Notes collected from Daniel H. Pink's To Sell Is Human.
The balance has shipped. If you're a buyer and you've got just as much as information as the seller, along with the means to talk back, you're no longer the only one who needs to be on notice. In a world of information parity, the new guiding principle is caveat venditor--seller beware.
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But the sharpest example is in plain view when you walk into the store. Each salesperson sits at a small desk--him on side, the customer on the other. Each desk also has a computer. In most settings, the seller would look at the computer screen and the buyer at the computer's backside. But here he computer is positioned not in front of either party, but off to the side with its screen facing outward so both buyer and seller can see it at the same time. It's the literal picture of information symmetry.
No haggling. Transparent commissions. Informed customers. Once again, it all sounds so enlightened. And maybe it is. But that's not why this new approach exists.
This is why: On Saturday I spent at SK Motors, a total of eight customers came in the entire day. On the Saturday at CarMax, more than that showed up in the first fifteen minutes.
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Successful negotiators recommend that you should mimic the mannerisms of you negotiation partner to get a better deal. For example, when the other person rubs his/her face, you should, too. However, they say it is very important that you mimic subtly enough that the other person does not notice what you are doing, otherwise this technique completely backfires. Also, do not direct too much of your attention to the mimicking so you don't lose focus on the outcome of the negotiation. Thus, you should find a happy medium of consistent, but subtle mimicking that does not disrupt your focus.
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One of Gueguen's studies found that women in nightclubs were more likely to dance with men who lightly touched their forearm for second or two when making the request. The same held in a non-nightclub setting, when men asked for women's phone numbers. (Yes, both studies took place in France.) 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. 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.
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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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In other words, 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 job much longer. What's more, explanatory style predicted performance with about the same accuracy as the most widely used insurance industry assessment. It's a catalyst that can stir persistence, steady us during challenges, and stroke the confidence that we can influence our surroundings.
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This theme eventually arises in almost any conversation about traditional sales. take, for example, ralph Chauvin, vice president of sales at Perfetti Van Melle, the Italian company that makes Mentos mints, AirHead fruit chews, and other delicacies. His sales force sells products to retailers who then stock their shelves and hope customers will buy. In the past few years he says he's seen a shift. Retailers are less interested in figuring out how many rolls of Mentos to order than in learning how to improve all facets of their operation. "They're looking for unbiased business partners," Chauvin told me. 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." That could mean offering five flavors of Mentos rather than seven. And it almost always means including products from competitors. In a sense, Chauvin says, his best salespeople think of their jobs not so much as selling candy but as selling insights about the confectionery business.
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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 lesson here is critical: 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 begings with a conversation, brings the other person in as a participant, and eventually arrives at an outcome that appeals to both of you. In a world where buyers have ample information and an array of choices, the pitch is often the first word, but it's rarely the last.
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-Hand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases.
** Hand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases.
-Gel in, wash out.
Clever signs alone won't eliminate hospital-acquired infections. As surgeon Atul Gawande has observed, checklists and other processes can be highly effective on this front. But Grant and Hofmann reveal something equally crucial: "Our findings suggest that health and safety messages should focus not on the self, but rather on the target group that is perceived as most vulnerable."
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Children play here,
Pick up after your dog.
