Daniel Pink has seen it all. From being a speech writer to Vice President Al Gore to a Sales guru and world-class author of nearly half a dozen books. His TED talk on motivation is definitely a worthy one to remember for a long time. Apart from this, Daniel has good command over behavioral and social sciences which is just another perfect reason to learn from him about persuasion and the science of good selling.
- 1)Sales are everyone’s cup of tea.
Nearly everyone is into selling and persuasion if you think about it. Whether it’s convincing your boss about your idea or if you are a teacher then you are persuading your students to stay on the course or if you’re a blogger like me, then you’re into catchy titles so that people read it.
“People spend nearly 40% of their work time on something akin to persuasion, influencing, convincing.”—Daniel Pink.
So mastering your sales skills really matters. Because you cannot push too much to scare the hell out or too little so that your idea doesn’t matter. And we are into sales every day not just that guy or woman in a suit to ring the bell.
- 2)Information Asymmetry is an illusion now.
The new world now is—Information parity. People exactly know what model of car they want with engine power. And they read, watch videos on YouTube about what they want. Consider this, we all google about our disease, see medication and their common side effects and various alternatives to surgery and then go to doctor for treatment. That exactly shows what has changed now.
In other words, you cannot sell a rat when buyer asks for a sheep in this new digital-information age. What people want now from you is your wisdom that is pick out 1 from a 1000 choices that bombard them.
- 3)Find the common ground through attunement.
You need to be a perspective taker. Think through their lens and walk in their shoes. Empathy is very critical now. This is because when you understand their problem then we can tailor the product and become better persuader.
For instance, McDonalds and KFC unless understand food needs and problems of native cultures cannot sell. And MNC’s giving holidays and day-off on holidays in respect of native cultures is an example of good perspective taking.
And Power bossing over employees and brushing off their problems and issues in office isn’t going to work anymore. And even in business meetings he asks to keep aside an empty chair(considering hypothetical customer there) so that we always have customer driven strategies and ideas. That’s a cheap investment high value investment. Use it ASAP.
- 4)Persuasion should be personal.
Selling should be personal and empowering. Your product’s mission should be to improve people’s lives. And persuasion shouldn’t be used to scam people. That will hurt your long term prospects.
And one way to improve performance of employees is to make it very personal. Daniel gives an example in Israel where Radiologists have spend more time on patient’s report when a photograph was attached to it than on reports without photograph. This shows that when people know that their work really matters and they are easily persuaded to do quality work.
- 5)“Loss to you pitch”
Next time you want to sell that balloon blower or hair dryer or even a house. Tell people what they lose not what they gain. This idea is extremely useful and I’ve been using it ever since.
People pay attention when there’s a loss or pain around the corner. Persuade your manager by saying things like—
*If we do this, then sales drop by 60%
*If we hire that guy, then teamwork suffers.
*If we don’t buy this, then our power bill goes up by 12%
*If we don’t upgrade our software, then we lose valuable data like that Tom-Dick-Harry company.
Daniel makes sales a science and persuasion a philosophy. Very concrete and extremely practical. Dig more into his ideas and you won’t regret. His “To sell is human” is a good place to start.
Thy Vox 
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