To Sell Is Human by Daniel Pink Flashcards
(213 cards)
1
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In the United States alone, some 1 in 9 workers still earns a living trying to get others to make a purchase.
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2
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“non-sales selling.”
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3
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If you buy these arguments, or if you’re willing just to rent them for a few
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4
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One adage of the sales trade has long been ABC—“Always Be Closing.” The three chapters of Part Two introduce the new ABCs—Attunement, Buoyancy, and Clarity.
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5
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I draw on a rich reservoir of research to show you the three rules of attunement—and why extraverts rarely make the best salespeople.
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6
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the Fuller Man became a fixture in popular culture—Lady
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7
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One out of every nine American workers works in sales. Each day more than fifteen million people earn their keep by trying to convince someone else to make a purchase.7
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8
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The United States manufacturing economy, still the largest in the world, cranks out nearly $2 trillion worth of goods each year.
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9
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37 percent of respondents said they devoted a significant amount of time to “teaching, coaching, or instructing others.”
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10
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70 percent reported that they spent at least some of their time “persuading or convincing others.” What’s more, non-sales selling turned out to be far more prevalent than selling in the traditional sense. When we asked how much time they put in “selling a product or service,” about half of respondents said “no time at all.”
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11
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striking interplay between what people find valuable and what they actually do.
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12
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why more of us find ourselves in sales: the rise of small entrepreneurs.
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13
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The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that the American economy has more than twenty-one million “non-employer” businesses—operations without any paid employees. These include everything from electricians to computer consultants to graphic designers.
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14
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middle-class employment of the future won’t be employees of large organizations, but self-sufficient “artisans.”
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15
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In just three years, Kickstarter surpassed the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts as the largest backer of arts projects in the United States.9
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16
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MIT’s Technology Review, “In 1982, there were 4.6 billion people in the world, and not a single mobile-phone subscriber. Today, there are seven billion people in the world—and six billion mobile cellular-phone subscriptions.”12 Cisco predicts that by 2016, the world will have more smartphones (again, handheld minicomputers) than human beings—ten billion in all.13
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17
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“We have no salespeople,” he told me, “because in a weird way, everyone is a salesperson.”
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18
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“We try to espouse the philosophy that everyone the customer touches is effectively a salesperson,”
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19
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Irritation, he says, is “challenging people to do something that we want them to do.” By contrast, “agitation is challenging them to do something that they want to do.” What he has discovered throughout his career is that “irritation doesn’t work.” It might be effective in the short term.
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20
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“The model of health care is ‘We’re the experts.’ We go in and tell you what to do.” But she has found, and both experience and evidence confirm, that this approach has its limits. “We need to take a step back and bring [patients] on board,” she told me. “People usually know themselves way better than I do.” So now, in order to move people to move themselves, she tells them, “I need your expertise.” Patients heal faster and better when they’re part of the moving process.
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21
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And the emotions elicited by “sales” or “selling” carry an unmistakable flavor. Of the twenty-five most offered words, only five have a positive valence
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22
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caveat emptor—buyer beware.
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23
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The belief that sales is slimy, slick, and sleazy has less to do with the nature of the activity itself than with the long-reigning but fast-fading conditions in which selling has often taken place. The balance has shifted. If you’re a buyer and you’ve got just as much information as the seller,
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24
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His book, How to Sell Anything to Anybody—whose
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25
“Girard’s Rule of 250”—that each of us has 250 people in our lives we know well enough to invite to a wedding or a funeral. If you reach one person, and get her to like you and buy from you, she will connect you to others in her 250-person circle.
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26
“A Chevrolet sold by Joe Girard is not just a car,” he writes. “It is a whole relationship between me and the customer and his family and friends and the people he works with.”5
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when do you think you might start looking at a new car?” I ask the question straight out, and he is going to think about it and give me an answer. Maybe he only wants to get rid of me. But whatever the reason what he says is probably going to be what he really means. It’s easier than trying to dream up a lie.
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28
“People want a fair deal from someone they like.”
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29
When buyers can know more than sellers, sellers are no longer protectors and purveyors of information. They’re the curators and clarifiers of it—helping to make sense of the blizzard of facts, data, and options.
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30
When the product is complicated—credit default swaps, anyone?—and the potential for lucre enormous, some people will strive to maintain information imbalances and others will opt for outright deception. That won’t change. As long as flawed and fallible human beings walk the planet, caveat emptor remains useful guidance. I heed this principle. So should you.
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31
the low road is now harder to pass and the high road—honesty, directness, and transparency—has become the better, more pragmatic, long-term route.
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the new ABCs of moving others: A—Attunement B—Buoyancy C—Clarity
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33
If the E resembles the one on the left, the person drew it so he could read it himself. If it looks likes the one on the right, he drew the E so you could read it. Since the mid-1980s, social psychologists have used this technique—call it the E Test—to measure what they dub “perspective-taking.”
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34
those who’d received even a small injection of power became less likely (and perhaps less able) to attune themselves to someone else’s point of view.
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researchers conclude, “power leads individuals to anchor too heavily on their own vantage point, insufficiently adjusting to others’ perspective.”
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36
Research by Dacher Keltner at the University of California, Berkeley, and others has shown that those with lower status are keener perspective-takers. When you have fewer resources, Keltner explained in an interview, “you’re going to be more attuned to the context around you.”4 Think of this first principle of attunement as persuasion jujitsu: using an apparent weakness as an actual strength. Start your encounters with the assumption that you’re in a position of lower power. That will help you see the other side’s perspective more accurately, which, in turn, will help you move them.
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37
Social scientists often view perspective-taking and empathy as fraternal twins—closely related, but not identical. Perspective-taking is a cognitive capacity; it’s mostly about thinking. Empathy is an emotional response; it’s mostly about feeling.
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38
“social cartography.” It’s the capacity to size up a situation and, in one’s mind, draw a map of how people are related.
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39
scientists view mimicry differently. To them, this tendency is deeply human, a natural act that serves as a social glue and a sign of trust. Yet they, too, assign it a nonhuman label. They call it the “chameleon effect.”10
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“Strategic mimicry” proved to be effective. The participants told to mimic—again, with just five minutes of notice and preparation—did it surprisingly well and to great effect. In the gas station scenario, “negotiators who mimicked their opponents’ mannerisms were more likely to create a deal that benefited both parties.”12
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41
People therefore looked to cues in the environment to determine whom they could trust. “One of those cues is the unconscious awareness of whether we are in synch with other people, and a way to do that is to match their behavioral patterns with our own.”14
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42
waitresses who repeated diners’ orders word for word earned 70 percent more tips than those who paraphrased orders—and
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When customers approached the salespeople for help, nearly 79 percent bought from mimickers compared with about 62 percent from non-mimickers. In addition, those who dealt with the mimickers reported “more positive evaluations of both the sales clerk and the store.”16
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44
studies have shown that when restaurant servers touch patrons lightly on the arm or shoulder, diners leave larger tips.18
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45
In other research, when signature gatherers asked strangers to sign a petition, about 55 percent of people did so. But when the canvassers touched people once on the upper arm, the percentage jumped to 81 percent.20
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Touching even proved helpful in our favorite setting: a used-car lot. When salesmen (all the sellers were male) lightly touched prospective buyers, those buyers rated them far more positively than they rated salespeople who didn’t touch.21
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47
When people know they’re being mimicked, which was exceedingly rare in the experiments, it can have the opposite effect, turning people against you.22
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48
top salespeople have strong emotional intelligence but don’t let their emotional connection sweep them away. They are curious and ask questions that drive to the core of what the other person is thinking. That’s getting into their heads and not just their hearts,
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49
The notion that extraverts are the finest salespeople is so obvious that we’ve overlooked one teensy flaw. There’s almost no evidence that it’s actually true.
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50
One of the most comprehensive investigations—a set of three meta-analyses of thirty-five separate studies involving 3,806 salespeople—found that the correlation between extraversion and sales was essentially nonexistent.
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51
Perhaps not surprisingly, introverted sales reps didn’t perform as well as extraverted ones, earning an average of $120 per hour in revenue compared with $125 per hour for their more outgoing colleagues. But neither did nearly as well as a third group: the ambiverts.
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Extraverts, in other words, often stumble over themselves. They can talk too much and listen too little, which dulls their understanding of others’ perspectives. They can fail to strike the proper balance between asserting and holding back, which can be read as pushy and drive people away.*
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introverts are “geared to inspect,” while extraverts are “geared to respond.”35
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selling—requires a delicate balance of inspecting and responding. Ambiverts can find that balance. They know when to speak up and when to shut up.
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A few of us are extraverts. A few of us are introverts. But most of us are ambiverts, sitting near the middle, not the edges, happily attuned to those around us.
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Jim Collins, author of the classic Good to Great and other groundbreaking business books. He says his favorite opening question is: Where are you from?
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what makes some salespeople extraordinary is their “ability to chameleon”—to adjust what they do and how they do it to others in their midst.
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58
The three key steps are Watch, Wait, and Wane:
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Bezos includes one more chair that remains empty. It’s there to remind those assembled who’s really the most important person in the room: the customer.
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http://www .danpink.com/assessment—where I’ve replicated the assessment that social scientists use to measure introversion and extraversion.
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61
She calls it “Conversation with a Time Traveler.” It doesn’t require any props or equipment, just a little imagination and a lot of work. Here’s how it goes: Gather a few people and ask them to think of items that somebody from three hundred years ago would not recognize. A traffic light, maybe. A carry-out pizza. An airport screening machine. Then divide into groups of two. Each pair selects an item. One person plays the role of someone from the early 1700s. The other has to explain the item. This is more difficult than it sounds.
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“This exercise immediately challenges your assumptions about the understandability of your message,” Salit says. “You are forced to care about the worldview of the other person.” That’s something we all should be doing a lot more of in the present.
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1. Discussion Map In your next meeting, cut through the clutter of comments with a map that can help reveal the group’s social cartography. Draw a diagram of where each person in the meeting is sitting. When the session begins, note who speaks first by marking an X next to that person’s name. Then each time someone speaks, add an X next to that name. If someone directs her comments to a particular person rather than to the whole group, draw a line from the speaker to the recipient. When the meeting is done you’ll get a visual representation of who’s talking the most, who’s sitting out, and who’s the target of people’s criticisms or blandishments.
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Find a partner and stand face-to-face with that person for thirty seconds. Then turn around so that you’re both back-to-back with your partner. Once turned around, each person changes one aspect of his or her appearance—for example, remove earrings, add eyeglasses, untuck your shirt. (Important: Don’t tell people what you’re going to ask them to do until they’re back-to-back.) Wait sixty seconds. Turn back around and see if you or your partner can tell what has changed. Repeat this twice more with the same person, each time altering something new about your appearance. When you’re done, debrief with a short discussion. Which changes did people notice? Which eluded detection? How much of doing this well depended on being observant and attuned from the outset? How might this experience change your next encounter with a colleague, client, or student?
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psychologist Robert Cialdini, some of which I’ll discuss in Chapter 6, shows that we’re more likely to be persuaded by those whom we like. And one reason we like people is that they remind us of . . . us.
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Set a timer for five minutes and see how many commonalities you can come up with.
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67
How to stay afloat amid that ocean of rejection is the second essential quality in moving others. I call this quality “buoyancy.”
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68
The hardest part of selling, Norman Hall says, occurs before his well-polished shoes even touch the streets of San Francisco. “Just getting myself out of the house and facing people” is the stiffest challenge, he says. “It’s that big, unknown faceless person I have to face for the first time.”
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Yes, positive self-talk is generally more effective than negative self-talk. But the most effective self-talk of all doesn’t merely shift emotions. It shifts linguistic categories. It moves from making statements to asking questions.
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the efficacy of “interrogative self-talk”
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People who’d written Will I solved nearly twice as many anagrams as those who’d written I will, Will, or I.
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Those who approached a task with Bob-the-Builder-style questioning self-talk outperformed those who employed the more conventional juice-myself-up declarative self-talk.
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the interrogative, by its very form, elicits answers—and within those answers are strategies for actually carrying out the task.
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Interrogative self-talk, the researchers say, “may inspire thoughts about autonomous or intrinsically motivated reasons to pursue a goal.”5 As ample research has demonstrated, people are more likely to act, and to perform well, when the motivations come from intrinsic choices rather than from extrinsic pressures.6
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Declarative self-talk risks bypassing one’s motivations. Questioning self-talk elicits the reasons for doing something and reminds people that many of those reasons come from within.*
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Those who’d heard the positive-inflected pitch were twice as likely to accept the deal as those who’d heard the negative one—even though the terms were identical.
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Negative emotions, she says, evolved to narrow people’s vision and propel their behavior toward survival in the moment (I’m frightened, so I’ll flee. I’m angry, so I’ll fight). By contrast, “Positive emotions do the opposite: They broaden people’s ideas about possible actions, opening our awareness to a wider range of thoughts and . . . making us more receptive and more creative,”
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Where negative emotions help us see trees, positive ones reveal forests.
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Cory Scherer and Brad Sagarin of Northern Illinois University have found that inserting a mild profanity like “damn” into a speech increases the persuasiveness of the speech and listeners’ perception of the speaker’s intensity.11
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those with an equal—that is, 1 to 1—balance of positive and negative emotions had no higher well-being than those whose emotions were predominantly negative. Both groups generally were languishing.
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people whose ratio was 2 to 1 positive-to-negative were also no happier than those whose negative emotions exceeded their positive ones.
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Once positive emotions outnumbered negative emotions by 3 to 1—that is, for every three instances of feeling gratitude, interest, or contentment, they experienced only one instance of anger, guilt, or embarrassment—people generally flourished. Those below that ratio usually did not.13
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Once the ratio hit about 11 to 1, positive emotions began doing more harm than good.
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Fredrickson sees the healthy positivity ratios of Hall and others as a calibration between two competing pulls: levity and gravity.
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A pessimistic explanatory style—the habit of believing that “it’s my fault, it’s going to last forever, and it’s going to undermine everything I do”16—is debilitating, Seligman found. It can diminish performance, trigger depression, and “turn setbacks into disasters.”17
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Agents who scored in the pessimistic half of the ASQ ended up quitting at twice the rate of those in the optimistic half. Agents in the most pessimistic quarter were three times as likely to quit as those in the most optimistic 25 percent.19
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the salespeople with an optimistic explanatory style—who saw rejections as temporary rather than permanent, specific rather than universal, and external rather than personal—sold more insurance and survived in their jobs much longer.
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As social scientists have discovered, interrogative self-talk is often more valuable than the declarative kind. But don’t simply leave the question hanging in the air like a lost balloon. Answer it—directly and in writing. List five specific reasons why the answer to your question is yes.
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When something bad occurs, ask yourself three questions—and come up with an intelligent way to answer each one “no”: 1. Is this permanent? Bad response: “Yes. I’ve completely lost my skill for moving others.” Better response: “No. I was flat today because I haven’t been getting enough sleep.” 2. Is this pervasive? Bad response: “Yes. Everyone in this industry is impossible to deal with.” Better response: “No. This particular guy was a jerk.” 3. Is this personal? Bad response: “Yes. The reason he didn’t buy is that I messed up my presentation.” Better response: “No. My presentation could have been better, but the real reason he passed is that he wasn’t ready to buy right now.”
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The more you explain bad events as temporary, specific, and external, the more likely you are to persist even in the face of adversity.
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the key is to “dispute” and “de-catastrophize” negative explanations.
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Negativity and negative emotions are crucial for our survival. They prevent unproductive behaviors from cementing into habits. They deliver useful information on our efforts. They alert us to when we’re on the wrong path.
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if you’re too lazy to write the letter yourself, try out the Rejection Generator Project (http://ow.ly/cQ5rl).
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About half of U.S. households are financially unprepared for their breadwinners to retire at age sixty-five. Three in four Americans have less than $30,000 saved in their retirement accounts.1
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we human beings are notoriously bad at wrapping our minds around far-off events. Our biases point us toward the present. So when given a choice between an immediate reward (say, $1,000 right now) and a reward we have to wait for ($1,150 in two years), we’ll often take the former even when it’s in our own interest to choose the latter.
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Those who saw images of their current selves (call them the “Me Now” group) directed an average of $80 into the retirement account. Those who saw images of their future selves (the “Me Later” group) allocated more than twice that amount—$172.3
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research has shown that “thinking about the future self elicits neural activation patterns that are similar to neural activation patterns elicited by thinking about a stranger.”5 Envisioning ourselves far into the future is extremely difficult—so difficult, in fact, that we often think of that future self as an entirely different person.
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we think of ourselves today and ourselves in the future as different people.
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Csikszentmihalyi discovered that the experts deemed the problem finders’ works far more creative than the problem solvers’.
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problem finders “were 18 years later significantly more successful—by the standards of the artistic community—than their peers” who had approached their still-life drawings as more craftsmanlike problem solvers.7 “The quality of the problem that is found is a forerunner of the quality of the solution that is attained . . .” Getzels concluded.
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“It is in fact the discovery and creation of problems rather than any superior knowledge, technical skill, or craftsmanship that often sets the creative person apart from others in his field.”8
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people most disposed to creative breakthroughs in art, science, or any endeavor tend to be problem finders.
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And that changes which salespeople are most highly prized. It isn’t necessarily the “closers,” those who can offer an immediate solution and secure the signature on the contract, he says. It’s those “who can brainstorm with the retailers, who uncover new opportunities for them, and who realize that it doesn’t matter if they close at that moment.” Using a mix of number crunching and their own knowledge and expertise, the Perfetti salespeople tell retailers “what assortment of candy is the best for them to make the most money.”
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when he first started, having access to information and being able to wield it was what often determined sales success. Today, when information is ubiquitous, he said the premium is now on “the ability to hypothesize,” to clarify what’s going to happen next.
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the best salespeople were adept at accessing information. Today, they must be skilled at curating it—sorting through the massive troves of data and presenting to others the most relevant and clarifying pieces.
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in the past, the best salespeople were skilled at answering questions (in part because they had information their prospects lacked). Today, they must be good at asking questions—uncovering possibilities, surfacing latent issues, and finding unexpected problems.
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Clarity depends on contrast.
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“the contrast principle.”11 We often understand something better when we see it in comparison with something else than when we see it in isolation.
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The less frame Everybody loves choices. Yet ample research has shown that too much of a good thing can mutate into a bad thing.
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Of the consumers who visited the booth with twenty-four varieties, only 3 percent bought jam. At the booth with a more limited selection, 30 percent made a purchase.13 In other words, reducing consumers’ options from twenty-four choices to six resulted in a tenfold increase in sales.
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“Adding an inexpensive item to a product offering can lead to a decline in consumers’ willingness to pay,” the researchers concluded.14 In many instances, addition can subtract.
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The experience frame
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people derive much greater satisfaction from purchasing experiences than they do from purchasing goods.
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we adapt quickly to material changes. That spectacular new BMW that so delighted us three weeks ago is now just how we get to work. But that hike on Canada’s West Coast Trail lingers in our mind—and as time goes by, we tend to forget the small-level annoyances (ticks) and remember the higher-level joys (amazing sunsets).
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Experiences also give us something to talk about and stories to tell, which can help us connect with others and deepen our own identities, both of which boost satisfaction.
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framing a sale in experiential terms is more likely to lead to satisfied customers and repeat business. So if you’re selling a car, go easy on emphasizing the rich Corinthian leather on the seats. Instead, point out what the car will allow the buyer to do—see new places, visit old friends, and add to a book of memories.
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the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The basic scenario goes as follows: A and B have been arrested for a crime, but the police and prosecutors don’t have sufficient evidence to convict them. So they decide to apply pressure by interrogating the two suspects separately. If A and B both keep mum, they each get only a light sentence—one month on unrelated charges. If they both confess, each will receive a six-month sentence. But if A confesses and B stays quiet, B gets ten years in prison and A walks free. Conversely, if B confesses and A stays quiet, A gets ten years in the slammer and B walks. Obviously, A and B would both be better off by cooperating—that is, by keeping their mouths shut. But if one party can’t trust the other, he risks a lengthy prison stay if his partner betrays him—and that, in short, is the dilemma.
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But they changed the name. For one group, they called it the “Wall Street Game”; for the other, the “Community Game.” Did a maneuver as innocuous as changing the label achieve results as significant as altering behavior? Absolutely. In the Wall Street Game, 33 percent of participants cooperated and went free. But in the Community Game, 66 percent reached that mutually beneficial result.17
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The neatest group by far was the first—the one that had been labeled “neat.” Merely assigning that positive label—helping the students frame themselves in comparison with others—elevated their behavior.
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The blemished frame
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the people who’d gotten that small dose of negative information were more likely to purchase the boots than those who’d received the exclusively positive information. The researchers dubbed this phenomenon the “blemishing effect”—where “adding a minor negative detail in an otherwise positive description of a target can give that description a more positive impact.”
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What we really should do, they say, is emphasize our potential.
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researchers tested two different Facebook ads for the same comedian. Half the ads said the comedian, Kevin Shea, “could be the next big thing.” The other half said, “He is the next big thing.” The first ad generated far more click-throughs and likes than the second. The somewhat peculiar upshot of the research, the scholars write, is that “the potential to be good at something can be preferred over actually being good at that very same thing.”19
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People often find potential more interesting than accomplishment because it’s more uncertain,
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That uncertainty can lead people to think more deeply about the person they’re evaluating—and the more intensive processing that requires can lead to generating more and better reasons why the person is a good choice.
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the letter that gave students details on how to act had a huge effect. Twenty-five percent of students deemed least likely to contribute actually made a contribution when they received the letter with a concrete appeal, a map, and a location for donating. What moved them wasn’t only the request itself, but that the requesters had provided them an off-ramp for getting to their destination. A specific request accompanied by a clear way to get it done ended up with the least likely group donating food at three times the rate of the most likely who hadn’t been given a clear path of action.20
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Clarity on how to think without clarity on how to act can leave people unmoved.
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Michael Pantalon is a research scientist at the Yale School of Medicine and a leading authority on “motivational interviewing.”
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the most effective tools for excavating people’s buried drives are questions.
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Question 1. “On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 meaning ‘not the least bit ready’ and 10 meaning ‘totally ready,’ how ready are you to study?” After she offers her answer, move to: Question 2. “Why didn’t you pick a lower number?”
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Asking why the number isn’t lower is the catalyst. Most people who resist doing or believing something don’t have a binary, off-on, yes-no position. So don’t ask a binary, off-on, yes-no question. If your prospect has even a faint desire to move, Pantalon says, asking her to locate herself on that 1-to-10 scale can expose an apparent “No” as an actual “Maybe.”
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Even more important, as your daughter explains her reasons for being a 4 rather than a 3, she begins announcing her own reasons for studying. She moves from defending her current behavior to articulating why, at some level, she wants to behave differently. And that, says Pantalon, allows her to clarify her personal, positive, and intrinsic motives for studying, which increases the chances she actually will.
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In the old days, our challenge was accessing information. These days, our challenge is curating it.
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Right Question Institute
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The audience gasped. The platform fell. But in seconds, the safety brake engaged and halted the elevator’s descent. Still alive and standing, Otis looked out at the shaken crowd and said, “All safe, gentlemen. All safe.”1 The moment marked two firsts. It was the first demonstration of an elevator safe enough to carry people. (Otis, you might have guessed by now, went on to found the Otis Elevator Company.)
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the success of a pitch depends as much on the catcher as on the pitcher. In particular, Elsbach and Kramer discovered that beneath this elaborate ritual were two processes. In the first, the catcher (i.e., the executive) used a variety of physical and behavioral cues to quickly assess the pitcher’s (i.e., the writer’s) creativity.
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If the catcher categorized the pitcher as “uncreative” in the first few minutes, the meeting was essentially over even if it had not actually ended.
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In the most successful pitches, the pitcher didn’t push her idea on the catcher until she extracted a yes. Instead, she invited in her counterpart as a collaborator.
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The most valuable sessions were those in which the catcher “becomes so fully engaged by a pitcher that the process resembles a mutual collaboration,”
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The purpose of a pitch isn’t necessarily to move others immediately to adopt your idea. The purpose is to offer something so compelling that it begins a conversation, brings the other person in as a participant, and eventually arrives at an outcome that appeals to both of you.
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The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that the typical American hears or reads more than one hundred thousand words every day.6
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companies compete for global ownership of one word in the public mind,”
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“Nowadays only brutally simple ideas get through,” he says. “They travel lighter, they travel faster.”
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questions can outperform statements in persuading others.
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the difference go to the core of how questions operate. When I make a statement, you can receive it passively. When I ask a question, you’re compelled to respond, either aloud if the question is direct or silently if the question is rhetorical. That requires at least a modicum of effort on your part or, as the researchers put it, “more intensive processing of message content.”10 Deeper processing reveals the stolidity of strong arguments and the flimsiness of weak ones.
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question pitches prompt people to come up with their own reasons for agreeing (or not). And when people summon their own reasons for believing something, they endorse the belief more strongly and become more likely to act on it.
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Rhymes boost what linguists and cognitive scientists call “processing fluency,” the ease with which our minds slice, dice, and make sense of stimuli.
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utility and curiosity. People were quite likely to “read emails that directly affected their work.” No surprise there. But they were also likely “to open messages when they had moderate levels of uncertainty about the contents, i.e. they were ‘curious’ what the messages were about.”15
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Utility worked better when recipients had lots of e-mail, but “curiosity [drove] attention to email under conditions of low demand.”
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People opened useful messages for extrinsic reasons; they had something to gain or lose. They opened the other messages for intrinsic reasons; they were just curious. Ample research has shown that trying to add intrinsic motives on top of extrinsic ones often backfires.16
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Carnegie Mellon researchers, your e-mail subject line should be either obviously useful (Found the best & cheapest photocopier) or mysteriously intriguing (A photocopy breakthrough!), but probably not both (The Canon IR2545 is a photocopy breakthrough).
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usefulness will often trump intrigue, although tapping recipients’ inherent curiosity, in the form of a provocative or even blank subject line, can be surprisingly effective in some circumstances.
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subject lines should be “ultra-specific.”17
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Readers rated only 36 percent of tweets as worth reading, a surprisingly low figure considering that they were evaluating tweets from people they’d chosen to follow. They described 25 percent as not worth reading at all. And they rated 39 percent as neutral, which, given the volume of our daily distractions, is tantamount to declaring those, too, not worth reading at all.20
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The types of tweets with the lowest ratings fell into three categories: Complaints (“My plane is late. Again.”); Me Now (“I’m about to order a tuna sandwich”); and Presence Maintenance (“Good morning, everyone!”).21
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readers assigned the highest ratings to tweets that asked questions of followers, confirming once again the power of the interrogative to engage and persuade. They prized tweets that provided information and links, especially if the material was fresh and new and offered the sort of clarity discussed in Chapter 6. And they gave high ratings to self-promoting tweets—those ultimate sales pitches—provided that the tweet offered useful information as part of the promotion.22
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Once upon a time there was a widowed fish named Marlin who was extremely protective of his only son, Nemo. Every day, Marlin warned Nemo of the ocean’s dangers and implored him not to swim far away. One day in an act of defiance, Nemo ignores his father’s warnings and swims into the open water. Because of that, he is captured by a diver and ends up as a pet in the fish tank of a dentist in Sydney. Because of that, Marlin sets off on a journey to recover Nemo, enlisting the help of other sea creatures along the way. Until finally Marlin and Nemo find each other, reunite, and learn that love depends on trust.24
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Once upon a time there was a health crisis haunting many parts of Africa. Every day, thousands of people would die of AIDS and HIV-related illness, often because they didn’t know they carried the virus. One day we developed an inexpensive home HIV kit that allowed people to test themselves with a simple saliva swab. Because of that, more people got tested. Because of that, those with the infection sought treatment and took measures to avoid infecting others. Until finally this menacing disease slowed its spread and more people lived longer lives.
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1. The One-Word Pitch Pro tip: Write a fifty-word pitch. Reduce it to twenty-five words. Then to six words. One of those remaining half-dozen is almost certainly your one-word pitch.
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2. The Question Pitch Pro tip: Use this if your arguments are strong. If they’re weak, make a statement. Or better yet, find some new arguments.
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3. The Rhyming Pitch Pro tip: Don’t rack your brain for rhymes. Go online and find a rhyming dictionary. I’m partial to RhymeZone (http://www.rhymezone.com).
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4. The Subject Line Pitch Pro tip: Review the subject lines of the last twenty e-mail messages you’ve sent. Note how many of them appeal to either utility or curiosity. If that number is less than ten, rewrite each one that fails the test.
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5. The Twitter Pitch Pro tip: Even though Twitter allows 140 characters, limit your pitch to 120 characters so that others can pass it on. Remember: The best pitches are short, sweet, and easy to retweet.
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6. The Pixar Pitch Pro tip: Read all twenty-two of former Pixar story artist Emma Coats’s story rules: http://bit.ly/jlVWrG Your try: Once upon a time __________________. Every day, ______________. One day _______________. Because of that, _______________________. Because of that, _____________. Until finally ________________.
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After someone hears your pitch . . . What do you want them to know? What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to do?
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Go first if you’re the incumbent, last if you’re the challenger. In competitive sales presentations, where a series of sellers make their pitches one after another, the market leader is most likely to get selected if it presents first, according to Virginia Tech University researchers. But for a challenger, the best spot, by far, is to present last (http://bit.ly/NRpdp6).
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Granular numbers are more credible than coarse numbers.
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Performance of a Lifetime, which teaches businesspeople improvisational theater—not
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Viola Spolin, an American who in the 1940s and 1950s developed a set of games—first for children, then for professional actors—centered on improvising characters, speeches, and scenes. In 1963, she wrote a book, Improvisation for the Theater,
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Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre.
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Beneath the apparent chaos of improvisation is a light structure that allows it to work.
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three essential rules of improvisational theater: (1) Hear offers. (2) Say “Yes and.” (3) Make your partner look good.
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For all the listening we do each day—by some estimates, it occupies one-fourth of our waking hours6—it’s remarkable how profoundly we neglect this skill.
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For many of us, the opposite of talking isn’t listening. It’s waiting.
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“Good improvisers seem telepathic; everything looks prearranged. This is because they accept all offers made.”
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it’s more than simply saying yes. “Yes and” carries a particular force, which becomes clearer when we contrast it with its evil twin, “Yes, but.”
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Improv artists have long understood that helping your fellow performer shine helps you both create a better scene. Making your partner look good doesn’t make you look worse; it actually makes you look better.
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The questions must be genuine queries, not veiled opinions
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The idea here isn’t to win. It’s to learn. And when both parties view their encounters as opportunities to learn, the desire to defeat the other side struggles to find the oxygen it needs.
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“Never argue,” he wrote. “To win an argument is to lose a sale.”11
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Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.”
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when you have a conversation, take five seconds before responding.
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classic improv exercise is “The Ad Game.” Here’s how it works. Select four or five participants. Then ask them to invent a new product and devise an advertising campaign for it. As players contribute testimonials or demonstrations or slogans, they must begin each sentence with “Yes and,” which forces them to build on the previous idea. You can’t refute what your colleagues say. You can’t ignore it. And you shouldn’t plan ahead. Just say “Yes and,” accept what the person before you offers, and use it to construct an even better campaign.
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“There are people who prefer to say ‘Yes,’ and there are people who prefer to say ‘No,’” Keith Johnstone writes. “Those who say ‘Yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have. Those who say ‘No’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.”
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Six to eight people sit in a circle and collectively craft a story. The hitch: Each person can add only one word and only when it’s his turn.
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have your partner decide her position on the issue. Then you take the opposite stance. She then makes her case, but you can reply only with questions—not with statements, counterarguments, or insults. These questions must also abide by three rules: (1) You cannot ask yes-no questions. (2) Your questions cannot be veiled opinions. (3) Your partner must answer each question.
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Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone.
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Improvisation for the Theater by Viola Spolin.
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Creating Conversations: Improvisation in Everyday Discourse by R. Keith Sawyer.
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Have everyone assemble themselves into pairs. Then ask each pair to “hook the fingers of your right hands and raise your thumbs.” Then, give the sole instruction: “Now get your partner’s thumb down.” Remain silent and allow the pairs to finish the task. Most participants will assume that your instructions mean for them to thumb-wrestle. However, there are many other ways that they could get their partner’s thumb down. They could ask nicely. They could unhook their own fingers and put their own thumb down. And so on. The lesson here is that too often our starting point is competition—a win-lose, zero-sum approach rather than the win-win, positive-sum approach of improvisation.
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If you want to travel from one town to another in Kenya, you’ll probably have to step into a matatu, a small bus or fourteen-seat minivan that constitutes the country’s main form of long-distance transportation.
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In developing countries, road accidents now kill the same number of people as does malaria. Across the globe nearly 1.3 million people die in traffic accidents each year, making traffic injuries the world’s ninth leading cause of death.
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Total insurance claims for the vehicles with stickers fell by nearly two-thirds from the year before. Claims for serious accidents (those involving injury or death) fell by more than 50 percent. And based on follow-up interviews the researchers conducted with drivers, it was clear that the passengers’ vocal persuasion efforts were the reason.5 In other words, adding a few stickers to the minibuses saved more money and spared more lives than just about any other effort the Kenyan government had tried.
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Make it personal and make it purposeful.
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All of them reported feeling “more empathy to the patients after seeing the photograph”
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“80% of the incidental findings were not reported when the photograph was omitted from the file.”7 Even though the physicians were looking at precisely the same image they had scrutinized ninety days earlier, this time they were far less meticulous and far less accurate. “Our study emphasizes approaching the patient as a human being and not as an anonymous case study,” Turner told ScienceDaily.
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This doesn’t mean doctors and nurses should abandon checklists and protocols.9 But it does mean that a single-minded reliance on processes and algorithms that obscure the human being on the other side of the transaction is akin to a clinical error.
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Yet in the name of professionalism, we often neglect the human element and adopt a stance that’s abstract and distant.
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Many of us like to say, “I’m accountable” or “I care.” Few of us are so deeply committed to serving others that we’re willing to say, “Call my cell.”
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style of making it personal is characteristic of many of the most successful sellers.
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health and safety messages should focus not on the self, but rather on the target group that is perceived as most vulnerable.”16
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While we often assume that human beings are motivated mainly by self-interest, a stack of research has shown that all of us also do things for what social scientists call “prosocial” or “self-transcending” reasons.17
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But in the “self-transcending” first group, nearly 90 percent chose to recycle.18 Merely discussing purpose in one realm (car-sharing) moved people to behave differently in a second realm (recycling).
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“Becoming a servant-leader begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.”20
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They serve first and sell later.
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Upserving means doing more for the other person than he expects or you initially intended, taking the extra steps that transform a mundane interaction into a memorable experience.
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Microchip’s vice president of sales told me: “Salespeople are no different from engineers, architects, or accountants. Really good salespeople want to solve problems and serve customers. They want to be part of something larger than themselves.”
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how we categorize our sales and non-sales selling transactions. We divide them, he says, into three categories. We think, “I’m doing you a favor, bud.” Or “Hey, this guy is doing me a favor.” Or “This is a favorless transaction.” Problems arise, Godin says, “when one party in the transaction thinks he’s doing the other guy a favor . . . but the other guy doesn’t act that way in return.”
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“Why not always act as if the other guy is doing the favor?”
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the wisest and most ethical way to move others is to proceed with humility and gratitude.
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“emotionally intelligent signage.” Most signs typically have two functions: They provide information to help people find their way or they announce rules. But emotionally intelligent signage goes deeper. It achieves those same ends by enlisting the principles of “make it personal” and “make it purposeful.”
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By reminding people of the reason for the rule and trying to trigger empathy on the part of those dog-walkers—making it purposeful—the sign-makers increased the likelihood that people would behave as the sign directed.
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If the person you’re selling to agrees to buy, will his or her life improve? When your interaction is over, will the world be a better place than when you began? If the answer to either of these questions is no, you’re doing something wrong.
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