Selling with Dan Pink

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

I’ve been reading a lot of business books lately, since leaving my 9 to 5 job in March, to really educate myself on the marketplace and how it works. I wasn’t educated in business, but I find that there is so much information available out there nowadays, that you can really learn anything you want to, without having to go to school.

Selling with Dan Pink

I want to review a few chapters of a book I’ve been reading. It’s by Dan Pink and it’s called ‘To Sell is Human: The surprising truth about moving others.’

I’m still reading this book but I’ve have gained so much value from what I’ve read so far that I had to share.

In the first chapter he introduces this idea of ‘Non-sales selling’. He says

“…everyday, we invest time and effort in an attempt to move others to see or do things a certain way …Whether we like it or not, we’re all in sales now..”

This idea really makes sense when you think about some examples – the doctor convinces her patients to follow through on treatment, the teacher convinces the students on the importance of paying attention, the employee sells her boss on getting a raise. The key idea I got from this is that sales is not just about exchanging tangible things but intangible things like time and attention.

The second chapter he explains how, more and more, people are involved in selling. People not only have to move clients and customers, but they’re also involved in moving fellow employees and coworkers. He describes how one of the fastest growing sectors Education and Healthcare, which is normally associated with soft skills such as caring and helping others, has a lot more in common with selling than we may have thought.

“To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources – not to deprive that person, but to leave him better off in the end.”

Which leads to the next chapter… Dan highlights what people generally think of salespeople…The highlights some of the words people used – they either described some form of aggression or deception. He goes on to explain why things have been that way.

He says the reason sales is slimy, slick, and sleazy is due to old conditions in which sales takes took place. Sellers used to have way more information than buyers i.e had all the power – a principle he calls caveat emptor – buyer beware. In this Information Age however, things have changed and the new guiding principle is caveat venditor – seller beware.

With buyers having more information, sellers have more incentives to be fair and honest. Old sales tricks don’t work anymore, instead what’s needed are skills that create more real and authentichuman connections.

I’ll continue in another post to describe, the tips I got from the book on how move people the natural way. If you want learn about what I found useful you’ll want to look out for that post.

If you want to see how the Empower Network can give you the leverage you need to survive in a competitive global marketplace, then click the man below.

To the future,

Brian Morris