven methodology, Bosworth flips his own playbook: "Logic gets buyers to think — emotion gets buyers to act." Drawing on Antonio Damasio, Joseph LeDoux, Daniel Kahneman, and Giacomo Rizzolatti's mirror-neuron research, Bosworth and Zoldan (co-founder of Sales Performance International) argue the best reps win through emotional connection and story-driven persuasion that bypasses the buyer's rational defenses.

The book introduces six storytelling frameworks that became the spiritual ancestor of David Hoffeld's Science of Selling (bs0062), Jeb Blount's Sales EQ (bs0029), and modern Gong/Chorus emotion-pattern AI.

1. Part One — Why the Old Way Is Breaking

1.1 Chapter 1 — The Sales Profession Is Broken

Bosworth opens with an unusual admission for a methodology author: roughly 80% of B2B reps miss quota despite decades of training in Solution Selling, SPIN, and CustomerCentric Selling. He argues the profession has over-engineered the logical, diagnostic side of selling and under-invested in the human side.

The chapter dismantles the assumption that more questions, more frameworks, and more discovery automatically produce more wins. The opening verbatim: "Connection precedes content — every time."

1.2 Chapter 2 — The Myth of the Born Salesperson

The authors examine the "natural" rep archetype — the top 20% who outperform everyone else regardless of methodology. Through interviews with hundreds of elite performers across IBM, Xerox, Oracle, and SAP, Bosworth and Zoldan find a consistent pattern: top reps are not better at qualifying, demoing, or closing.

They are better at building emotional trust in the first five minutes. The chapter introduces the book's organizing claim: storytelling is the learnable skill that separates the top 20% from the rest.

2. Part Two — The Neuroscience Foundation

2.1 Chapter 3 — The Emotional Brain Decides First

The neuroscience chapter is the book's intellectual backbone. Bosworth cites Antonio Damasio's *Descartes' Error* (1994) to argue patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex — who lose emotional processing but retain logic — cannot make decisions. The implication for sales: the buyer feels first and rationalizes after. Joseph LeDoux's amygdala research and Daniel Kahneman's System 1/System 2 model from *Thinking, Fast and Slow* (2011) round out the foundation.

The takeaway: a rep who fires logic at System 2 while ignoring System 1 has already lost.

2.2 Chapter 4 — Mirror Neurons and the Story Advantage

Bosworth's signature 2012 contribution: the mirror neuron explanation for why stories work. Citing Giacomo Rizzolatti's 1990s macaque research at the University of Parma, the authors argue that when a buyer hears a story, the same brain regions fire as if they were experiencing the events themselves.

Charts, ROI calculators, and feature lists activate analytical regions; stories activate embodied simulation. Verbatim Bosworth/Zoldan-ism: "Mirror neurons make stories the single highest-bandwidth persuasion tool."

3. Part Three — The Six Storytelling Frameworks

3.1 Chapter 5 — The Personal Connection Story

The first framework opens every sales conversation. The rep shares a brief, authentic personal anecdote — a hobby, a family detail, a struggle — that signals "I am a human, not a vendor." The Personal Connection Story typically runs 60-90 seconds and is told before any business discussion begins.

Bosworth provides templates and warns against the most common failure mode: fake vulnerability that triggers buyer suspicion.

3.2 Chapter 6 — The Empathy Story

Once connection is established, the Empathy Story signals "I understand your world." The rep tells a story about a buyer they previously worked with whose situation closely mirrors the prospect's. The neurological mechanism: when the buyer recognizes themselves in the story, the anterior insula activates and trust deepens.

The chapter prescribes the "I worked with someone who..." opener and warns against generic case studies that lack specific emotional detail.

3.3 Chapter 7 — The Industry Story

The third framework establishes credibility without bragging. The rep tells a story about the industry's evolution — a trend, a shift, a failure mode — that positions them as a knowledgeable guide rather than a vendor pushing product. Bosworth contrasts this with the Challenger "teaching" pillar, noting the Industry Story is softer, more conversational, and designed to invite buyer reflection rather than provoke debate.

3.4 Chapter 8 — The Insight Story

The Insight Story surfaces a hidden truth the buyer has not yet seen. Unlike the Challenger Reframe — which confronts the buyer directly — the Insight Story delivers the same payload through a third-party narrative: "Here's what one of my customers discovered about their own business..." This indirection reduces buyer defensiveness.

The chapter includes a worked example from a software-as-a-service rep at a PeopleSoft alumnus company.

3.5 Chapter 9 — The Use Case Story

The fifth framework is the peer-customer success narrative — but told as a story arc, not a case study. The rep walks through a previous customer's before state, inciting incident, decision, implementation, and outcome as a five-act structure. Bosworth borrows from screenwriter Robert McKee's *Story* (1997) for the narrative arc and emphasizes that named protagonists (a specific VP at a specific company) outperform anonymized references by a wide margin.

3.6 Chapter 10 — The Vision Story

The sixth and final framework paints the buyer's future state in vivid sensory detail. The rep co-creates a picture of what the buyer's business looks like 18 months after implementation — what their morning meeting feels like, what their dashboard shows, what their boss says.

The Vision Story is the close. The chapter ends with the verbatim Bosworth line: "People don't buy products. They buy a better version of themselves."

4. Part Four — The Operating Discipline

4.1 Chapter 11 — The Open-Ended Question Discipline

Bosworth returns to his roots. The chapter re-emphasizes the foundational Solution Selling and SPIN open-question discipline — but reframes it through an emotional lens. Open questions are not interrogation tools; they are invitations for the buyer to tell their own story.

The rep's job is to listen, mirror, and reflect, not to diagnose. The chapter teaches the "Tell me more about that..." prompt as the single highest-leverage phrase in selling.

4.2 Chapter 12 — Active Listening and Reflection

The penultimate chapter covers the listening discipline. Bosworth borrows from Carl Rogers's client-centered therapy and Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication to teach the reflect-and-validate pattern: the rep repeats back the buyer's words, names the emotion underneath, and waits.

The chapter argues most reps fail here — they listen for objection-handling openings rather than for genuine understanding.

4.3 Chapter 13 — Building the Story Library

The closing chapter is operational. Reps are instructed to build a personal story library of 20-30 stories across the six frameworks, indexed by industry, persona, and use case. The library is rehearsed, tested in real calls, and refined quarterly.

Bosworth and Zoldan argue this is where most sales-training programs fail: they teach the theory but skip the disciplined accumulation of usable stories.

The Bosworth Emotional-Selling Model

flowchart TD A[Buyer Encounter] --> B[Personal Connection Story 60-90 sec] B --> C[Empathy Story I worked with someone like you] C --> D[Open-Ended Questions Tell me more] D --> E[Industry Story Soft credibility] E --> F[Insight Story Hidden truth via 3rd party] F --> G[Use Case Story Peer 5-act arc] G --> H[Vision Story Future-state close] H --> I[Mirror Neuron Activation Buyer feels the win] I --> J[Emotional Decision Rationalized after]

Frameworks at a Glance

The Six Storytelling Frameworks — Personal Connection, Empathy, Industry, Insight, Use Case, Vision.
Mirror Neuron Effect — Rizzolatti's embodied simulation explains why stories outperform data.
System 1 / System 2 — Kahneman's dual-process model adapted for sales: stories hit System 1, charts hit System 2.
The Damasio Decision Loop — emotional brain decides first, rational brain rationalizes after.
Open-Ended Question Discipline — SPIN/Solution-Selling questioning reframed as story invitation.
The Story Library — 20-30 rehearsed stories indexed by industry, persona, use case.
Connection-Before-Content Rule — no business discussion until emotional trust is established.

The Operating Loop

flowchart LR A[Build Story Library 20-30 stories] --> B[Pre-call Prep Match story to buyer] B --> C[Open with Personal Connection Story] C --> D[Layer Empathy + Open Questions] D --> E[Industry + Insight Stories Mid-call] E --> F[Close with Use Case + Vision Story] F --> G[Post-call Reflection What story landed?] G --> A

What Holds Up, What Has Aged

What holds up in 2027: the six storytelling frameworks remain the highest-leverage skill the average B2B rep can build. Jeb Blount's Sales EQ (2017), David Hoffeld's Science of Selling (2016), and Gong/Chorus call-analytics products all built on the emotional-pattern foundation Bosworth and Zoldan codified.

Top enterprise reps still win on emotion plus story, not on logic plus data.

What has aged: the mirror neuron research has faced significant replication concerns since roughly 2015 — neuroscientists including Gregory Hickok have argued the original Rizzolatti findings were over-extrapolated to human behavior. The operational utility of storytelling holds regardless of whether the mechanism is mirror neurons or simpler embodied-cognition processes.

The bigger 2027 caveat: product-led-growth companies like Slack, Figma, Notion, and Linear bypass emotional-connection selling entirely — the product itself carries the trust signal. Bosworth's frameworks remain most relevant in complex enterprise sales where a human rep still owns the buyer relationship.

FAQ

Is this book worth reading if I already read Solution Selling? Yes — it is the counterweight to Bosworth's earlier work. Solution Selling teaches the diagnostic logic; this book teaches the emotional layer that makes the diagnosis land. Read them together.

How is this different from Challenger Sale? Challenger (Dixon and Adamson, 2011) teaches reps to confront and reframe. Bosworth and Zoldan teach reps to connect and story-tell. Challenger is harder-edged; this book is softer and more relational. Top reps blend both.

Has the mirror neuron science held up? Partially. Giacomo Rizzolatti's original macaque findings stand, but the extension to human social cognition has been challenged by Gregory Hickok and others since 2015. The behavioral observation — stories outperform data in persuasion — holds regardless of the underlying mechanism.

Does this work in product-led-growth motions? Less so. PLG companies like Figma and Linear let the product carry the trust signal, which compresses or eliminates the human-rep storytelling layer. The frameworks remain essential in complex enterprise and strategic-account sales.

What's the single highest-leverage chapter? Chapter 6 on the Empathy Story. Most reps skip the "I worked with someone like you..." pattern and jump straight to product. Adding 90 seconds of empathy-story opening to every discovery call is the highest-ROI behavior change in the book.

How does this connect to Sales EQ and Science of Selling? Bosworth and Zoldan are the intellectual ancestors. Blount's Sales EQ (2017) extends the emotional-intelligence frame into the full sales cycle. Hoffeld's Science of Selling (2016) deepens the neuroscience citations.

Both authors credit Bosworth as the founder of the emotional-selling school.

Bottom Line

Read What Great Salespeople Do if you are a complex-deal enterprise rep, a sales manager rebuilding a team's discovery discipline, or a methodology nerd tracing the lineage from Bosworth → Hoffeld → Blount. Monday morning, build your Personal Connection Story and your top three Empathy Stories, rehearse them out loud, and open your next discovery call with the connection story before any business question.

The book matters because it is the bridge between the diagnostic 1990s methodologies and the emotion-aware AI-coached selling of the 2020s.

Sources

Michael Bosworth and Ben Zoldan — *What Great Salespeople Do: The Science of Selling Through Emotional Connection and the Power of Story* (McGraw-Hill, 2012)
Michael Bosworth — *Solution Selling: Creating Buyers in Difficult Selling Markets* (McGraw-Hill, 1994) — bs0035
Michael Bosworth and John Holland — *CustomerCentric Selling* (McGraw-Hill, 2003) — bs0037
Antonio Damasio — *Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain* (Putnam, 1994)
Daniel Kahneman — *Thinking, Fast and Slow* (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011)
Joseph LeDoux — *The Emotional Brain* (Simon and Schuster, 1996)
Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia — *Mirrors in the Brain* (Oxford University Press, 2008)
Robert McKee — *Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting* (Regan Books, 1997)
David Hoffeld — *The Science of Selling* (TarcherPerigee, 2016) — bs0062
Jeb Blount — *Sales EQ* (Wiley, 2017) — bs0029
Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson — *The Challenger Sale* (Portfolio, 2011) — bs0001
Gregory Hickok — *The Myth of Mirror Neurons* (W. W. Norton, 2014)
Gong Labs — *Revenue Intelligence Research* (2021-2026)
Sales Performance International — Ben Zoldan founding-partner archives

Keep reading

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### Direct Answer

**What Great Salespeople Do: The Science of Selling Through Emotional Connection and the Power of Story** by **Michael Bosworth** and **Ben Zoldan** (**McGraw-Hill, 2012**) is the obscure but essential pivot book from the creator of **Solution Selling**. After 30 years teaching diagnostic, logic-driven methodology, Bosworth flips his own playbook: **"Logic gets buyers to think — emotion gets buyers to act."** Drawing on **Antonio Damasio**, **Joseph LeDoux**, **Daniel Kahneman**, and **Giacomo Rizzolatti's** mirror-neuron research, Bosworth and **Zoldan** (co-founder of **Sales Performance International**) argue the best reps win through **emotional connection** and **story-driven persuasion** that bypasses the buyer's rational defenses. The book introduces **six storytelling frameworks** that became the spiritual ancestor of **David Hoffeld's Science of Selling** (bs0062), **Jeb Blount's Sales EQ** (bs0029), and modern **Gong/Chorus** emotion-pattern AI.

## 1. Part One — Why the Old Way Is Breaking

### 1.1 Chapter 1 — The Sales Profession Is Broken

Bosworth opens with an unusual admission for a methodology author: roughly **80% of B2B reps miss quota** despite decades of training in **Solution Selling**, **SPIN**, and **CustomerCentric Selling**. He argues the profession has over-engineered the **logical, diagnostic** side of selling and under-invested in the **human** side. The chapter dismantles the assumption that more questions, more frameworks, and more discovery automatically produce more wins. The opening verbatim: **"Connection precedes content — every time."**

### 1.2 Chapter 2 — The Myth of the Born Salesperson

The authors examine the **"natural" rep** archetype — the top 20% who outperform everyone else regardless of methodology. Through interviews with hundreds of elite performers across **IBM**, **Xerox**, **Oracle**, and **SAP**, Bosworth and Zoldan find a consistent pattern: top reps are not better at qualifying, demoing, or closing. They are better at **building emotional trust** in the first five minutes. The chapter introduces the book's organizing claim: storytelling is the **learnable** skill that separates the top 20% from the rest.

## 2. Part Two — The Neuroscience Foundation

### 2.1 Chapter 3 — The Emotional Brain Decides First

The neuroscience chapter is the book's intellectual backbone. Bosworth cites **Antonio Damasio's** *Descartes' Error* (1994) to argue patients with damage to the **ventromedial prefrontal cortex** — who lose emotional processing but retain logic — cannot make decisions. The implication for sales: **the buyer feels first and rationalizes after.** **Joseph LeDoux's** amygdala research and **Daniel Kahneman's** **System 1/System 2** model from *Thinking, Fast and Slow* (2011) round out the foundation. The takeaway: a rep who fires logic at System 2 while ignoring System 1 has already lost.

### 2.2 Chapter 4 — Mirror Neurons and the Story Advantage

Bosworth's signature 2012 contribution: the **mirror neuron** explanation for why stories work. Citing **Giacomo Rizzolatti's** 1990s macaque research at the **University of Parma**, the authors argue that when a buyer hears a story, the same brain regions fire as if they were experiencing the events themselves. Charts, ROI calculators, and feature lists activate analytical regions; stories activate **embodied simulation**. Verbatim Bosworth/Zoldan-ism: **"Mirror neurons make stories the single highest-bandwidth persuasion tool."**

## 3. Part Three — The Six Storytelling Frameworks

### 3.1 Chapter 5 — The Personal Connection Story

The first framework opens every sales conversation. The rep shares a brief, authentic personal anecdote — a hobby, a family detail, a struggle — that signals **"I am a human, not a vendor."** The Personal Connection Story typically runs **60-90 seconds** and is told before any business discussion begins. Bosworth provides templates and warns against the most common failure mode: **fake vulnerability** that triggers buyer suspicion.

### 3.2 Chapter 6 — The Empathy Story

Once connection is established, the **Empathy Story** signals **"I understand your world."** The rep tells a story about a buyer they previously worked with whose situation closely mirrors the prospect's. The neurological mechanism: when the buyer recognizes themselves in the story, the **anterior insula** activates and trust deepens. The chapter prescribes the **"I worked with someone who..."** opener and warns against generic case studies that lack specific emotional detail.

### 3.3 Chapter 7 — The Industry Story

The third framework establishes credibility without bragging. The rep tells a story about the **industry's evolution** — a trend, a shift, a failure mode — that positions them as a knowledgeable guide rather than a vendor pushing product. Bosworth contrasts this with the **Challenger** "teaching" pillar, noting the Industry Story is **softer, more conversational**, and designed to invite buyer reflection rather than provoke debate.

### 3.4 Chapter 8 — The Insight Story

The Insight Story surfaces a **hidden truth** the buyer has not yet seen. Unlike the Challenger Reframe — which confronts the buyer directly — the Insight Story delivers the same payload through a third-party narrative: **"Here's what one of my customers discovered about their own business..."** This indirection reduces buyer defensiveness. The chapter includes a worked example from a **software-as-a-service** rep at a **PeopleSoft alumnus** company.

### 3.5 Chapter 9 — The Use Case Story

The fifth framework is the **peer-customer success** narrative — but told as a story arc, not a case study. The rep walks through a previous customer's **before state**, **inciting incident**, **decision**, **implementation**, and **outcome** as a five-act structure. Bosworth borrows from screenwriter **Robert McKee's** *Story* (1997) for the narrative arc and emphasizes that **named protagonists** (a specific VP at a specific company) outperform anonymized references by a wide margin.

### 3.6 Chapter 10 — The Vision Story

The sixth and final framework paints the buyer's **future state** in vivid sensory detail. The rep co-creates a picture of what the buyer's business looks like 18 months after implementation — what their morning meeting feels like, what their dashboard shows, what their boss says. The Vision Story is the close. The chapter ends with the verbatim Bosworth line: **"People don't buy products. They buy a better version of themselves."**

## 4. Part Four — The Operating Discipline

### 4.1 Chapter 11 — The Open-Ended Question Discipline

Bosworth returns to his roots. The chapter re-emphasizes the foundational **Solution Selling** and **SPIN** open-question discipline — but reframes it through an emotional lens. Open questions are not interrogation tools; they are **invitations for the buyer to tell their own story**. The rep's job is to listen, mirror, and reflect, not to diagnose. The chapter teaches the **"Tell me more about that..."** prompt as the single highest-leverage phrase in selling.

### 4.2 Chapter 12 — Active Listening and Reflection

The penultimate chapter covers the listening discipline. Bosworth borrows from **Carl Rogers's** client-centered therapy and **Marshall Rosenberg's** Nonviolent Communication to teach the **reflect-and-validate** pattern: the rep repeats back the buyer's words, names the emotion underneath, and waits. The chapter argues most reps fail here — they listen for **objection-handling openings** rather than for genuine understanding.

### 4.3 Chapter 13 — Building the Story Library

The closing chapter is operational. Reps are instructed to build a **personal story library** of 20-30 stories across the six frameworks, indexed by industry, persona, and use case. The library is rehearsed, tested in real calls, and refined quarterly. Bosworth and Zoldan argue this is where most sales-training programs fail: they teach the theory but skip the **disciplined accumulation** of usable stories.

## The Bosworth Emotional-Selling Model

```mermaid
flowchart TD
    A[Buyer Encounter] --> B[Personal Connection Story<br/>60-90 sec]
    B --> C[Empathy Story<br/>I worked with someone like you]
    C --> D[Open-Ended Questions<br/>Tell me more]
    D --> E[Industry Story<br/>Soft credibility]
    E --> F[Insight Story<br/>Hidden truth via 3rd party]
    F --> G[Use Case Story<br/>Peer 5-act arc]
    G --> H[Vision Story<br/>Future-state close]
    H --> I[Mirror Neuron Activation<br/>Buyer feels the win]
    I --> J[Emotional Decision<br/>Rationalized after]
```

## Frameworks at a Glance

- **The Six Storytelling Frameworks** — Personal Connection, Empathy, Industry, Insight, Use Case, Vision.
- **Mirror Neuron Effect** — Rizzolatti's embodied simulation explains why stories outperform data.
- **System 1 / System 2** — Kahneman's dual-process model adapted for sales: stories hit System 1, charts hit System 2.
- **The Damasio Decision Loop** — emotional brain decides first, rational brain rationalizes after.
- **Open-Ended Question Discipline** — SPIN/Solution-Selling questioning reframed as story invitation.
- **The Story Library** — 20-30 rehearsed stories indexed by industry, persona, use case.
- **Connection-Before-Content Rule** — no business discussion until emotional trust is established.

## The Operating Loop

```mermaid
flowchart LR
    A[Build Story Library<br/>20-30 stories] --> B[Pre-call Prep<br/>Match story to buyer]
    B --> C[Open with Personal<br/>Connection Story]
    C --> D[Layer Empathy +<br/>Open Questions]
    D --> E[Industry + Insight<br/>Stories Mid-call]
    E --> F[Close with Use Case<br/>+ Vision Story]
    F --> G[Post-call Reflection<br/>What story landed?]
    G --> A
```

## What Holds Up, What Has Aged

**What holds up in 2027:** the six storytelling frameworks remain the highest-leverage skill the average B2B rep can build. **Jeb Blount's Sales EQ** (2017), **David Hoffeld's Science of Selling** (2016), and **Gong/Chorus** call-analytics products all built on the emotional-pattern foundation Bosworth and Zoldan codified. Top enterprise reps still win on emotion plus story, not on logic plus data.

**What has aged:** the **mirror neuron** research has faced significant **replication concerns** since roughly **2015** — neuroscientists including **Gregory Hickok** have argued the original Rizzolatti findings were over-extrapolated to human behavior. The operational utility of storytelling holds regardless of whether the mechanism is mirror neurons or simpler embodied-cognition processes. The bigger 2027 caveat: **product-led-growth** companies like **Slack**, **Figma**, **Notion**, and **Linear** bypass emotional-connection selling entirely — the **product itself** carries the trust signal. Bosworth's frameworks remain most relevant in **complex enterprise sales** where a human rep still owns the buyer relationship.

## FAQ

**Is this book worth reading if I already read Solution Selling?** Yes — it is the **counterweight** to Bosworth's earlier work. Solution Selling teaches the diagnostic logic; this book teaches the emotional layer that makes the diagnosis land. Read them together.

**How is this different from Challenger Sale?** **Challenger** (Dixon and Adamson, 2011) teaches reps to **confront and reframe**. Bosworth and Zoldan teach reps to **connect and story-tell**. Challenger is harder-edged; this book is softer and more relational. Top reps blend both.

**Has the mirror neuron science held up?** Partially. **Giacomo Rizzolatti's** original macaque findings stand, but the extension to human social cognition has been challenged by **Gregory Hickok** and others since **2015**. The behavioral observation — stories outperform data in persuasion — holds regardless of the underlying mechanism.

**Does this work in product-led-growth motions?** Less so. **PLG** companies like **Figma** and **Linear** let the product carry the trust signal, which compresses or eliminates the human-rep storytelling layer. The frameworks remain essential in **complex enterprise** and **strategic-account** sales.

**What's the single highest-leverage chapter?** Chapter 6 on the **Empathy Story**. Most reps skip the **"I worked with someone like you..."** pattern and jump straight to product. Adding 90 seconds of empathy-story opening to every discovery call is the highest-ROI behavior change in the book.

**How does this connect to Sales EQ and Science of Selling?** Bosworth and Zoldan are the **intellectual ancestors**. **Blount's Sales EQ** (2017) extends the emotional-intelligence frame into the full sales cycle. **Hoffeld's Science of Selling** (2016) deepens the neuroscience citations. Both authors credit Bosworth as the founder of the emotional-selling school.

## Bottom Line

Read **What Great Salespeople Do** if you are a **complex-deal enterprise rep**, a **sales manager** rebuilding a team's discovery discipline, or a **methodology nerd** tracing the lineage from **Bosworth → Hoffeld → Blount**. Monday morning, build your **Personal Connection Story** and your top three **Empathy Stories**, rehearse them out loud, and open your next discovery call with the connection story before any business question. The book matters because it is the **bridge** between the diagnostic 1990s methodologies and the emotion-aware AI-coached selling of the 2020s.

## Sources

- Michael Bosworth and Ben Zoldan — *What Great Salespeople Do: The Science of Selling Through Emotional Connection and the Power of Story* (McGraw-Hill, 2012)
- Michael Bosworth — *Solution Selling: Creating Buyers in Difficult Selling Markets* (McGraw-Hill, 1994) — bs0035
- Michael Bosworth and John Holland — *CustomerCentric Selling* (McGraw-Hill, 2003) — bs0037
- Antonio Damasio — *Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain* (Putnam, 1994)
- Daniel Kahneman — *Thinking, Fast and Slow* (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011)
- Joseph LeDoux — *The Emotional Brain* (Simon and Schuster, 1996)
- Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia — *Mirrors in the Brain* (Oxford University Press, 2008)
- Robert McKee — *Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting* (Regan Books, 1997)
- David Hoffeld — *The Science of Selling* (TarcherPerigee, 2016) — bs0062
- Jeb Blount — *Sales EQ* (Wiley, 2017) — bs0029
- Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson — *The Challenger Sale* (Portfolio, 2011) — bs0001
- Gregory Hickok — *The Myth of Mirror Neurons* (W. W. Norton, 2014)
- Gong Labs — *Revenue Intelligence Research* (2021-2026)
- Sales Performance International — Ben Zoldan founding-partner archives

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