To Sell Is Human summary

When most people think of selling, the first thing that springs to mind is a slick, pushy used-car salesman – a distinctly negative image.

Indeed, salespeople used to be able to get away with almost anything in the past, because it was the customer’s responsibility to not make a bad purchase, a policy known as caveat emptor – “buyer beware.” With used cars, for example, customers could be duped into overpaying for a poor product because the seller knew much more about it than the customer; there was an information asymmetry.   

Attunement, meaning our ability to see things from other people’s perspective and act accordingly, is vital for our ability to move others.

The stereotype is that successful salespeople are always fast-talking extroverts, but research has shown that being too extroverted can actually hurt sales. An overly gregarious showboat doesn’t listen to customers, much less see things from their perspective. In fact, the most successful salespeople are ambiverts, occupying the middle ground between introvert and extrovert. They are able to listen to customers, attune themselves to their perspective and then make the sale.

From a polite “no” to a slammed door in the face, every salesperson in the world has faced rejection. This is where buoyancy comes in, the ability to stay afloat in a sea of rejection and keep selling day after day, without losing faith. So what can you do before, during and after a sales call to stay buoyant?

Self-help authors have long advocated pumping yourself up with motivational self-declarations like, “I am the greatest!” when preparing for a difficult task. But research shows we should rather emulate Bob the Builder, who asks, “Can we fix it?”

Because many salespeople – as well as non-sales persuaders like teachers and doctors – have lost their value as providers of information, they must find a new way of moving people. One key way they can do this is by providing clarity: helping people see their situations in a fresh light and from new angles.

One effective way to do this is to find problems rather than solve them. Sure, consumers today can buy whatever vacuum cleaner they need online, but what if they’ve got their problem wrong? What if the problem is actually that their carpet gathers dust? A salesperson who identifies this problem provides a valuable service.

In 1853, in front of an enthralled audience, Elisha Otis took an axe and severed the cable of the open elevator he was standing in, some three stories off the ground. The audience gasped in fright, but the elevator barely budged.

Otis had just proven that his new automatic safety break worked. Both his invention and his method of moving people with a simple, short and effective pitch proliferated rapidly.

Just like actors in a theater, salespeople used to rely on pre-prepared scripts: Each sales call was to follow a set course that had been determined to produce results. In some companies, even the body language of salespeople was scripted.

But today’s dynamic and complex sales environment demands a more versatile approach than the mere robotic reading of sales scripts. Just as unscripted, improvisational theater – improv – reinvented classical theater by focusing on open-mindedness and cultivating the interaction between actors, so can the same elements help in making a sale today.

Today, moving people must be about something greater than a mere exchange of resources. To be successful, you must make your efforts personal and purposeful.

Making it personal means focusing on being of service to the person you see rather than seeing them in abstract terms as customer X, student Y or patient Z. Research has shown that radiologists do a far better job of reading people’s X-rays if they also see a photograph of the person in question. Seeing a human face reminds them that they are working for this person’s benefit.