Last Updated on February 1, 2024 by admin

Title: Rethinking Sales: Why We’re All In Sales Now

The author decided to examine his own time management and realized he spent a significant portion of his days trying to convince others to part with resources
He discovered that he was essentially a salesman, even though he didn’t sell physical products or services for money
Upon closer examination, most people will realize they are also spending a lot of time selling in a broader sense, whether it’s pitching ideas in a meeting or persuading kids to do something
However, many people have a negative perception of sales, viewing it as a task for slick and deceitful individuals or as an unpleasant and unclean job
The author argues that selling has changed significantly in the past decade, and our assumptions about it are outdated
In Part One of the book, the author lays out the arguments for rethinking sales as we know it
Chapter 1 refutes the idea that salespeople are dying out in the digital age, as traditional sales still exist and make up a significant portion of the workforce, even if the products and methods have changed.

Title: The Rise of Non-Sales Selling

8 out of 9 people are engaged in non-sales selling, which includes persuading, convincing, and influencing others to give up something they have in exchange for what the seller has.
Up to 40% of people’s time on the job is devoted to moving others, which is considered critical to professional success.
The workplace transformation is due to entrepreneurship, elasticity, and Ed-Med.
The use of technology has lowered the barriers to entry for small entrepreneurs, turning more people into sellers.
Most people’s skills on the job must now stretch across boundaries, encompassing traditional sales and a lot of non-sales selling.
The fastest-growing industries around the world are educational services and health care, which are all about moving people.
The balance of power has shifted from caveat emptor to caveat venditor, where honesty, fairness, and transparency are often the only viable path.
The three qualities that are most valuable in moving others are Attunement, Buoyancy, and Clarity.
Attunement is about bringing oneself into harmony with individuals, groups, and contexts, and extraverts rarely make the best salespeople.
Buoyancy combines grittiness of spirit and sunniness of outlook, and actually believing in what you’re selling has become essential on sales’ new terrain.
Clarity is the capacity to make sense of murky situations, and what matters more today is problem finding.
Part Three describes the abilities that matter most in moving others.

Chapter 7: Pitch

Elevator pitches have become outdated in today’s world of dwindling attention spans and people constantly looking at their phones.
The chapter covers the six successors of the elevator pitch and how and when to deploy them.

Chapter 8: Improvise

This chapter covers what to do when perfectly attuned, appropriately buoyant, ultra-clear pitches inevitably go awry.
Readers will meet a veteran improv artist and see why understanding the rules of improvisational theater can deepen persuasive powers.

Chapter 9: Serve

This chapter covers the two essential principles for sales or non-sales selling to have any meaning: Make it personal and make it purposeful.

Sample Cases

At the end of each chapter in Parts Two and Three, there are dozens of smart techniques assembled from fresh research and best practices around the world.
These collections of tools and tips, assessments and exercises, checklists and reading recommendations are called “Sample Cases” in homage to traveling salesmen who toted bags bulging with their wares from town to town.

Overall message

The author hopes that readers will become more effective at moving others by putting the ideas presented in the book into action.
The author also wants readers to see selling in a new light and understand that it is fundamentally human.
The ability to move others to exchange what they have for what we have is crucial to our survival and happiness and has helped our species evolve, lift our living standards, and enhance our daily lives.

Title: The Last Fuller Brush Salesman

Norman Hall is a Fuller Brush salesman.
He is the last one in San Francisco.
Hall visits a law office where he tries to sell some of his products.
He shows a feather duster, a kitchen brush, microfiber cloths, an anti-fog cloth, laundry spot remover, moth deodorant blocks, stainless-steel sponges, and an electrostatic carpet sweeper.
The lawyers are not interested in most of the products.
However, they buy the stainless-steel sponges and the electrostatic carpet sweeper.
Hall is 75 years old and looks like a dapper professor.
He carries a leather three-ring binder with product pictures.
He sells his products through direct selling.
The Fuller Brush Company was founded in 1906.
Fuller Brush salesmen were once a common sight in American households.
Fuller Brush Company went bankrupt in 1994.
The Fuller Brush Company was revived in 2012.
Hall is one of the last remaining Fuller Brush salesmen in America.

The Last Fuller Brush Man

The Fuller Brush Man was a popular door-to-door salesman in the United States in the mid-20th century, offering brushes and other cleaning products.
Started by Alfred Fuller, a Nova Scotia farm boy who arrived in Boston in 1903 and began selling brushes for the Somerville Brush and Mop Company.
Fuller eventually set up his own brush manufacturing workshop and began selling his own products door-to-door.
By the late 1930s, Fuller had over 5,000 salespeople and had given away 12.5 million Handy Brushes in 1937 alone.
By 1948, Fuller salesmen were making nearly 50 million house-to-house sales calls in the United States.
The Fuller Brush Man became a cultural icon and a fixture in popular culture, appearing in cartoons, movies, and even Dolly Parton songs.

Title: The Last Fuller Brush Man

The Fuller Brush Man was a door-to-door salesman who sold brushes and other household items.
The Fuller Brush Man was skilled in his art of opening doors and his ability to sell brushes was regarded as poetry.
The Fuller Brush Man was also virtuous and provided a range of services to his customers, including pulling teeth, massaging headaches, and preventing suicides.
The Fuller Brush Company filed for bankruptcy in 2012 under Chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy law.
Norman Hall is the last remaining Fuller Brush Man who still works in San Francisco, California.
Hall walks five to six miles each day and has a garage full of Fuller items, but his connection to the struggling parent company is minimal.
Hall’s customers have dwindled, his orders have declined, and his profits have shrunk due to the rise of online shopping and a lack of interest in brushes.
Hall now only spends two days a week selling his products and believes that people do not want to do this kind of work anymore.
The collapse of selling companies such as Encyclopædia Britannica and Avon seemed inevitable, marking the end of an era for door-to-door sales.

Title: Salespeople aren’t dead yet

The song referencing Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman suggests that salespeople are irrelevant in a world where information is easily accessible through technology.
Salespeople are seen as intermediaries who slow down the transaction process and add unnecessary expenses.
Consumers can do their own research and get buying advice from social networks while large companies can streamline their procurement processes with software.
The decrease in the need for salespeople is compared to the decrease in bank tellers and telephone operators due to technology.
Norman Hall is the last of his kind as a salesman for the Fuller Brush Company, but the notion that salespeople and sales in general are dead is incorrect.
The Occupational Employment Statistics program of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals that one out of every nine American workers is in sales.
Sales jobs are still in demand and offer high earning potential.
Selling is an important aspect of business and continues to evolve with technology advancements.
The idea of a “birth announcement” for selling in the 21st century is suggested as salespeople adapt to new technologies and changing consumer behaviors.

Title: The Role of Salespeople in the Global Economy

Over 15 million people work in sales in the US.
The US has more salespeople than factory workers and the federal workforce combined.
Sales is the second-largest occupational category in the American workforce.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the US will add nearly two million new sales jobs by 2020.
The Internet has not had a significant impact on sales jobs in the US.
Sales and service occupations constitute slightly more than 25% of the Canadian workforce.
About 10% of the Australian labor force falls under the heading “sales workers.”
In the United Kingdom, around 1 in 10 workers are involved in selling.
In the entire European Union, about 13% of the labor force works in sales.
Japan has over 8.6 million sales workers, meaning more than 1 out of 8 workers in Japan are in sales.
India and China likely have a smaller proportion of salespeople relative to more developed markets.
A large proportion of people in India and China still work in agriculture.

Title: The Rise of Non-Sales Selling

Sales jobs are projected to expand in India, with the pharmaceutical industry expected to triple its cadre of drug representatives to 300,000 employees by 2020.
Sales jobs have remained a stalwart part of labor markets even as advanced economies have transformed.
Many professions involve selling in a broader sense, such as persuading, influencing, and convincing others.
This activity never shows up in the data tables, as statistical agencies do not ask about it.
People also devote spare time to non-sales selling, such as selling handmade crafts on Etsy or promoting causes on DonorsChoose.
The conventional view of economic behavior involving producing and consuming may not be accurate, as much of what we do involves moving others to part with resources.
A survey commissioned with Qualtrics aimed to uncover how much time and energy people devote to moving others, including non-sales selling.

The What Do You Do at Work? survey

9,057 respondents participated in the survey
The data was gathered using sophisticated research tools
Qualtrics statisticians reviewed the responses and assessed the sample size and composition
The study was limited to an adjusted sample of more than 7,000 adult full-time workers in the United States
People are spending about 40 percent of their time at work engaged in non-sales selling
People consider non-sales selling crucial to their professional success
Respondents reported spending the most time on reading and responding to emails, followed by face-to-face conversations and attending meetings
Nearly 37 percent of respondents said they devoted a significant amount of time to teaching, coaching, or instructing others
Thirty-nine percent said the same about serving clients or customers
Nearly 70 percent reported that they spent at least some of their time persuading or convincing others
The average percentage of work that involves convincing or persuading people to give up something they value for something you have is 41 percent
Many people are spending a decent amount of time trying to move others, but for some, moving others is the mainstay of their jobs.

Title: The Value of Non-Sales Selling Tasks

Respondents consider non-sales selling tasks as critical components in their professional success.
Processing information is the task that respondents spent the most time on.
Serving clients and customers and teaching, coaching, and instructing others are ranked higher in the list of tasks that are most vital in doing their job well.
More than half of respondents said that pitching ideas was important to their success, despite ranking it relatively low on the list of how they allocated their time.
The graph shows the interplay between what people find valuable and what they actually do.
The vertical axis is a weighted index showing the level of importance assigned to non-sales selling tasks.
The horizontal axis is an index showing how much time people actually spent on these tasks.
The diagonal line indicates a perfect match between time spent and importance.
Activities plotted below that line indicate that people are expending time on something that’s not commensurately important and presumably should be doing it less.
Activities plotted above that line indicate that they are critical and people should be devoting even more time to them.

Title: We’re All in Sales Now

Non-sales selling is high in importance and time spent
Older individuals with more experience spend more time moving others and attribute their success to it
1 in 9 Americans works in sales, but the new data reveal that the other 8 in 9 also spend their days moving others
Entrepreneurship, elasticity, and ed-med have led to the transformation of the economy and increased demand for sales skills
Many individuals are now working in education and healthcare sectors where moving others is central to their purpose
Brooklyn Brine, a small company selling artisanal pickled vegetables, exemplifies the new economy where selling in all its dimensions is becoming important

Title: The Rise of Small Entrepreneurs

Small enterprises have fundamentally different operations from large organizations
Large companies rely on specialization while small companies require individuals to wear multiple hats
Shamus Jones, founder of Brooklyn Brine, started his business from scratch and now spends his time selling his products and influencing employees
Small enterprises have increased in the last decade, with more than 21 million “non-employer” businesses in the American economy
IDC estimates that 30% of American workers are nontraditional workers and the number is expected to reach 1.3 billion worldwide by 2015
The ranks of independent entrepreneurs in the US may grow by 65 million in the rest of the decade and could become the majority of the American workforce by 2020.

Title: The Rise of Micro-Entrepreneurship

54% of 18-34-year-olds either want to start their own business or have already done so, according to research by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
In 16 OECD countries, over 90% of businesses have less than 10 employees, and the percentage of people who are nascent entrepreneurs or owner-managers of new businesses is higher in markets such as China, Thailand, and Brazil than in the US or UK.
38% of respondents in a survey on micro-entrepreneurship said they work for themselves or run their own business, even on the side.
Lawrence Katz, a top labor economist, projects that middle-class employment of the future won’t be employees of large organizations, but self-sufficient “artisans.”
Micro-entrepreneurs are selling all the time and may be the future of the economy.

Title: The Rise of the Entrepreneurial Salesperson

Salespeople are now responsible for the entire operation, including business partnerships, supplier negotiations, and employee motivation.
Technologies that were supposed to replace salespeople have actually transformed more people into sellers, such as Etsy and eBay.
Kickstarter has allowed entrepreneurs to post creative projects and try to sell them to funders, surpassing the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts as the largest backer of arts projects in just three years.
Smartphones have created an app economy, allowing anyone with a phone to become a shopkeeper, and new technologies like Square, PayHere, and GoPayment make it easier for individuals to accept credit card payments directly on their mobile devices.
There are currently 6 billion mobile cellular-phone subscriptions worldwide, and Cisco predicts that by 2016, there will be ten billion smartphones – more than human beings.
A world of entrepreneurs is a world of salespeople, and being an entrepreneur could become the norm rather than the exception.

Title: The Elasticity of Sales

Atlassian is a company that builds enterprise software used by businesses and governments to manage projects and foster collaboration among employees.
The company has 1,200 customers in 53 countries, including Microsoft, Air New Zealand, Samsung, and the United Nations, and generates $100 million in revenue.
Atlassian does not have any salespeople, but instead relies on its support staff and engineers to offer assistance to potential customers who initiate the relationship themselves by downloading a trial version of one of the company’s products.
The employees who offer support do not use traditional sales tactics, but rather simply help people understand the software, knowing that their assistance can move wavering buyers to make a purchase.
Engineers at Atlassian are also involved in sales, as their job involves discovering customers’ needs, understanding how the products are used, and building something unique and exciting that someone will be moved to buy.
At Palantir, a company that develops software to combat terrorism and crime, there are also no salespeople.
Instead, the company relies on “forward-deployed engineers” who interact directly with customers and make sure the product is meeting their needs.
Shyam Sankar, who directs Palantir’s band of forward-deployed engineers, believes that the traditional approach of using account executives or salespeople to handhold the customer and ensure their satisfaction does not work.

Note: The article discusses the idea of “elasticity” in sales, where traditional sales roles are replaced by a more collaborative approach that involves multiple employees across various departments.

Title: The Importance of Elastic Skills in Today’s Business World

In the past, skills were fixed and segmented, but the current business world requires elasticity of skills.
Organizations have become flatter and more varied, while business conditions have become more unpredictable and tumultuous.
Elastic skills require individuals to stretch across functional boundaries and move others.
Atlassian and Palantir put computer scientists in the field to interact with customers and identify new problems.
Atlassian requires new hires to read two books: one about the September 11 attacks and another about improvisational acting to develop elasticity.
Valerie Coenen, a terrestrial ecologist, must use her technical skills and also submit proposals, pitch her services, and sell her services within the company.
Sharon Twiss, a content strategist, must use persuasion in almost everything she does.
Elastic skills are necessary for success in today’s business world.

Title: The Elasticity of Skills is Reshaping Job Titles

People who do not have power or authority from their job title are finding other ways to exert power
Elasticity of skills has begun to reshape job titles
Timothy Shriver Jr. is the Chief Movement Officer at The Future Project, a nonprofit that connects secondary school students with interesting projects to adults who can coach them
Gwynne Shotwell, President of SpaceX, deals with selling every day on top of her operational and managerial duties
Larry Ferlazzo, a high school teacher, and Jan Judson, a nurse-practitioner, represent the fastest-growing job sector in the US and other advanced economies
The U.S. Occupational Employment Statistics program provides an analysis of twenty-two major occupational groups and nearly eight hundred detailed occupations
The Monthly Employment Report shows a remarkable trend in employment in manufacturing, retail trade, professional and business services, and education and health services.

Title: The Rise of Ed-Med Jobs in the US Economy

The manufacturing sector has been declining for 40 years, but as recently as the late 1990s, the US still employed more people in that sector than in professional and business services.
Professional and business services took over the lead from manufacturing ten years ago, but their ascendance was short-lived.
Education and health services, or Ed-Med, is now the largest job sector in the US economy, as well as a fast-growing sector worldwide.
Ed-Med generates significantly more new jobs in the US than all other sectors combined.
Over the next decade, health care jobs alone will grow at double the rate of any other sector.
Ed-Med has a singular mission of moving people, as teachers want to move people and the majority of what health care professionals do is to move people.
Education and health care have more in common with the sharp-edged world of selling than we realize, as both require convincing someone to part with resources to leave them better off in the end.
Teaching and healing are not the same as selling electrostatic carpet sweepers as a healthy and educated population is a public good.
Ferlazzo distinguishes between irritation and agitation, where irritation is challenging people to do something that we want them to do, and agitation is challenging them to do something that they want to do.
To move people fully and deeply requires looking at the student or patient as a full participant in the game.

Title: The Principle of Moving Others

Moving others relies on the qualities of attunement and clarity.
Leading with ears instead of the mouth is key to the principle of moving others.
Ferlazzo, a teacher, convinced a struggling student, John, to write an essay by framing it in the context of his interest in football.
The approach helped John develop writing skills and he eventually wrote two good essays.
Ferlazzo’s wife, a healthcare professional, involves patients in their healing process by asking for their expertise.
Non-sales selling is the ability to influence, persuade, and change behavior while balancing what others want and what can be provided.
The rising prominence of the Ed-Med sector is potentially transformative.
The Ed-Med sector may lead to a “white coat/white chalk” economy where moving others is at the core.
Four questions to determine if one is in the moving business are asked.

Title: Are You in Sales?

If someone earns their living by convincing others to purchase goods or services, they are in sales.
If someone works for themselves or runs their own operation, they are likely involved in a mix of traditional sales and non-sales selling.
If someone’s work requires elastic skills such as the ability to work outside their specialty, they are almost certainly in sales, mostly non-sales selling.
If someone works in education or healthcare, they are in sales, specifically the new world of non-sales selling.
If someone does not meet any of the above criteria, they are not in sales.
Sales has a negative reputation, often being associated with greed and misdeeds.
The next chapter will provide a picture to support this negative reputation.

From Caveat Emptor to Caveat Venditor

The author conducted a survey asking people about their perception of sales and the first word that comes to mind.
The most common answer was “money” and the top ten included words like “pitch,” “marketing,” and “persuasion.”
The author created a word cloud of the twenty-five adjectives and interjections people offered most frequently when prompted to think of “sales” or “selling.”
“Pushy” was the most frequent adjective or interjection and the fourth-most-mentioned word overall.
Adjectives and interjections reveal people’s attitudes and most of the words were negative, including “slimy,” “smarmy,” “sleazy,” “dishonest,” “manipulative,” and “fake.”
The word cloud also showed that selling makes many people uncomfortable and even disgusted, in part because they believe its practice revolves around duplicity, dissembling, and double-dealing.
The author asked a related question about the first picture that comes to mind when thinking of “sales” or “selling.”
The top five responses involved a man in a suit selling a car, generally a used one, and “car salesman” and “used-car salesman” were the top two responses.
The image that formed in respondents’ minds was uniformly male, with very few using the gender-neutral term “salesperson” and nobody answering “saleswoman.”

Title: Myth of Selling Being Deceitful

The first word cloud portrays sales as distasteful and deceitful
The second word cloud shows that successful salespeople prioritize relationships, listening, and helping customers
The beliefs shown in the first image are outdated and not inherently wrong
In 1967, George Akerlof wrote a paper about the used-car market, identifying a weakness in traditional economic reasoning
Akerlof’s paper, “The Market for ‘Lemons’: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism,” is one of the most cited economics papers of the last fifty years and earned him a Nobel Prize
Akerlof’s paper illustrated how asymmetrical information creates problems in transactions and can drive out honest sellers, leaving only shysters and charlatans in the market
The same reasoning applies to insurance, credit, and labor
Dishonest dealings tend to drive out honest dealings in the market.

Title: Information Parity in the Market

Akerlof’s commercial landscape is characterized by information asymmetry where sellers have more information than buyers.
Ways to make the commercial landscape less forbidding include warranties, brand names, lemon laws, and caveat emptor principle.
In a world of information parity, buyers and sellers have roughly equal access to relevant information.
In the market for used cars, buyers can arm themselves with relevant information before approaching a seller, such as online searches, social networks, forums, and price comparisons.
Buyers today are not hapless victims of asymmetrical information they once were, but they are not fully informed in the idealized way of many economic models.
In a world of information parity, the new guiding principle is caveat venditor – seller beware.
Joe Girard, the world’s greatest salesman, sold 1,425 cars at Merollis Chevrolet in Detroit in one year by doing whatever it takes to put buyers in a Chevy Malibu.
Information parity in the market empowers buyers and makes sellers more accountable.

Title: How to Sell Anything to Anybody

The author of the book, “How to Sell Anything to Anybody” claims to have sold over $5 billion worth of products and services.
The book has sold over 2 million copies.
The author shares his secrets to selling with live audiences around the world.
The centerpiece of his system is “Girard’s Rule of 250” which states that each person has a network of 250 people that they can potentially sell to.
The author promises that his system will work if followed correctly.

Title: The World of Sales: Old Tactics and New Realities

Joe Girard, known as the world’s greatest salesman, files Mr. Kowalski’s name in his calendar to call him and moves on to the next name on his list, stating that there are many Kowalskis if one keeps searching.
Girard hasn’t sold a car since 1977 and has been teaching others how to sell for more than three decades.
Girard insists that the world of sales hasn’t changed since he last commanded the showroom and that he doesn’t need the Internet or ample access to information to alter the sales process.
Girard advocates service after the sale and believes that people want a fair deal from someone they like.
Tammy Darvish, vice president of DARCARS Automotive Group, has watched the decline of information asymmetry reshape her business in the last thirty years and acknowledges that customers are often more educated than salespeople.
Darvish started in the car industry as a junior sales consultant facing skepticism due to being a twenty-year-old woman and the boss’s daughter in a heavily male field.
Darvish believes in building relationships with customers and providing them with a positive buying experience.

Title: The Shift in Sales Practices

When buyers have more information than sellers, sellers become curators and clarifiers of information
DARCARS has a policy of rarely hiring experienced salespeople to avoid bad habits and old-school perspectives
Sales training programs can turn people into selling robots, so DARCARS focuses on customer service and social media in their training
The qualities that make someone effective in sales have shifted to include empathy and persistence
The decline of information asymmetry hasn’t ended all forms of lying and cheating, but caveat venditor (let the seller beware) is becoming more prevalent in sales
Caveat venditor extends beyond car sales to most encounters that involve moving others, including travel and job sales

Title: The New Rules of Caveat Venditor in the Ed-Med Sector

The new rules of caveat venditor apply to the Ed-Med sector
Access to information has shifted the balance of power from educators and health care professionals to patients and students
Educators and health care professionals can no longer rely on information asymmetry to maintain authority
The Ed-Med sector must adapt to these changes

Title: A Tale of Two Saturdays

Steve Kemp runs SK Motors, a used car dealership in Lanham, Maryland
The dealership has an old-fashioned feel and offers free detailing to the teacher of the month
Two salesmen, Frank and Wayne, wait for customers on a busy Saturday morning
The dealership has a diverse inventory of about fifty cars, from a Mercedes-Benz SL to a Hyundai Elantra
The salesmen work hard to close deals and make sales on this busy day

Title: A day in the life of a used-car dealership

The article describes a day at SK Motors, a used-car dealership.
The protagonist, a journalist, observes the sales process.
Two salespeople, Frank and Wayne, are introduced along with a potential buyer – a young man and his father.
The young man is interested in a Nissan Altima but ends up settling for a 1993 Ford Escort due to his financial constraints.
The dealership runs a credit check on the young man and discovers he has a history of collection actions and repossessions.
The dealership offers the young man a loan with a high-interest rate and a tracking device attached to the car, but he cannot afford the down payment.
Two other potential customers come in but do not make any purchase.
A man in a cowboy hat buys a burnt-orange Acura for $3,200, which is the dealership’s first sale of the day.
The dealership sells a 2003 Dodge Stratus to a woman in need of a car for her teenage son later in the day.
The article compares SK Motors to CarMax, a larger dealership with more information available to customers.

Title: The Rise of Non-Sales Selling

CarMax was launched in 1993 to change the way Americans buy used cars and is now a Fortune 500 company selling over 400,000 vehicles annually with $9 billion in revenue.
CarMax established a set price for each car eliminating the need for haggling.
Salespeople at CarMax earn commissions, but they are not based on the price of the car, which reduces the fear of a pushy salesman.
CarMax provides information reports on the vehicle’s condition or history for free and offers warranties, certifications, and guarantees to address quality concerns.
Each salesperson at CarMax sits at a small desk with a computer positioned off to the side so that both buyer and seller can see it at the same time, promoting information symmetry.
CarMax’s approach has been successful, with more customers showing up in the first fifteen minutes than SK Motors had all day.
The idea that everyone is in sales has become increasingly important, with honesty, directness, and transparency becoming the better, more pragmatic, long-term route.
The myth that salespeople are not smart is untrue as moving people now requires more sophisticated skills and intellect.
The myth of the moneygrubber, that being effective in sales requires being greedy, is also untrue, as money is not the driving force for the majority of people in traditional sales.

The Myth of the Natural Salesperson

Many people believe in the myth of the natural salesperson
Some think that people are either born with sales skills or they are not
This is a paradox because there are no natural salespeople
We all have a selling instinct because we are human
Anyone can master the basics of moving others

How to Be

Part two of the book will show how to become a better salesperson
It will provide tips and strategies to improve sales skills
It will teach how to connect with customers and build relationships
It will also cover the importance of understanding customer needs and how to effectively communicate with them.

Title: Attunement Techniques for Effective Communication

Conversations are the most powerful form of attunement which help in understanding and connecting with others.
The best way to start a conversation with someone you don’t know well is by asking them, “Where are you from?”.
This question allows the other person to respond in a myriad of ways and opens things up rather than shutting them down.
Strategic mimicry is an important technique for effective communication.
The three key steps for strategic mimicry are Watch, Wait, and Wane.
Watch and observe the other person’s body language, tone, expressions, and gestures.
Wait and let the situation breathe before mimicking the other person’s behavior.
Wane and try to be less conscious of what you’re doing, and let it feel effortless.
The objective of strategic mimicry is to be strategic by being human and not to be false or deceptive.
Subtle mimicry comes across as a form of flattery and can help in closing deals.
Pull up a chair is a technique used by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, which involves sitting with customers to get feedback and understand their needs and preferences.

Summary: Attuning Yourself to Others

Amazon includes an empty chair in important meetings to remind attendees of the customer’s importance.
The empty chair technique can be applied to other scenarios, such as presentations and lesson plans.
Adam Grant’s research shows that ambiverts are the most effective salespeople.
Take the introversion-extraversion assessment to determine if you are an ambivert.
Those who test as an extravert should practice introverted skills, such as asking questions and listening more.
Those who test as an introvert should practice extraverted skills, such as speaking up and stating their point of view.
Most people are in the middle of the introversion-extraversion scale, allowing them to attune themselves as needed.
Cathy Salit’s “Conversation with a Time Traveler” exercise can help hone attunement skills by challenging assumptions about the understandability of a message.

Title: Two Maps to Help You Understand Group Dynamics

Discussion Map: – A map to understand social cartography in a meeting – Draw a diagram of where each person is sitting and mark an X next to the name of the person who speaks first – Each time someone speaks, add an X next to their name – If someone directs comments to a particular person, draw a line from the speaker to the recipient – After the meeting, get a visual representation of who talked the most, who sat out, and who was the target of people’s criticisms or blandishments – Can be used for conference calls too – Example shows that JW talked the most, comments were directed at AB and SL and KC barely participated

Mood Map: – A map to track the mood in a particular context over time – In a meeting that involves moving others, note the mood at the beginning of the session on a scale from 1 to 10 – Check the mood again at what you think is the midpoint of the meeting and write down the number – Do the same at the end of the meeting – Helps to understand whether the mood improved, deteriorated or remained the same

Note: Both maps can help gain a clear sense of group dynamics and understand social interactions in different contexts.

Title: Tips for Attunement and Persuasion

Attunement is the ability to accurately read and understand people and situations.
Attunement can be improved by playing a team exercise called “Mirror, Mirror” where individuals change aspects of their appearance and their partner must identify the changes.
Attunement can also be improved by finding uncommon commonalities with others, such as shared interests or experiences.
Interrogative self-talk, where one poses a question instead of making declarations or affirmations, can be more effective in persuading others.
To monitor positivity ratio, aim for a balance of three positive emotions to one negative emotion.

Title: Embrace Rejection: How to Turn a “No” into a Positive

Jay Goldberg, founder of Bergino Baseball Clubhouse, wanted a job in Major League Baseball (MLB).
Goldberg sent letters to all twenty-six MLB teams asking for an interview or internship, but only one team didn’t respond and the remaining 25 rejected him.
Goldberg framed each rejection letter and hung them on his office wall as a reminder of persistence and not giving up.
When he launched his own sports agency in the 1990s, representatives of some of the teams that rejected him saw their earlier decision on his wall.

Title: The Power of Negative Thinking

Negativity and negative emotions are crucial for survival as they prevent unproductive behaviors from becoming habits and deliver useful information on our efforts.
Appropriate negativity, such as anger, hostility, disgust, and resentment, can serve a productive purpose and can be used as an impetus to improve.
Defensive pessimism, thinking through gloom-and-doom scenarios and mentally preparing for the worst that can occur, helps some people effectively manage their anxieties.
Writing a rejection letter to yourself can reduce the sting of rejection and reveal soft spots in what you’re presenting, which you can then work to strengthen.
Michael Pantalon’s motivational interviewing technique uses questions to tap into people’s inner drives for behavior change. One effective tool is to clarify others’ motives with two “irrational” questions.

Title: Techniques for Moving Others

Rational questions are not effective for motivating resistant people
Irrational questions are better for motivating people
Asking someone to rate their readiness on a scale of 1 to 10 and then asking why they didn’t choose a lower number can expose an apparent “No” as an actual “Maybe”
This technique can help people clarify their personal, positive, and intrinsic motives for taking action
Giving yourself a jolt of the unfamiliar can help bring clarity to your life
A mini, half, or full jolt can be used to achieve this
Curating information is important to make sense of the world
The three-step process for curation involves seeking, scanning, and sharing the most interesting items

Content Curation: An Art and a Science

Content curation involves gathering, organizing, and sharing information from various sources.
The first step in content curation is to identify reliable sources of information.
Once you have identified the sources, you need to capture the information and organize it in a meaningful way.
Sense-making is the process of adding value to the material you have collected by creating meaning out of it.
You can share the curated content with your colleagues, prospects, or social network through email, newsletters, or social media platforms.
Content curation requires daily practice to be effective.
Beth Kanter’s “Content Curation Primer” can provide more insight into content curation.

Question Formulation Technique

The ability to ask the right questions is more valuable than having the right answers.
Unfortunately, schools often emphasize answering questions rather than asking them.
The Right Question Institute has developed a method to help students learn to ask better questions.
The Question Formulation Technique can be useful in various contexts, including sales calls and interpersonal relationships.

How to Ask Powerful Questions

Step 1: Produce your questions

Write down as many questions as you can without judging or answering them.
Change any statements to questions.

Step 2: Improve your questions

Categorize each question as either “closed-ended” or “open-ended”.
Think about the advantages and disadvantages of each type.
Create an open-ended question for a few closed-ended questions.
Create a closed-ended question for a few open-ended questions.

Step 3: Prioritize your questions

Choose the three most important questions.
Edit them one more time to make them ultra-clear.

Recommended Books

“Influence: Science and Practice” by Robert Cialdini.
“Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
“Switch” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
“Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think” by Brian Wansink.
“Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness” by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein.

Ask the Five Whys

Ask a “Why?” question to figure out what kind of problem someone has.
Ask a total of five “Why?” questions in response to their answers.
This exercise can help uncover hidden problems that need solving.

Title: Focus on the One Percent

In law school, the author learned from Professor Harold Hongju Koh that to understand the law or anything, it is important to focus on the “one percent” that gives life to the other ninety-nine.
Understanding and being able to explain that one percent is the hallmark of strong minds and good attorneys.
The same logic applies to clarity in communication, whether selling computers or pitching a new bedtime to a child.
The key is to ask oneself, “What’s the one percent?” and be able to convey it to others.
To perfect the six pitches, one must practice, practice, practice.
The six pitches are the one-word pitch, question pitch, rhyming pitch, subject line pitch, Twitter pitch, and Pixar pitch.
Pro tips for each pitch include reducing a fifty-word pitch to six words for the one-word pitch, using strong arguments for the question pitch, using a rhyming dictionary for the rhyming pitch, reviewing the subject lines of the last twenty emails for the subject line pitch, limiting the Twitter pitch to 120 characters, and following the Pixar formula for the Pixar pitch.

Title: Tips for Crafting and Improving Your Pitch

Pixar Pitch Pro tip: Read all twenty-two of former Pixar story artist Emma Coats’s story rules
As you prepare your pitch, clarify your purpose and strategy by answering these three questions: What do you want them to know? What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to do?
Keep a pitch notebook and jot down the great pitches you hear as you’re moving through the world to make yourself aware of all the pitches in your midst and to see which techniques move others.
Try recording your practice pitches and listen to them to analyze the sense, tone, and rate of speech.
Images and videos can add flavor to certain pitches, and you can even use props.
Experiment with pecha-kucha, a presentation style that features 20 slides, each shown for 20 seconds, to keep your audience engaged.

Use Constraints and Sequence to Improve Your Pitch

Pecha-kucha Presentation

A pecha-kucha presentation has 20 slides, each displayed for 20 seconds.
Presenters have to pitch in 6 minutes and 40 seconds.
The rigid rules promote clarity and elegance in conveying the message.

Social Science Literature Findings

Virginia Tech University researchers suggest that in competitive sales presentations, the market leader is most likely to get selected if it presents first.
For challengers, the last spot is the best.
A University of Michigan study found that granular numbers are more credible than coarse numbers.

Describe Your Invisible Pitch

We convey a message about ourselves, our work, or our organization without realizing it.
Ask people to describe your pitch in three words to find out what they think you are saying.
Look for patterns to identify the disconnect between what you think you are conveying and what others are hearing.

Improvise

Slow down and listen to others twice as much as you speak.

Title: Improve Your Listening Skills and Communication with Two Simple Techniques

Designate a slow day during the week to improve your listening skills.
Take five seconds before responding in conversations to improve your listening skills.
Pausing for a few additional seconds before responding can hone your listening skills.
Lainie Heneghan advocates “radical listening” and suggests ways to test whether you have slowed down enough.
Use the “Yes and” technique in conversations to improve communication skills.
The “Ad Game” is a classic improv exercise that can be used to practice the “Yes and” technique.
The “Ad Game” involves selecting four or five participants and asking them to invent a new product and devise an advertising campaign for it.
In the “Ad Game,” players contribute testimonials, demonstrations, or slogans, beginning each sentence with “Yes and” to build on what others have said.

Title: Improv Techniques for Creative Thinking

Saying “Yes and” is an improv technique that encourages building on the idea presented by others without refuting it.
“Word-at-a-time” is a game where a group of people sit in a circle and collectively craft a story by adding one word at a time.
“I’m Curious” is an exercise where two partners pick a controversial issue with opposing views and take opposite stances. One person makes their case, and the other responds only with questions.
Recommended books on improv include “Impro” by Keith Johnstone, “Improvisation for the Theater” by Viola Spolin, “Creating Conversations” by R. Keith Sawyer, “Improv Wisdom” by Patricia Ryan Madson, and “The Second City Almanac of Improvisation” by Anne Libera.
These techniques can help with creative thinking and problem-solving.

Title: Using Improvisation to Improve Interactions

Thumb Activity:- A group activity that involves pairs of people hooking their right hand fingers and raising their thumbs. – The task is to get the partner’s thumb down. – The lesson is that the starting point should not be competition, but rather a win-win, positive-sum approach of improvisation.

Upserving:- “Upselling” is detestable in sales. – “Upserving” means doing more for the other person than expected, taking extra steps to transform an interaction into a memorable experience. – Upserving is the right thing to do and is more effective than upselling.

Rethink Sales Commissions:- Sales commissions are used to motivate and compensate traditional salespeople. – The practice of offering commissions may be orthodox and may stand in the way of the ability to serve.

Title: Rethinking Sales Commissions

Microchip Technology replaced the industry standard of 60% base salary and 40% commissions for its sales force with a package of 90% base salary and 10% variable compensation tied to company growth.
This change resulted in increased total sales, maintained cost of sales, decreased attrition, and consistent profits every quarter for the past thirteen years.
Many companies, from multinationals to start-ups, are also questioning the traditional practice of sales commissions and implementing new strategies that promote collaboration, eliminate gaming the system, and make salespeople the agents of their customers.
Paying salespeople in other ways can remove a barrier to serving customers thoroughly and authentically.
Not every company should forsake sales commissions, but challenging the orthodoxy can be healthy.
Salespeople want to solve problems and serve customers, and they want to be part of something larger than themselves.