Let me first say that I received an advance copy of Dan Pink’s new book, To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others
I give to Sell Is Human four stars because who you are will determine what you think of the book. If you are one of the eight out of nine people in America who does not formally sell for a living, then it is a five-star book and this first half is for you. If you make your living in sales, it’s a three-star book and you can skip down to the second half.
The majority of readers will definitely enjoy and profit from the book. Pink writes engagingly, and fills the book with fascinating research findings and compelling stories. It also provides a much-needed explanation and perspective on the profession and practice of selling. If you think you don’t sell for a living, take a close look at how much of your day is spent trying to convince others of your point of view. And if you think selling is somehow beneath you, remember that what Plato said about politics is what Pink tells us about selling: those who refuse to participate in it end up being led by their “inferiors.”
The theme of the book can be summarized as follows:
- Selling is something we all do in our work and personal lives.
- Selling is talking someone into something that leaves them better off as a result.
- It has to be done right, because the balance of power has shifted from the seller to the buyer.
- When it’s done right, it’s a worthy and noble calling.
If you’re a “non-sales seller”, you will certainly pick up a lot of useful insights and tips from the book.
If you are a sales professional, especially one involved in complex corporate sales, you will probably also enjoy reading the book and will learn some new things, but don’t confuse it with a complete book on the art of selling. You might also be put off a bit by some of the statements that are pronounced as great discoveries. For example, he tells us that the three qualities of attunement, buoyancy, and clarity “are the new requirements for effectively moving people on the remade landscape of the twenty-first century”, as if we did not know that we’re supposed to listen, keep an optimistic attitude, and frame our messages properly. And, did you know that when you’re mapping the customer’s decision process you’re engaging in “social cartography”? In addition, the book rightfully pans manipulative sales techniques, but then fills the book with many suggestions to do just that, such as mimicking the other person, touching them, even occasional swearing and rhyming. I’m afraid that some of the good will the book creates towards the sales profession may be erased when readers come across these embarrassing suggestions.
On the plus side, Pink has come up with some interesting insights from social science research that even experienced salespeople can profit from. For example, we learn that salespeople who are neither too introverted or extraverted are the most successful, and I like his suggestion to use interrogative self-talk to conquer nerves before a sales call or presentation.
This is my second annual list of recommended books for anyone on your list who either sells, influences others, or cares about getting better at what they do. I’ve limited the list to books I’ve read during 2012. If you want to see more, I still strongly recommend the books on my 2011 list.
For each book, click on the picture to link directly to Amazon for more information.
Sales
Presenting and speaking
Success
Bonus
Are sales hunters going the way of the dinosaurs? Is cold calling dead? We’re told by sales experts that prospecting is no longer effective in this age of social media and information abundance. You have to find new customers through referrals and social media, and cold calling is ineffective.[1]
Mike Weinberg begs to differ, and has written New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development
I usually don’t read books about prospecting, because I think of them like diet books—the theory is simple but the doing is hard. Everyone knows that you have to eat less and exercise more, and it’s hard for a book to say something new on the subject or to motivate you for long. That being said, Weinberg has come through and delivered an excellent book which outlines a clear path for generating more revenue and brining in new customers, as long as you’re willing to do the work.
The promise implied in the title of the book is kept. Mike writes in a direct and compelling style, stripping out all unnecessary complexity and jargon out of the simple process of prospecting. Prospecting is a function of numbers, discipline and skill. The first three chapters are about the motivation and discipline needed, and the rest of the book provides the skill in three sections:
Choosing your targets. The key issue is to focus. Although prospecting is generally seen as a numbers game, you can stack the numbers in your favor by quickly eliminating the low-percentage prospects and then selecting a finite and realistically workable list. Weinberg suggests finding companies that “look, feel, and smell” like your best clients. You know you bring value to them, and you have instant credibility, and you speak their language. Then, target their senior executives with the sales story that you develop in the second section.
Marshaling your sales weapons. The most important weapon in your arsenal is your sales story. An effective sales story is written in outside-in fashion; instead of yourself and your company, you need to make the customer the center of your story. I found this to be the most helpful section of the entire book, in that it made me do something I rarely do when I read a sales book. I took out a pen and several sheets of paper and worked through the exercise that Mike suggests for creating a compelling sales story. The first step is to brainstorm as many possible ways as you can think of to complete this sentence: “Companies bring us in when…” You then list common pains you can eliminate, problems you can solve, opportunities you can help them take advantage of, and results they need to generate. The second step is to honestly list your differentiators in plain language. It’s a simple exercise, but very eye-opening and very productive.
Planning and executing the attack. I have some differences of opinion with Mike’s suggested approach in this section, but overall I believe his method is very sound and will be effective, for any sales hunters. The main difference might be that I and the clients I generally work with are going after very large accounts, so that there is a smaller population to choose from and a more rifle-shot approach is necessary. I’d like to see more “warming up” the cold call by sending email or using a referral before the first call, and more detailed sales call planning. That said, the differences between us are only in degree, and not in kind.
If you are reasonably new in sales and need a solid and complete manual to learn how to prospect, New Sales. Simplified. is an excellent book for you. If you have been around for a long time and need kick in the back of the pants to get you re-started, plus some excellent suggestions for refining and improving your approach, then this is also the book for you.
This book may make you uncomfortable; it will make you money.
[1] In The Challenger Sale, we’re told that buyers on average have already gone through 60% of their buying cycle before they speak to a salesperson. Maybe that’s because salespeople have stopped calling them.
Having trained salespeople for twenty years, I’d like to think I know a thing or two about effective training. But having read Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better
By now it’s well-known that the most important factor in mastery of a skill is thousands of hours of practice. Taking this idea one step further, what you need to consistently get better is deliberate practice, which is about repeatedly identifying specific areas that need improvement, practicing to get to a certain standard, getting immediate feedback and then practicing again until you get it right. This book takes the idea of deliberate practice one step further, by showing specifically how to isolate the key areas that need improvement, how to practice, and how to give and receive feedback. It’s organized into 42 rules for “getting better at getting better”.
The key theme of the book is that practice does not make perfect—it makes permanent. If you practice the right things wrong, or the wrong things right, you will permanently encode substandard performance. In other words, practicing the same thing over and over in the wrong way will only make you better at doing it wrong. Or, if you practice the wrong skill, you will get very good at something that will not contribute to your success. So, you first have to figure out what to practice by analyzing the domain you want to succeed in and then identify and prioritize the key skills that will have the greatest impact. Then, devise the proper drills to practice to a measurable standard so that you can encode success.
I judge if a book is worth reading by how many useful and immediately practical ideas I take from it, and Practice Perfect has given me at least a dozen. In a general sense, I plan to incorporate less scrimmaging and more drilling into the skills portions of my training sessions. For example, sales training teaches a variety of skills and then usually culminates in a realistic role play or presentation, after which participants are critiqued and then sent on their way. The problem with realistic training is that each new skill may only be practiced once, if at all. Drilling is intended to be unrealistic, so that it can provide multiple concentrated opportunities to practice each skill. As the authors say, use scrimmaging to assess, and drilling to improve.
While this may sound like common sense, it can actually be hard to sell to potential clients. In a tough economy everyone is justifiably tight with their training dollars and time spent away from the field, so they try to cram as much into shorter training sessions as they possibly can. The question that must be answered by sales executives or training professionals is: is it better to learn a lot of things imperfectly, or a few critical things perfectly?
One way out of that conundrum, as the authors note, is to plan training sessions meticulously, in order to get as much possible effectiveness out of every single minute. They note that in the NFL it has now become common to have “pre-game” meetings to prepare for practices, and that review of practice tapes is as important as game tapes. This idea is actually amazingly easy to follow even for full-time professionals who don’t have the luxury of much dedicated practice time. Almost everyone carries a tablet device or smartphone that takes video, and imagine how your skill level could improve if you would rehearse a sales presentation or questioning sequence before an important sales call.
Another way out of the conundrum is to provide a proper framework and standard for the most important skills and then help managers institutionalize the practice of practice within their organizations. In today’s fiercely competitive war for talent, it may be better to have a strong culture of practice and then hire for coachability and willingness to learn, as opposed to demonstrated skill.
The authors are education experts and have developed their techniques and rules for training classroom teachers, but they also weave in plenty of examples from sports[1] and business, and make it very clear that the ideas and techniques are universal to the proper learning of a skill. The first half of the book is devoted to individual skill improvement, and the second half offers practical advice for institutionalizing perfect practice within the organization.
Whether you are an executive seeking ways to improve the performance of your employees, Little League coach on the weekends, or a motivated self-learner, Practice Perfect is the book for you.
[1] In fact, it appears that the legendary basketball coach John Wooden is their patron saint, and you could certainly do worse than that in a book about practice.
