From To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by Pink, Daniel H. (2012-12-31).
About a year ago, in a moment of procrastination masquerading as an act of reflection, I decided to examine how I spend my time. I opened my laptop, clicked on the carefully synched, color-coded calendar, and attempted to reconstruct what I’d actually done over the previous two weeks. I cataloged the meetings attended, trips made, meals eaten, and conference calls endured. I tried to list everything I’d read and watched as well as all the face-to-face conversations I’d had with family, friends, and colleagues. Then I inspected two weeks of digital entrails— 772 sent e-mails, four blog posts, eighty-six tweets, about a dozen text messages. When I stepped back to assess this welter of information— a pointillist portrait of what I do and therefore, in some sense, who I am— the picture that stared back was a surprise: I am a salesman.
I was listening to HBR Ideacast – an interview with Daniel Pink. In those 15 minutes, Pink shares some amazing observations about sales covering a variety of topics:
- Information Assymetry and Information Parity and their effect on sales
- Introverts vs Extroverts
- Buoyancy and the ratio of positive to negative emotions in sales
- Subject lines in email messages – utility vs curiosity
I recommend listening to this podcast (even if you are not in Sales). I bought the book and expect to learn a lot from it.