Highly regarded author Daniel Pink looks at sales a little differently in his new book, To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others.
“When you go into certain types of encounters, whether it’s a sales call, asking someone out a date, or pitching an idea, the conventional view is that ahead of time we should pump ourselves up,” Pink said at a recent Greater Washington Board of Trade breakfast (published in The Washington Post). “We have our self talk: ‘You can do this.’ ‘I got this.’ The research shows you are actually better off asking yourself a question. Instead of saying you can do this, you are better off with interrogative self talk, asking, can you do this?
“Why? Questions by their very nature are active. If I ask questions, I start to think of answers. Can I do this? Yes, I’ve been in this place before. I’ve done my research. I know the objections, and I’m prepared to address them. I’ve got to remember to make this point. What you do in a more muscular way, is you prepare.”
Here are 3 more sales tips from Pink and 3 from the recent Breakthrough Conference:
1. The people who do best at selling are neither pure extroverts nor introverts; they are in the middle. Research from a Wharton study, said Pink, “shows extroverts are more likely to take sales jobs, extroverts are more likely to get hired, and extroverts are more likely to get promoted. But…the classic, glad-handing extroverts only did a little bit better than the introverts cowering in the corner…Why are the extroverts not very good? They don’t listen. They are too pushy. Why are [the introverts] not very good. They don’t assert. They are quiet. The people who are in the middle, they have the best of both worlds. They know when to talk. They know when to listen. They know when to push. They know when to hold back. They are much more attuned. The good news is most people are ambiverts.”
2. Look for buoyancy in sales reps. Amid what Pink calls the “ocean of rejection,” how do you remain afloat?
3. You must take the high road now in selling. “If you know a lot more than your prospect … if your prospect doesn’t have many choices, if your prospect has no means to talk back, you can totally take the low road. But that’s not our world,” Pink said. “We are basically forced to take the high road, and the high road requires a much more fundamental human approach: understand where other people are coming from, be clear, be honest, put the other’s person’s interest first, have an ethic of service. Those things might sound superficially touchy feely but they are actually very hard-headed ways to [sell] effectively.
4. Empower your sales people with information. The world has changed. There’s a new customer who has all the same information you do, George Colony, head of Forrester Research, told the Breakthrough audience. “To serve empowered customers you must empower your teams. You must support a constantly changing portfolio of channels. And you’d better coach your CEO; their average age is 59—they first went to work with Wite-Out and a typewriter. You have to educate them and educate their children.”
5. You need to move from a one-way organization to a partnership with customers, where you are interested in what will serve them. This comes from a session delivered by the leadership team at the Christian Science Monitor. “We moved from being a silo organization to a collaborative one, where we talk to each other all the time,” said Editor John Yemma. “The new generation is not reading like the old.”
6. Take the time to know what your customer wants to achieve. “This is a trend we see,” said Denzil Rankine, executive chairman of AMR International. “It’s not only a matter of fitting into your customers’ workflow; you need to understand what they’re trying to achieve.”
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Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @RonnatSIPA