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042 - To Sell is Human

Hello there. Kevin here, with another episode of the “Feel Good English” Podcast.

How are you doing out there today? I hope you’re having a lovely day.

Today, I have a business lesson for you, and it’s about “selling,” being a salesman or saleswoman or let’s just say a salesperson.

I’m going to talk about a book called “To Sell is Human.” The author of this book is named Daniel Pink, and even if you’re not a salesman, Daniel suggests that most of us have to do some sort of sales today at our job.

If you think of start–ups, start-ups are small little companies with a few people, they don’t have the money to have a Sales Team, so they have to do their own sales. If you’re in Customer Service, you’ll probably end up selling. Engineers, designers also have to sell their ideas even if you’re not selling a product or service, you might have to convince people of something, which is a form of sales. Daniel calls this moving people. So he says, “Almost all of us, in some way or another, either sell something or have to move people at our job.”

The book gives great tips on how to sell better. In the episode, I’m going to talk about his technique, which is called the “ABC Technique,” the ABC technique of sales to make you a better salesperson or a better “mover of people” or both.

Before we get into the lesson, let me just remind you, if you are an English learner and you want a transcript to this and the other episodes I make, go to feelgoodenglish.com/member, learn how you can become a member, and get transcripts for free to help you become a better English speaker. “To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink”, let’s get into the lesson.

So, the ABC Technique of Sales: This can help you become a better persuader and salesperson, if that’s important to you.

The A in ABC stands for Attunement. Attunement is the ability to seek things from other people’s perspective, and act accordingly. You see where they’re coming from, and you’re able to react to that. So you’re connecting with them on a deep level. Now, don’t confuse this with empathy. Empathy is similar, but empathy is able to connect with the emotions of somebody else, where attunement is more on a cognitive level. You’re able to connect with the thoughts, in a way somebody is thinking, to be able to match, or to be able to adapt and comply with the thoughts of others.

And now, a stereotype is that salespeople are very outgoing, very talkative. “Hey, look at his car! This is a beautiful red Ferrari. Yeah! Look at you. Can you imagine yourself sitting in this car with a hot blonde babe?” But actually, Daniel Pink suggests, “The best type of salespeople aren’t extroverts, but they are ambiverts.” Extroverts talk a lot, very outgoing. They love talking to people, getting in people’s faces, being communicative, where an ambivert finds the balance between introverted and extroverted. The middle ground between introverted and extroverted. Very outgoing and talkative and quiet. They find that middle ground. In this way, an ambivert is able to pay a lot of attention to somebody else, to what they’re thinking and what they’re desiring without talking too much, you can even hear them, but also being able to react and being able to converse with the person, and also offer what they have, that might help the customer or the client.

Last part of attunement is called “mimicry.” To mimic; somebody is to copy them, to copy their actions, to copy the way that they move. There’s a very cool field of study called NLP or Neuro – Linguistic Programming. I’ve studied that a little bit, and it’s basically how to read other people’s behavior and connect with other people’s behavior through small little movements and actions in order to not only understand them but also to influence them. So mimicry would be copying somebody else’s body language; maybe they have their arms crossed, or maybe they’re moving their hands a lot or maybe they’re having a pen in their hands and they’re fiddling with the pen. So you would kind of copy some of these actions just so they feel connected with you. You could even match the tone of voice. If they’re quiet, then you can get a little quiet and match them so they’d feel more comfortable, or if they talk a bit, make a lot of jokes, “Hahaha,” then you could be funny too and, “Yeah! That’s cool, men. Hahaha,” trying to be like them to make them feel more comfortable. A, attunement, the first part of sales.

Now, the B in The ABC’s of Being an Effective Salesperson stands for Buoyancy. Buoyancy. So buoyancy, in this regard, is talking about being able to overcome rejection before, during, and after trying to sell something or trying to persuade somebody. If you’ve ever been in sales or in business, in general, you’ve probably been rejected before you want to get something done, you want to sell something and they say “No. I don’t want that crap,” or you want to convince somebody or manage somebody and say “I’m not going to do what you tell me.”

Rejection can be hard. Often, we get scared of selling something because we are fearing rejection while we’re talking about it, or maybe you’re trying to sell yourself during a job interview and you’re scared because you’re fearing that you’re going to be rejected. Daniel Pink suggests that we need to be buoyant, and we need to be able to deal with rejection and be prepared for this even before we face these situations.

One of the things he talks about that we can do is self– interrogative talk. Self–interrogative talk. Interrogative is like questions. So you ask yourself questions. One of the questions could be for example, “Can we fix it?” You’re trying to sell somebody a software solution, for example. Maybe they have a problem, and you software solution can help them. So ask yourself before trying to sell this, “Can we fix their problem? Can we fix this?” This will help you come up with strategies and examples to share with them on exactly how you can fix their problem. Maybe before an interview, you would ask yourself “Am I good for this job? Am I adequate for this position?” Then, you will come up with answers to why you are good for that job.

So asking yourself questions beforehand, coming up with solutions before you get into the situations can help you be more ready for this, and also to avoid the feeling of rejection.

Also, staying positive; this can be hard, but staying positive during an interaction, during an interview, during a sales meeting, during a proposal, staying positive about things and being open and being optimistic about what’s going on so you don’t shut yourself off. Involved in there, we’re talking to somebody, we’re trying to sell something, or we’re trying to get a job and you kind of start feeling already negative, pessimistic while you’re in that interaction, and not just closest things down, and not just affects the whole rest of the encounter. So staying positive, don’t let those negative thoughts attack you. Stay positive in these interactions.

And lastly, how we deal with rejection, and I talked about this in another episode. There’s two ways to deal with rejection: In bad things that happened to you, in general, so let’s say you’re trying to sell the software to somebody, and you go to their offices and you give a nice presentation, but they don’t even care, they say “Sorry, I don’t have time for this. Thanks for the presentation, but get out of here.” So, you could do two things: You could say “Wow! The software must suck. The guys didn’t even care. I don’t know what I’m doing. This product is terrible. I should start over. Nobody’s going to buy this.” That’s the bad way to react, obviously. Or you could look at it as: “Well, maybe these guys are having a bad day, maybe they just lost a big client, and maybe the software is something they couldn’t understand.

However, it could be great for them. There will be possible clients in the future. I know this is a good piece of software.” So are you thinking of everything, permanent personnel, or are you taking things as just for the moment, and not taking things personally? That could help you in sales, too. Look at the big picture. Don’t assume things. Know that there’s a lot of factors that can be going on, of why this person didn’t buy something from you.

And the C of ABC’s of selling stands for Clarity. Salespeople and also people that traditionally try to influence people and teach people: doctors, lawyers, are no longer the providers of information. I guessed to be like me, as an English teacher. In the past, English teachers were the ones that could teach you grammar and stuff like that, but you had to go to the teacher.

The teacher had the information; you would go see them, and they would provide you with that information. These days, obviously, you don’t need to go anywhere; you have your computer with the Internet and Youtube and all those places where information is accessible to you anytime from anywhere, and it’s a lot more than it used to be. So nowadays, as salespeople and influencers, we can’t just be the people to provide information; we have to provide clarity. We have to take the information that’s available, and clarify it to a potential customer or student or patient to make their life easier. So, the C in the ABC’s is to provide clarity. Often, what we have to do is show people things in a new light. Give them a new perspective on their problems.

I don’t just teach students English things, phrases, vocabs, stuff like that; often, I have underlying problems that are getting in the way of them becoming more confident English speakers. So I show them some of the issues they might be having, that are obstructing them from becoming more confident; providing them clarity on what they need to do, what information they need to find, and how to use that information. It’s a lot more important for me as a teacher I think, than just simply giving information.

Another tactic involving clarity is to find problems for somebody.

Don’t just find the solution, but look deep into what they’re dealing with and find problems, the underlying problems that might be there. And then later, you could solve that through means of a product or whatever that may be, but asking a lot of questions at them and sifting through the information they come up with, can find a lot of little problems. Asking a lot of questions, looking for problems, and not just going somewhere with the solution. So let’s say somebody is coming to you to buy a computer. You would ask them a lot of questions about what they need in a computer, what their objectives are, what their habits are, and what kind of computer they would need for work.

So, finding all of this information before saying “Oh! This computer is Apple. This Macbook is great. Buy it.” That solution might not be right if it’s not dealing with the specific problems that this person has. A few more examples to provide clarity is to limit the options. If you’re selling something to somebody or trying to influence somebody, don’t give them a lot of different options. Just give them a few options. Make it easier. Just give them a few options to choose from, instead of a bunch of options, and this makes a little less stressful for somebody to choose.

And lastly, give clear instructions when you are giving something to somebody, selling something to somebody, or you’re influencing somebody as a manager or a supervisor. Make sure they have very clear instructions on what to do, so they won’t feel lost and discouraged and give up and run away. Make sure that they know exactly what to do. Clear instructions. So, clarity is the C of ABC’s. Wave from selling products to negotiating with friends or teaching children, the art of moving people is becoming an ever–increasing part of our lives. So, embrace these ABC’s: Attunement, Buoyancy, and Clarity, and learn how to connect with people and how to influence people better, and if you have something good to offer them, influencing them is going to be very important, right?

And going over the vocab from today’s lesson, I used the phrasal verb again “end up.” I say, “You end up selling.” So if you heard another episode, to end up is to do something in the end, as a result of something or to do other tasks but in the end, you happened to do something just by chance or by default. You can’t really avoid it. So, an example. You’re getting a job, and you say “Oh. You’re going to mostly perform this task. However, you’ll probably end up selling something, anyway.” So in the end, no matter what you do, you will have to do some sales, anyway.

Another word I used here, another phrasal verb, actually, is “fiddle with.” Fiddle, F-I-D-D-L-E. This always comes with a preposition “with.” It’s to play with something nervously. The best way that I could describe this: Imagine you’re bored in a classroom, listening to your boring teacher, and you have a pencil in your fingers, and you’re just kind of moving the pencil back and forth. You’re kind of playing with it. That would be fiddling with it. You’re fiddling with your pencil. So you’re nervous and you’re just bored and you’re playing with your pencil.

Buoyant, buoyancy. I talked about in this episode. Buoyant literally means to float, to be on water. But in this case, it’s more about being optimistic and being able to recover or to return after challenges. Staying optimistic, staying positive. So, if you’re buoyant during a sales interaction, it means you are staying positive and optimistic in that situation.

Another phrasal verb, “shut yourself off.” To shut yourself off is to stop, to close, to create a barrier. So, if you’re not optimistic during sales, you’re going to shut yourself off. You’re going to turn off your interaction. You’re going to create a block or barrier between you and who you’re trying to sell to.

Another phrasal verb, maybe you know this, maybe not, “start over.” Start over just means to begin from the beginning. You’re going to start over. You’re going to restart. Start over and restart are synonyms. Are you going to start this podcast over, once it’s finished? I’d recommend doing that.

And lastly, underlying, one word. Underlying. Talking about underlying problems. If something is underlying, it means that it is there, but it is kind of hidden. So, “Ah! There’s some thing’s going on in here, but I don’t think we know the whole story. I think there are some underlying problems happening here,” and, “My wife is just always upset with me these days. There must be some underlying issues going on.” Got it?

“To Sell is Human”, by Daniel Pink. I think this can help you in life. Take these lessons and become a better salesperson or a better influencer of others. We all have to influence others sometimes, maybe it’s your mom. Use some of the sales tactics on your mom, and see if you can influence her.

So that’s it for today’s lesson of the Feel Good English podcast, and if you want transcripts to this and other episdoes, go to feelgoodenglish.com/member , and you will find out how to become a member which gives you access to the transcripts to the shows to supercharge your English.

I will see you soon in another lesson to help you improve your life, business, and English.

But of course, before I go, I will leave you with a lovely joke: How can you tell when a salesperson is lying?

His lips are moving.

Talk to you soon.