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To Sell Is Human
To Sell Is Human
com
To Sell is
Human
The Surprising Truth about Moving
Others
Daniel H. Pink
New York: Riverhead Books (2012)
www.15MinuteBusinessBooks.com
1. The only thing you got in this world is what you can sell. And the
funny thing is, youre a salesman, and you dont know that.
ARTHUR MILLER, Death of a Salesman (1949) 59
2. I am a salesman It turns out that I spend a significant portion of
my days trying to coax others to part with resources The vast
majority of time Im seeking resources other than money. 76
3. All of you are likely spending more time than you realize selling in a
broader sensepitching colleagues, persuading funders, cajoling
kids. Like it or not, were all in sales now. 81
4. Selling in all its dimensionswhether pushing Buicks on a car lot
or pitching ideas in a meetinghas changed more in the last ten
years than it did over the previous hundred. Most of what we think
we understand about selling is constructed atop a foundation of
assumptions that has crumbled. 88
5. Two months after Fullers bankruptcy announcement,
Encyclopdia Britannica, which rose to prominence because of its
door-to-door salesmen, shut down production of its print books. A
month later, Avonwhose salesladies once pressed doorbells
from Birmingham to Bangkokfired its CEO and sought survival in
the arms of a corporate suitor. 231
In a world where anybody can find anything with just a few
keystrokes, intermediaries like salespeople are superfluous. 236
In the same way that cash machines thinned the ranks of bank
tellers and digital switches made telephone operators all but
obsolete, todays technologies have rendered salesmen and
saleswomen irrelevant. 239
To Sell is Human
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7. Consider: The United States manufacturing economy, still the largest in the world, cranks out nearly $2 trillion worth
of goods each year. But the United States has far more salespeople than factory workers. 254
Americas sales force outnumbers the entire federal workforce by more than 5 to 1. 256
8. Physicians sell patients on a remedy. Lawyers sell juries on a verdict. Teachers sell students on the value of paying
attention in class. 296
Entrepreneurs woo funders, writers sweet-talk producers, coaches cajole players. Whatever our profession, we
deliver presentations to fellow employees and make pitches to new clients. 297
9. The conventional view of economic behavior is that the two most important activities are producing and
consuming. But today, much of what we do also seems to involve moving. 304
10. People are now spending about 40 percent of their time at work engaged in non-sales sellingpersuading,
influencing, and convincing others in ways that dont involve anyone making a purchase 318
roughly twenty-four minutes of every hour to moving others. 320
People consider this aspect of their work crucial to their professional successeven in excess of the considerable
amount of time they devote to it. 320
Most of us are movers; some of us are super-movers. 339
11. The existing data show that 1 in 9 Americans works in sales. But the new data reveal something more startling: So
do the other 8 in 9. They, too, are spending their days moving others and depending for their livelihoods on the
ability to do it well. 355
12. large operations discovered that segmenting job functions didnt work very well during volatile business
conditionsand because of that, they began demanding elastic skills that stretched across boundaries and included
a sales component. Meanwhile, the economy itself transformed so that in the blink of a decade, millions of additional
people began working in education and health caretwo sectors whose central purpose is moving others. Until
finally, in ways weve scarcely realized, most of us ended up in sales. 369
13. 30 percent of American workers now work on their own and by 2015, the number of nontraditional workers
worldwide (freelancers, contractors, consultants, and the like) will reach 1.3 billion. 404
14. The technologies that were supposed to make salespeople obsolete in fact have transformed more people into
sellers. 427
15. Today, there are seven billion people in the worldand six billion mobile cellular-phone subscriptions.12 449
16. a distinction between products people buy and products people are sold 468
17. When organizations were highly segmented, skills tended to be fixed. If you were an accountant, you did
accounting. 494
The same was true when business conditions were stable and predictable. 495
However, in the last decade, the circumstances that gave rise to fixed skills have disappeared. 497
18. People who dont have the power or authority from their job title have to find other ways to exert power. 515
19. To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resourcesnot to deprive that person, but to leave him
better off in the end. 543
20. When sellers know more than buyers, buyers must beware. 673
In a world of information asymmetry, the guiding principle is caveat emptorbuyer beware. 675
The balance has shifted. If youre a buyer and youve got just as much information as the seller, along with
the means to talk back, youre no longer the only one who needs to be on notice. In a world of information
parity, the new guiding principle is caveat venditorseller beware. 693
To Sell is Human
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To Sell is Human
The conventional
view of economic
behavior is that
the two most
important
activities are
producing and
consuming. But
today, much of
what we do also
seems to involve
moving. [304]
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To Sell is Human
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To Sell is Human
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To Sell is Human
The Surprising Truth about Moving Others
by Daniel H. Pink
New York: Riverhead Books (2012)
To Sell is Human
A couple of stories:
o
Napolean Hill and Anthony Robbins are now past their sell
date it is not self-talk, it is self-ask, with pre-brief, and
debrief
Negative self-talk is really bad
But positive self-talk doesnt quite work either
What you need is interrogative self-talk
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o
Maybe the big change -- from caveat emptor (Buyer Beware) to caveat venditor (Seller Beware)
Joe Girard is a reason why we had to live by caveat emptor. Tammy Darvish survivesand thrives
because she lives by caveat venditor 783
Ten Takeaways:
#1 Accept/Embrace your role in sales (Market yourself; get out there and sell!)
#2 Adopt the stance of collaborator
#3 Adopt the stance of problem identifier/problem finder
o Problem find is more valuable than Problem solve
#4 Adopt the stance of interrogator ask lots of questions
o Questions may trump (usually trump) statements
#5 Adopt the stance of listener
#6 Be Clear (and Short)
#7 Word choice really matters. Work diligently on your word choice
o Repetition, parallel structure, and rhyme
(If it doesnt fit, you must acquit)
o Don't forget contrast
o And, throw in an occasional mild profanity
#8 Practice, and make piece with, caveat venditor (seller beware)
#9 Regularly practice pre-brief, and debrief, self-meetings
#10 Use far more interrogative self-talk than positive self-talk (and very little negative self-talk but, some!)
o Embrace the positivity-negativity of 3-1 (but, you need some negativity)
Randy Mayeux
214.577.8025
r.mayeux@airmail.net
Randy blogs about business books at
www.FirstFridayBookSynopsis.com
Follow Randy on Twitter: @Randy1116
Synopses available at www.15MinuteBusinessBooks.com
To Sell is Human