service tagged posts

To Sell Is Human: How to Toubleshoot Your Pedal Board

***This is my last post on Dan Pink’s book To Sell Is Human before it becomes available for purchase on 31 Dec 2012.  If you are quick, you can still pre-order it and qualify for a number of awesome freebies.  If you pick it up later, you lose the freebies!  Thanks to Dan Pink and his team for sharing an early copy of the book with me and letting me be a part of his Launch Team.***

The last principle from Dan Pink’s To Sell Is Human that I want to highlight is what he calls Clarity.  Pink writes that those working in sales, or who try to persuade people, need to focus on bringing clarity to people’s needs instead of simply trying to push a product or agenda.  It’s not about moving units off a shelf, cars off a lot, or making sure to up sell the lobster before it goes bad...

To Sell Is Human: Just Don’t Give Up

Staying afloat amidst a sea of rejection requires buoyancy.  Just don't give up because to sell is human.

Staying afloat amidst a sea of rejection requires buoyancy.

Dan Pink writes in To Sell Is Human, “Draw a map of the world of selling and the most prominent topographical feature is that deep and menacing ocean [of rejection].  Anyone who sells – whether they’re trying to convince customers to make a purchase or colleagues to make a change – must contend with wave after wave of rebuffs, refusals, and repudiations.  How to stay afloat amid that ocean of rejection is the second essential quality in moving others.  I call this quality ‘buoyancy’.”

One of the most important principles to successful sales, according to Dan Pink, and one with which I agree, is to be able to stay afloat.  You have to stay buoyant.  But I would add that the heart of buoyancy is, just don’t give up.

The problem...

To Sell Is Human: It’s Not About What You Know, It’s About Who You Are

Peddling our wares in Santa Monica, California because to Sell is Human.

Peddling our wares on the streets of Santa Monica, California

I realize now that I have worked in “sales” during many different parts of my life.  I write it with quotes because I haven’t been a traditional salesman in the sense of, “I have a product and I want to sell it to you for this much.”  But like Dan Pink says in his book To Sell Is Human, I have been in the business of moving others to action.  I’ve been a full-time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Argentina; I’ve been a door-to-door salesman for Dish Network; and for the majority of my life I’ve tried to “sell” my music and myself as an entertainer.  So, I’m familiar with trying to get someone to believe in you and buy what you’re selling...