To Sell Is Human

To Sell Is Human shows you that selling is part of your life, no matter what you do, and what a successful salesperson looks like in the 21st century, with practical ideas to help you convince others in a more honest, natural and sustainable way.

Name a startup with a particularly large and aggressive sales team.

It’s hard, isn’t it?

I mean, does Facebook have any sales people? Evernote? Who sells those razor blades at Dollar Shave Club?

The reason it’s really hard to think of new companies with dedicated sales teams is that the line between sales and other departments is blurring, and it’s blurring fast. Daniel Pink’s example is software giant Atlassian, who generated over $100 million in revenues without a single sales employee in 2011.

This is especially true for startups, because they usually can’t afford to hire people just to sell stuff, especially in the beginning. Everyone has to sell – on top of their regular responsibilities. What’s more, even regular jobs require you to spend time selling.

40% of your time at work is spent in non-sales selling, which simply means moving others somehow. For example this could mean persuading them to help you with a project, convincing them of your idea, or influencing them to get on board with a particular strategy.

Medicine and education, the largest two job sectors in the US economy, rely heavily on this: doctors must get people to change their health-damaging habits and teachers must get students to spend time on their education.

So no matter what your job is – yes, you’re a salesperson!

The reason we think of salespeople as sleazy and sales always has a negative connotation to it is that we’re still used to the old days, where sales consisted mostly of people abusing the information gap between buyer and seller. When you bought a used car in 1990 and didn’t know a lot about cars, your dealer could tell you all kinds of good things about it, but leave out plenty of the bad stuff, and you’d end up overpaying. Simply because he knew more than you, he’d be the “winner” of this transaction. Luckily, that has changed, thanks to the internet. At the click of a button you can find all dealers in your surrounding area, including reviews from people who have bought cars there, compare models online, get all the technical specs, average market prices, and find out if any dealers were involved in a scandal. In 2016 and beyond, the only way to sell is to be honest and transparent. To sell is no longer to guard information and hand out little pieces – it’s a service, helping people to navigate…