Book Notes: “To Sell Is Human” – Chapters 4-6

Chapter 4 – Attunement

Instead of “always-be-closing,” Pink believes the new ABC’s of sales are attunement, buoyance, and clarity. He says the three aspects of attunement are, “perspective-taking,” empathy, and mimicking strategically.  Because power can sometimes create blind spots, assuming a lower position of power, Pink’s “perspective-taking,” allows a salesperson to better gain a prospect’s point of view.  Empathy helps build long-term relationships and “defuse conflicts.”  Strategically mimicking can make a strong connection (e.g., crossing one’s arms when another crosses hers).  Finally, a study revealed that ambiverts, or “people who are neither overly extraverted nor highly introverted,” sell the most. 

Quotes from the chapter:

• Attunement is the ability to bring one’s actions and outlook into harmony with other people and with the context you’re in.
• The key is to be strategic and human – to be strategic by being human.
• “The most common thread in the people who are really good at this is humility,” [Martin] told me.”

Chapter 5 – Buoyancy

In shadowing a salesman, the salesman calls the “no’s” he hears an ocean of rejection.  Pink states the way to float “amid that ocean of rejection” is the quality he calls “buoyancy.”  Before a sale, Pink says asking “can I fix it?” is better than an affirmation because it prompts “you to summon the resources and strategies to actually accomplish the task.”  During a sale, positivity allows a salesperson to be more creative in ways to solve prospects’ problems.  After a sale, having an optimistic explanation if the sale doesn’t close “can stir persistence, steady us during challenges, and stoke the confidence that we can influence our surroundings.”

Related quotes:

• But the most effective self-talk of all doesn’t merely shift emotions.  It shifts linguistic categories.  It moves from making statements to asking questions.
• Where negative emotions help us see trees, positive ones reveal forests.  And that, in turn, can aid in devising unexpected solutions to the buyer’s problem.
• In other words, the salespeople with an optimistic explanatory style – who saw rejections as temporary rather than permanent, specific rather than universal, and external rather than personal – sold more insurance and survived in their jobs much longer

Chapter 6 – Clarity

Pink opens by defining clarity as “the capacity to help others see their situations in fresh and more revealing ways and to identify problems they didn’t realize they had.”  Because of this, he says the best salespeople today ask questions instead of answer them.  Next, Pink touches on five frames that can help move people: the less frame, the experience frame, the label frame, the blemished frame, and the potential frame.  Lastly, he emphasizes the importance of giving a prospect a direction to move – a request with “a clear way to get it done.”

A couple of related quotes:

• If I know my problem, I can likely solve it.  If I don’t know my problem, I might need some help finding it.
• Framing people’s options in a way that restricts their choices can help them see those choices more clearly instead of overwhelming them.
• The somewhat peculiar upshot of the research, the scholars write, is that “the potential to be good at something can be preferred over actually being good at that very same thing.”