To Sell is Human (Book Summary)

Pixar pitch [story framework]
- Once upon a time and every day…
- Until one day…
- And because of that…
- Until finally…
- [And after that]
- [And the moral of the story is…]
What people actually do inside of tiny operations is often fundamentally different from what they do within massive ones. In particular, large organization tend to rely on specialization.
[There is a] distinction between “products people buy” and “products people are sold.”
To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources – not to deprive that person, but to leave him better off in the end.
“To move people a large distance and for the long term, we have to create the conditions where they can move themselves.” – Larry Ferlazzo

When buyers can know more than sellers, sellers are no longer protectors and purveyors of information. They-re the curators and clarifiers of it – helping to make sense o the blizzard of facts, data, and options.
Seek to hire sellers with persistence and empathy since these traits are not (easily) trainable

The ability to move people now depends on power’s inverse: understanding another person’s perspective, getting inside his head, and seeing the world through his eyes.
Successful negotiators recommend mimicry. However, they say it is very important that you mimic subtly enough that the other person does not notice what you are doing.
Mimicry has a first cousin: touching. Several studies have shown that when restaurant servers touch patrons lightly on the arm or shoulder, diners leave larger tips.
“The most common thread in people who are very good at [moving others] is humility.” – Gwen Martin
The correlation between extraversion and sales is essentially non-existent. (n=3,806)
The most destructive behavior of salespeople wasn’t being ill-informed. It was an excess of assertiveness and zeal that led to contacting customers too frequently.
Finding similarities can help you attune yourself to others and help them attune themselves to you.

Anyone who sells – whether they’re trying to convince customers to make a purchase or colleagues to make a change – must content with wave after wave of rebuffs, refusals, and repudiations.
The effects of positivity during a sales encounter infect the buyer, making him less adversarial, more open to possibility, and perhaps willing to reach an agreement in which both parties benefit.
Inserting a mild profanity like “damn” into a speech increases the persuasiveness of the speech and listeners’ perception of the speaker’s intensity.
Agents who scored in the optimistic half of explanatory style sold 37% more insurance than agents scoring in the pessimistic half.
Optimism is a catalyst that can stir persistence, steady us during challenges, and stroke the confidence that we can influence our surroundings.

Clarity on how to think without clarity on how to act can leave people unmoved.
In the old days, our challenge was accessing information. These days, our challenge is creating it.

In the most successful pitches, the picture didn’t push her idea on the catcher until she extracted a yes. Instead, she invited in her counterpart as a collaborator.
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 begins a conversation, brings the other person in as a participant, and eventually arrives at an outcome that appeals to both of you.
Questions outperform statements in persuading others.
Your email subject line should be either obviously useful or mysteriously intriguing though usefulness will often trump intrigue.

On improvisation: “Yes and…” spirals upward toward possibility.
“Nature hath given man one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.” – Epictetus.
One of the simpler ways to reduce your ratio of talking to listening is simply to slow down.

Brett Bohl, who runs Scrubadoo.co, which sells medical scrubs, sends a handwritten note to every single customer who bus one of his products.
Upserving means doing more for the other person than he expects or you initially intended, taking the extra steps that transform a mundane interaction into a memorable experience.
The wisest and most ethical way to move others is to proceed with humility and gratitude.
Treat everyone as you treat your grandmother, but assume that grandma has 80,000 Twitter followers.