Selling is Human by Daniel H Pink – Book Review – The New ABC’s of Selling-C is for Clarity
On December 31, 2012, Daniel H. Pink released his new book, “Selling Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others.” Pink is the best-selling author of “Drive” and “A Whole New Mind.”
Pink’s new message declares that regardless of our career, we are all in sales today. Traditional selling is about convincing current and potential customers to make a purchase. “For-profit selling” is Pink’s term for convincing, persuading, and influencing others to give up something they have for what we have. The concept applies to everyone, as parents cajole children, lawyers sell juries with a verdict, and teachers sell students the value of paying attention in class, to name a few.
To be successful in both traditional and non-sales sales requires a new mindset based on the revised ABC’s of Sales. Previously, the ABC meant “always be closing.” Now the ABC embodies tuning, buoyancy and clarity. The following article highlights clarity.
Clarity. Research confirms that it is extremely difficult to think of our present and future selves as the same person. This challenge represents the third quality needed (along with attunement and vitality) to move others today: clarity.
Clarity is the ability to help others see their situations in fresh and more revealing ways and identify problems they didn’t know they had.
The information explosion of the Internet made it easier to find solutions to our problems, making salespeople less valuable as problem solvers. Today, good salespeople are excellent. trouble seekers. If we don’t know about our problem, we may need help finding it.
Research confirms that most people relate to creative breakthroughs in art, science, or any activity; They tend to be trouble seekers.
“Today, both sales and non-sales rely more on the creative, heuristic, and troubleshooting skills of artists than on the reductive, algorithmic, and problem-solving skills of technicians,” says Pink.
Before the Internet, good salespeople excelled at access information, much of which is not available to the general public (i.e. car dealers). Today, good salespeople must master cicatrization sorting information through the vast amount of information available and presenting the most relevant and clarifying pieces to others.
Historically too, good salespeople dominated answering questions (partly due to privacy, industry related information is not available to the masses). Today, the best sellers ask questions to uncover possibilities, reveal latent problems, and find unexpected problems.
“Clarity depends on contrast,” says Pink. “We often understand something better when we see it in comparison to something else than when we see it in isolation.” The most important question she can ask is “Compared to what?”
Pink outlines five frameworks for presenting your offer in ways that contrast the alternatives and clarify their strengths:
1. The Less Frame. One famous study involved grocery store shoppers who were offered twenty-four selections of jams at a stand. The results showed that 3 percent of the stall buyers bought jam, vs. 30 percent you bought from a similar stall that offered only 6 jam options. Framing people’s options in a way that narrows their options can help them see those options more clearly rather than overwhelm them.
2. The framework of experience. Research shows that people derive greater satisfaction from shopping experiences than from shopping experiences. buying goods Experiences give us something to talk about and stories to tell, helping us connect with others and deepen our own identities, which increases our satisfaction. Framing a sale in terms of experience is apt to generate satisfied customers and repeat business.
3. The label frame. A popular 1975 study involved three fifth-grade classrooms. Teachers, janitors, and others told the first group that they were extremely neat. Group two heard that they used to be clean and were instructed to keep the classroom clean. The third room served as a control. The research showed that the most orderly group was the first group that had been labeled “orderly.” Simply assigning the positive label helped students frame themselves in comparison to others and elevated their behavior.
4. The stained frame. Adding a minor negative detail to a positive description of a goal can give that description more positive impact. This is called “the staining effect” and it operates only under two circumstances. First, the people processing the information must be in a “low effort” state, perhaps busy or distracted and not fully focused on the decision. Second, the information must continue positive information, not the other way around. Being honest about a small flaw in your offer can result in a sale.
5. The Potential Framework. When selling ourselves, it is better to emphasize our potential, against looking at what we achieved yesterday. Research shows that the potential to be good at something can be preferred to being really good at that very thing.
Find an exit ramp. Once you’ve found the problem and the right framework, you need to define the actions people need to take. One famous study involved college students and a food drive. The groups were labeled “most likely” and “least likely” to contribute. Surprisingly, the “least likely” group contributed the most, due to receiving a specific appeal and a map with location drop-off sites, than the “most likely” group.
Once you’ve mastered tuning, buoyancy, and clarity, which show you how to be, you need to know what to do. Perfecting his tone, learning to improvise and serving complement his actions.
Dan Pink endorses the Right Question Institute (RQI), a nonprofit educational organization that offers simple and powerful strategies to help people advocate for themselves in the areas of education, health care, social service, community organizations, and public agencies. . For more information, visit: http://rightquestion.org/