To Sell Is Human by Daniel H. Pink
“We move better when we go beyond solving a puzzle to serving a person”
3 Main Messages:
Successful people need “flexible optimism - optimism with its eyes open.”
Schools “teach us how to answer, but not to ask.”
‘Selling’ is serving others - and we all do it.
Life is transactional. We have to weigh up how we spend or waste our time, how we earn or lose trust, how we build or lose a reputation, and how we pay attention. Money is clearly not the only thing being earned, spent, saved or lost, and some would argue that time, trust, reputation and attention are more important in the long run.
This is why Daniel H. Pink believes that we are all selling or being sold to, all the time. From childhood, when teachers and parents persuade us to read, through adulthood when spouses and society press us to relax, to our deathbed when doctors and loved ones permit us to release - life is full of examples of people trying to move others in one way or another.
Sometimes selling is an art in itself. Earlier this year I witnessed the most sophisticated upsell I’ve ever seen. In a bustling and friendly marketplace in Kazakhstan, my friend was looking to buy dried fruits to take back to his children in Scotland. We tried the dried mango and liked it, we tried the dried berries and liked them, we tried a whole variety of fruit and were blown away by the taste. The price was very reasonable and so we asked for a few bags.
But we weren’t done there as the trader also sold nuts. We tried the cashews, macadamias, walnuts and hazelnuts - they were exquisite! Yes, yes we’ll take a few bags of those too. Except, of course, that we hadn’t checked and the nuts were extortionately expensive. My friend spent somewhere in the region of £80 on family treats that day! Afterwards, he said that he didn’t mind at all as he was SO impressed with the selling technique of the market trader - he had turned it into an artform!
However, sales usually often had negative connotations. When Pink asked people to offer an adjective when thinking about ‘sales’ or ‘selling’, people said words like: pushy, yuck, sleazy, hard, difficult, dishonest, annoying, manipulative and smarmy. A few, however, dared to offer words such as necessary, fun, essential and important. Still, being told that ‘to sell is human’ is an intriguing suggestion.
Pink writes that ‘selling’ should instead be considered as “moving people” either to spend their time, attention, efforts or money with you. He believes that we NEED to be selling to people in order to influence, educate, heal and move people. He advocates for a win-win situation, when selling is not taking advantage of someone, but understanding their need and meeting it.
In order for this to happen he believes that there are new skills to be learned, the most important being ‘radical listening.’ If we can make our offers and suggestions personal and purposeful, then we are serving others and providing what they need. This requires what Pink calls a ‘chameleon effect’ where we need to listen deeply, attune and empathise, and then follow up with carefully crafted questions.
Much of selling is communication and Pink shares simple tips for being transparent, genuinely helpful, and standing out from the crowd, with messages that are meaningful, powerful and memorable. He emphasizes, however, that this is far removed from the image of yesterday's sleazy door-to-door salesperson, and much more about an alignment of need and offer so that everyone benefits.
In a world where it feels like we are always being distracted, sold to and manipulated, we could all do with adjusting our mindset towards how we move others. Everyone’s time and money is limited. That’s why I would highly recommend that the lessons in this book are ones that you can’t afford to miss.
