Latest / The Action Catalyst / REMASTERED: To Sell is Human and When, with Daniel Pink (Sales, Science, Psychology, Economics)

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REMASTERED: To Sell is Human and When, with Daniel Pink (Sales, Science, Psychology, Economics) · The Action Catalyst

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  Host: Daniel Pink is a behavioral scientist and New
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  York Times and Wall Street Journal best selling author of
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  several books; Drive: The Surprising Truth About What
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  Motivates us in 2009. Definitely one of the biggest ones, then he
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  wrote the book, part of what we're gonna talk about today, To
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  Sell Is Human, and When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect
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  Timing. Anyways, Daniel, welcome to the show.
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  Daniel Pink: Great to be here.
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  Host: So one of the big catchphrases, I think, from your
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  book was that we're all in sales now.
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  Daniel Pink: So when you look at how people actually spend their
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  time at work, you realize that no matter what their job title
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  is a huge portion of what they're doing every day is
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  selling. Now what we did is we put together a survey of about
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  7,000 full time workers in the US. And we found that people are
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  spending 40% of their time, persuading, convincing,
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  cajoling, essentially selling now, they're not necessarily
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  selling a Winnebago, or selling consulting services or selling
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  encyclopedias or selling kitchen appliances. But what they are
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  doing is they are trying to get their employees to do something
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  different or do something in a different way that's selling,
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  they are employees trying to get their boss to stop doing stupid
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  that's selling. You're trying to get someone to see their point
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  of view that's selling, they're working on a project, it's
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  trying to get that talented person down the hall to work on
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  their product rather than another product they're selling.
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  And so when you actually look at the ground truth of what people
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  do day to day on the job, we are spending a huge portion of time
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  selling even though the majority of us do not have that word
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  sales are selling in our job title.
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  Host: You refer to that as non sales selling.
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  Daniel Pink: You're selling but the characters are not ringing.
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  And the denomination of the transaction is in dollars, or
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  euros or rubles, but time, effort, tension, energy, zeal,
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  commitment, those kinds of things.
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  Host: Part of the currency there is trust.
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  Daniel Pink: No question. Absolutely right. Trust is
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  essential on so many different domains and so many different
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  aspects of business. But I mean, you know, it almost goes without
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  saying, but I'll say it, you know, if someone doesn't trust
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  you, they're not going to buy from you whether they're buying
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  a car or whether they're buying an idea.
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  Host: One of the things you also introduced in the book as you
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  said, it used to be Caveat emptor, buyer beware. But now
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  you're saying the world has changed to something else. So
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  can you highlight it's not Caveat emptor. But now it's what
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  and why is that?
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  Daniel Pink: Well, we've gone from a world of buyer beware to
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  a world now seller beware. Now how that is extraordinarily
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  important. Most of what we know about sales, whether you're
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  selling again, whether it's non sales, selling, selling an idea
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  concept, or whether you're selling Winnebago, most of what
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  we know about sale has come from a world of information
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  asymmetry, where the seller always had more information than
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  the buyer. When the seller has more information, the buyer, the
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  seller has the edge worse the seller can take the low road
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  seller can rip you off. Right information asymmetry is why we
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  have this principle of buyer beware, buyers have to be aware
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  because the seller has an AED. And this is true from the very
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  first commercial transaction in human history. You know,
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  whatever it was some guy selling a goat to someone else for Shell
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  or something like that the guy selling the goat knew a lot more
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  about the goats and the guy buying the goat information
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  asymmetry is to find what sales is for a very long time.
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  However, in the last 10 years, everything's turned upside down
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  is it less and less and less and less and less? Do we live in a
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  world of information asymmetry, we live in a world of much
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  greater information parity, where the buyer of something can
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  actually find out a huge amount of information, sometimes as
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  much of the often as much as the seller, sometimes more than the
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  seller. Okay, that's a huge deal. And you see this in you
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  know, basically buying a car used to be if you bought a car
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  and a car dealer would know a lot more about cars and a lot
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  more about Toyota is a lot more about Toyota Camrys than you
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  ever could fire everywhere now you can go into that Toyota
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  dealership and you know almost as much sometimes more than that
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  car salesman knows about cars Toyota's and cameras so point of
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  all this is that a world of information asymmetry is a world
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  of buyer beware but a world of information parity in the world
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  of seller beware. It used to be that buyers had knowledge
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  information, not many choices, no way to talk back. Buyer
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  beware. Now we're in a world where buyers have lots of
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  information, lots of choices and all kinds of with back doesn't
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  want to celebrate where and this is as huge a change in business
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  as anything we have had to confront it is one of the one of
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  biggest cultural and economic changes in the world of the 21st
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  century. That's the way the world works now and salespeople
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  who don't adjust to that are going to be in a world of hurt.
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  Host: Yeah. So you talk about, you know, the old ABCs of
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  selling and sort of the classic, you know, salesy stuff and you
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  introduce the new ABCs of selling. The first one is
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  attunement, right?
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  Daniel Pink: So attunement is perspective taking, basically,
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  can you get out of your own head, see things from someone
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  else's point of view, that's all that it is. Now, it ends up
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  being enormously important in any kind of sales and
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  persuasion. Why? Because today, we have whether we're a boss,
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  whether we're a teacher, whether we're salesperson, we have very
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  little ability to force other people to do things, very little
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  course of power. So when we lack that kind of power, we need
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  almost the flip side of that, which is, can you get out of
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  your own head, see things from someone else's point of view,
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  find common ground. And this ends up being one of the most
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  profoundly important elements of sales in a world of filler,
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  beware. And it's something that human beings, you know, are not
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  often not that great at. Fortunately, we're not
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  inherently great at it. Fortunately, we can learn how to
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  be a lot better at it.
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  Host: Is it right to call it empathy is that part of it?
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  Daniel Pink: Empathy, sort of, I mean, empathy is related to
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  perspective taking. But perspective taking is a little
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  bit more hard headed than empathy. With empathy, you're
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  sort of understanding how somebody is feeling. But
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  actually, there's some interesting research showing
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  that in in many kinds of sales is understanding what they're
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  thinking is as important if not more so. So certainly true in
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  negotiation, that there's some interesting research showing
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  that if you direct people in a negotiation to focus on the
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  other side feelings, and the end one another people to focus on
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  the other side thoughts of interests, that in general, the
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  people focus on the thoughts of interest, do better than the
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  folks who are focused on the emotions and feelings. So what
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  you want is you want to get both channels, you want to get the
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  thinking channel and the emotional channel. But the
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  reality of our lives is that we have very, very heavy loads on
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  our brain. And so if you're negotiating in real time, you're
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  trying to remember what the terms are, you're trying to
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  remember what your objectives are, you're trying to remember a
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  whole variety of facts, you're making decisions on the fly,
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  it's very hard for us to keep everything in our head. And so
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  getting, then you say, Oh, you have to have the emotional
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  channel and the thoughts and interest channel, that's
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  sometimes hard for us to do. So if you're overloaded focus on
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  the thoughts and focus on the interest. The other thing about
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  that is that there's some good evidence showing that that is
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  the key to in just overall persuading inside of a company
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  say, that's the key to persuading that when you
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  persuade up, you're much better off focusing on the other
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  person's thoughts and interests. And you are in the feeling that
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  emotions, my view in terms of persuading, selling to people
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  higher in the organization, as it is my own view, I don't have
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  data to support this. But bosses always put people into two
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  categories. Do the people who report to them into two
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  categories, people will make my life easier people who make my
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  life harder, and you want to be in that first category of people
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  who make the boss's life easier.
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  Host: That's an interesting perspective. So again, getting
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  back into the data when you talk about attunement, one of the
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  common things is oh, you know, if you're gonna be great in
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  sales, you got to be an extrovert. Can you talk about
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  how extroverts and introverts perform?
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  Daniel Pink: There's a very good there's a very good study out of
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  the University of Pennsylvania. And here's what they did. They
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  went to a large company, large software company and a large
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  software company had a large sales force. They measure the
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  introvert and extrovert, the extraversion levels of the
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  people in the sales force, then the sales reps, rental software.
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  So we know that introverts are we know that the extroverts are
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  we know how much every person sold. Here's what they concluded
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  that strong introverts were terrible at sales. I don't have
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  the big surprise. But I think the bigger surprise is that
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  strong extroverts were also terrible at sales. And then
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  what's scary about that, if you say is like it's a myth, that
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  you know that we tend to think that the people who do the best
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  are the strong extroverts. The data don't bear that out. What
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  the data show is that the people who do the best are people who
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  are ambivert, an ambivert, like ambidextrous. And one of the
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  things that's going on is that we've gotten introversion and
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  extraversion wrong. We think of it as binary, when in fact, it's
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  a spectrum. And what the research shows very clearly, is
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  that the people who do the best at sale are neither strongly
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  introverted nor strongly extroverted. They're in the
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  middle, they are ambivert. And if we go back to this idea of
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  being ambidextrous, think of it that way. They can use the left
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  hand they can use the right hand. What does this mean? In
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  terms of attunement, it means they know when to speak up, and
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  they don't want to shut up. They don't want to push anyone to
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  hold back. And so, as you say, this idea that strong extroverts
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  are great at sales is flatly wrong. There's no evidence of
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  that, in fact, there's evidence of the contrary. But it doesn't
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  mean that strong introverts are better, they're actually a
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  little worse. The people who do the best are people who are in
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  the middle ambiverts. And the best news of all is that most of
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  us are introverts. Most of us, I mean, they're very strong
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  introverts, nor are strong extroverts. We're in the middle.
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  Host: Big, big stuff. Well, I want to shift the conversation
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  right now to when the scientific secrets of perfect timing, why
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  this book and why right now?
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  Daniel Pink: Well writing a book as you know, is a big
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  undertaking you have to be you have to have something that you
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  really love working on somebody that you want to live with, for
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  many, many, many, many years about the rest of your life. And
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  I actually wrote and threw away a couple of book proposals in
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  that time, because I didn't feel like the ideas were big enough
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  folded up. Interesting enough, but it finally came around to
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  this idea. And the main reason that I wanted to write this
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  book, no joke is that I wanted to read it, I realized that I
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  was making all kinds of wind decisions in my own everything
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  from when should I exercise during the day? When should I do
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  in the did my most important work those kinds of daily when
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  decisions but also, you know, yearly when decisions why? Why
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  does do a lot of people's well being droop around midlife? Why
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  do beginning matter? How can I make better endings of, of
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  experiences. And so I realized that I was making these wind
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  decisions that are really haphazard way. But it turns out,
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  there's a very, very complicated, but rich and deep
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  body of science, on tonic from economic, social psychology to a
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  lot of work in medicine and biology, that can allow us to
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  make systematically better wind as it has in our life. And so I
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  found from doing the research, and writing this book that I'm
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  now making far, far, far better win decisions in my own life.
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  The big idea here is the following that we tend when we
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  make decisions about our performance, about our lives
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  about our own happiness, we tend to focus on what should we do?
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  How should we do it? Who should we do it with? And we make these
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  questions alone, secondary question that sort of sitting at
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  the kids table. And what what I found in doing the research is
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  that when belongs at the grown up table, that these questions
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  of when matter significantly, they matter on how we perform in
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  our job, they matter on how happy we are with our lives,
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  they matter in almost every dimension of of what we do. And
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  so if we start taking these questions of when seriously, do
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  we take questions of what and who and how I think people are
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  going to live better lives and work a little bit smarter,
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  interesting, there's so many different dimensions of that,
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  let me give you a couple of just like, you know, be really
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  practical and tactical for your listeners here. So for instance,
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  having studied this subject, I would never allow anybody in my
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  family to willingly go into a hospital in the afternoon versus
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  the morning. Here's what happened. Doctors make four
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  times as many anesthesia errors at 3pm, as they do at 9am
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  incidents of hand washing declines dramatically in the
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  afternoon, compared with the morning or higher number of
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  surgical errors in the afternoon. And in the morning.
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  Look at somebody like Alaska, adopted this fine half as many
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  pilots in the same population in the afternoon exams, as they do
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  in the morning, that there's a rapid deterioration in
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  performance in hospitals in the afternoon. So that's one very
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  specific, very practical takeaway on that. Another really
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  practical, logical way is that is that we don't, when we think
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  about break, okay, we, the science of break is powerful.
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  And what it shows us very clearly, is that we need to
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  start treating breaks with much greater serious bite breaks
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  during the day. The way I look at it is that, that, remember,
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  15 years ago, somebody who didn't sleep, who pulled all
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  nighters, who came into the office saying, Oh, I only got
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  two hours of sleep last night, that person, we would look at it
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  that hero, that person was so dedicated, so committed, and now
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  that we understand the science of sleep, if you know that
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  person is an idiot, that person is hurting his own performance,
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  he's hurting other people's performance, the science of
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  break through or the science of sleep was 15 years ago. And what
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  it showed is that we need to start thinking of breaks as part
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  of our performance rather than a deviation of performance. And a
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  very specific practical thing you can do on that front is to
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  make them break lit, right down to two or three breaks you're
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  going to take during the day, write it down, schedule it and
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  treat it with the seriousness with which you schedule
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  meetings. We also know a lot more about breaks. Taking a
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  break with somebody is more is better than taking without
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  somebody with with friend, going outside is better than being
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  inside that moving is better than being stationary, that
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  being fully detached is better than being only partly detached.
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  Host: How long?
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  Daniel Pink: There's no magic number to that. Unfortunately, I
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  wish that their work they do the research shows that something is
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  better than nothing. So if you can get like a 15 minute break
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  20 minute break a couple times a day you're gonna perform at a
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  higher level.
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  Host: So is it the time of it that really matters, or is it
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  the number, the how long someone's been working?
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  Daniel Pink: That's a great question. One of the things,
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  let's go back to handwashing, for example, one of the things
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  that can tick and tick handwashing back up in the
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  afternoon, if they can break. It's unclear exactly what's
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  causing all of this. But one of the remedies seems to be giving
• 15:21
  people a break. So for instance, there's some interesting
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  research out of Denmark, showing the kids score systematically
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  lower better life path when they take them in the afternoon
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  versus the morning. And but a good remedy for that is giving
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  kids a 20 to 30 minute break before they take the test. So
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  part of it is basically our circadian rhythms, diurnal
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  variation, and make them the afternoon a precarious time in
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  general, and part of it, as you suggest, is just simply people
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  being out of tap for a long time and losing some of their vigilance.
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  Host: Well where do you want people to go Daniel, to connect
• 15:55
  with you or check out the book?
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  Daniel Pink: I think you just come to my website, which is
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  Daniel pink.com, Daniel pink.com. All things pink.
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  Host: And then last question here on the topic of self
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  discipline, and timing. Do you feel like you personally are
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  seeing data that would suggest that you're more likely to do
• 16:15
  your tax return? Make the sales call? Do the workout, balance
• 16:18
  your finances early in the day than later in the day? Or do you
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  is that kind of inconclusive or not? You? Have you not looked at
• 16:26
  anything enough to be able to even address it?
• 16:29
  Daniel Pink: Yeah, no, I can't address it. And, and again, some
• 16:32
  of it depends. So for instance, what we have are very similar to
• 16:36
  what we were talking about with introversion extroversion. So
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  some of us are mark that is we ride relatively early, we peak
• 16:43
  during the early part of the day. And then we're out a little
• 16:47
  bit others of us are out. And as we take longer, we wake up a
• 16:51
  little bit later, and we reach our peak later in the day. What
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  the research shows is that most of us are in between most of us
• 16:58
  neither large nor out, but 30 Birds right in between, for
• 17:01
  people who are larks. And for people who are third birth,
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  you're generally better off doing your head down focus
• 17:08
  analytic work in the morning, that's very, very clear to me,
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  and save your some of your mundane work for the early
• 17:15
  afternoon, which is often a trap for people. And then maybe some
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  of your more creative work for the rebound that which often
• 17:22
  occurs around four or five. So typically, the pattern of the
• 17:25
  day have a peak, a trough and a rebound. What's interesting is
• 17:29
  that the people who are out and there are about one out of five
• 17:33
  of us are strong out, people who are out the pattern goes the
• 17:36
  reverse. So you basically have a recovery trough and peak. So
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  they are often better off doing their heads down analytic work,
• 17:44
  the tax return, whatever, you know, maybe beginning at four or
• 17:47
  five in the afternoon there. But again, for most of us it's
• 17:51
  you're better off doing your head down analytic work in the
• 17:54
  morning, clearing the deck, doing what Cal Newport called
• 17:58
  your deep work then, and then pushing everything out till
• 18:01
  later in the day.
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  Host: Daniel, thank you so much, man, just for your work and your
• 18:06
  science and your data and your objective, creative but
• 18:09
  objective empirical view on the world. You're constantly pushing
• 18:13
  us to think differently.
• 18:14
  Daniel Pink: Thanks for having me, I enjoyed it.