To Sell is Human and When, with Daniel Pink – Episode 226 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Best-selling author Daniel Pink tackles lofty topics such as the primacy of trust, information asymmetry vs parity, practicing attunement, what we’ve all got wrong about introverts and extroverts, how breaks are a part of performance, why EVERYONE is selling, and why never to visit a hospital in the afternoon.

About Daniel:

Daniel H. Pink is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, including The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, When and A Whole New Mind — as well as the #1 New York Times bestsellers Drive and To Sell is Human. Dan’s books have won multiple awards, have been translated into 42 languages, and have sold millions of copies around the world.

Pink was host and co-executive producer of “Crowd Control,” a television series about human behavior on the National Geographic Channel that aired in more than 100 countries. He hosts a popular MasterClass on sales and persuasion. He has appeared frequently on NPR, PBS, ABC, CNN, and other TV and radio networks in the US and abroad.  

He has been a contributing editor at Fast Company and Wired as well as a business columnist for The Sunday Telegraph. His articles and essays have also appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and other publications. He was also a Japan Society Media fellow in Tokyo, where he studied the country’s massive comic industry.

Before venturing out on his own 20 years ago, Dan worked in several positions in politics and government, including serving from 1995 to 1997 as chief speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore.

He received a BA from Northwestern University, where he was a Truman Scholar and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and a JD from Yale Law School. He has also received honorary doctorates from Georgetown University, the Pratt Institute, the Ringling College of Art and Design, the University of Indianapolis, and Westfield State University.

He lives in Washington, DC, with his family. 

Learn more at DanPink.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
Daniel Pink is a behavioral scientist and New York Times and Wall Street Journal best selling author of several books; Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates us in 2009. Definitely one of the biggest ones, then he wrote the book, part of what we’re gonna talk about today, To Sell Is Human, and When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. Anyways, Daniel, welcome to the show.

Daniel Pink
Great to be here.

Host
So one of the big catchphrases, I think, from your book was that we’re all in sales now.

Daniel Pink
So when you look at how people actually spend their time at work, you realize that no matter what their job title is a huge portion of what they’re doing every day is selling. Now what we did is we put together a survey of about 7,000 full time workers in the US. And we found that people are spending 40% of their time, persuading, convincing, cajoling, essentially selling now, they’re not necessarily selling a Winnebago, or selling consulting services or selling encyclopedias or selling kitchen appliances. But what they are doing is they are trying to get their employees to do something different or do something in a different way that’s selling, they are employees trying to get their boss to stop doing stupid that’s selling. You’re trying to get someone to see their point of view that’s selling, they’re working on a project, it’s trying to get that talented person down the hall to work on their product rather than another product they’re selling. And so when you actually look at the ground truth of what people do day to day on the job, we are spending a huge portion of time selling even though the majority of us do not have that word sales are selling in our job title.

Host
You refer to that as non sales selling.

Daniel Pink
You’re selling but the characters are not ringing. And the denomination of the transaction is in dollars, or euros or rubles, but time, effort, tension, energy, zeal, commitment, those kinds of things.

Host
Part of the currency there is trust.

Daniel Pink
No question. Absolutely right. Trust is essential on so many different domains and so many different aspects of business. But I mean, you know, it almost goes without saying, but I’ll say it, you know, if someone doesn’t trust you, they’re not going to buy from you whether they’re buying a car or whether they’re buying an idea.

Host
One of the things you also introduced in the book as you said, it used to be Caveat emptor, buyer beware. But now you’re saying the world has changed to something else. So can you highlight it’s not Caveat emptor. But now it’s what and why is that?

Daniel Pink
Well, we’ve gone from a world of buyer beware to a world now seller beware. Now how that is extraordinarily important. Most of what we know about sales, whether you’re selling again, whether it’s non sales, selling, selling an idea concept, or whether you’re selling Winnebago, most of what we know about sale has come from a world of information asymmetry, where the seller always had more information than the buyer. When the seller has more information, the buyer, the seller has the edge worse the seller can take the low road seller can rip you off. Right information asymmetry is why we have this principle of buyer beware, buyers have to be aware because the seller has an AED. And this is true from the very first commercial transaction in human history. You know, whatever it was some guy selling a goat to someone else for Shell or something like that the guy selling the goat knew a lot more about the goats and the guy buying the goat information asymmetry is to find what sales is for a very long time. However, in the last 10 years, everything’s turned upside down is it less and less and less and less and less? Do we live in a world of information asymmetry, we live in a world of much greater information parity, where the buyer of something can actually find out a huge amount of information, sometimes as much of the often as much as the seller, sometimes more than the seller. Okay, that’s a huge deal. And you see this in you know, basically buying a car used to be if you bought a car and a car dealer would know a lot more about cars and a lot more about Toyota is a lot more about Toyota Camrys than you ever could fire everywhere now you can go into that Toyota dealership and you know almost as much sometimes more than that car salesman knows about cars Toyota’s and cameras so point of all this is that a world of information asymmetry is a world of buyer beware but a world of information parity in the world of seller beware. It used to be that buyers had knowledge information, not many choices, no way to talk back. Buyer beware. Now we’re in a world where buyers have lots of information, lots of choices and all kinds of with back doesn’t want to celebrate where and this is as huge a change in business as anything we have had to confront it is one of the one of biggest cultural and economic changes in the world of the 21st century. That’s the way the world works now and salespeople who don’t adjust to that are going to be in a world of hurt.

Host
Yeah. So you talk about, you know, the old ABCs of selling and sort of the classic, you know, salesy stuff and you introduce the new ABCs of selling. The first one is attunement, right?

Daniel Pink
So attunement is perspective taking, basically, can you get out of your own head, see things from someone else’s point of view, that’s all that it is. Now, it ends up being enormously important in any kind of sales and persuasion. Why? Because today, we have whether we’re a boss, whether we’re a teacher, whether we’re salesperson, we have very little ability to force other people to do things, very little course of power. So when we lack that kind of power, we need almost the flip side of that, which is, can you get out of your own head, see things from someone else’s point of view, find common ground. And this ends up being one of the most profoundly important elements of sales in a world of filler, beware. And it’s something that human beings, you know, are not often not that great at. Fortunately, we’re not inherently great at it. Fortunately, we can learn how to be a lot better at it.

Host
Is it right to call it empathy is that part of it?

Daniel Pink
Empathy, sort of, I mean, empathy is related to perspective taking. But perspective taking is a little bit more hard headed than empathy. With empathy, you’re sort of understanding how somebody is feeling. But actually, there’s some interesting research showing that in in many kinds of sales is understanding what they’re thinking is as important if not more so. So certainly true in negotiation, that there’s some interesting research showing that if you direct people in a negotiation to focus on the other side feelings, and the end one another people to focus on the other side thoughts of interests, that in general, the people focus on the thoughts of interest, do better than the folks who are focused on the emotions and feelings. So what you want is you want to get both channels, you want to get the thinking channel and the emotional channel. But the reality of our lives is that we have very, very heavy loads on our brain. And so if you’re negotiating in real time, you’re trying to remember what the terms are, you’re trying to remember what your objectives are, you’re trying to remember a whole variety of facts, you’re making decisions on the fly, it’s very hard for us to keep everything in our head. And so getting, then you say, Oh, you have to have the emotional channel and the thoughts and interest channel, that’s sometimes hard for us to do. So if you’re overloaded focus on the thoughts and focus on the interest. The other thing about that is that there’s some good evidence showing that that is the key to in just overall persuading inside of a company say, that’s the key to persuading that when you persuade up, you’re much better off focusing on the other person’s thoughts and interests. And you are in the feeling that emotions, my view in terms of persuading, selling to people higher in the organization, as it is my own view, I don’t have data to support this. But bosses always put people into two categories. Do the people who report to them into two categories, people will make my life easier people who make my life harder, and you want to be in that first category of people who make the boss’s life easier.

Host
That’s an interesting perspective. So again, getting back into the data when you talk about attunement, one of the common things is oh, you know, if you’re gonna be great in sales, you got to be an extrovert. Can you talk about how extroverts and introverts perform?

Daniel Pink
There’s a very good there’s a very good study out of the University of Pennsylvania. And here’s what they did. They went to a large company, large software company and a large software company had a large sales force. They measure the introvert and extrovert, the extraversion levels of the people in the sales force, then the sales reps, rental software. So we know that introverts are we know that the extroverts are we know how much every person sold. Here’s what they concluded that strong introverts were terrible at sales. I don’t have the big surprise. But I think the bigger surprise is that strong extroverts were also terrible at sales. And then what’s scary about that, if you say is like it’s a myth, that you know that we tend to think that the people who do the best are the strong extroverts. The data don’t bear that out. What the data show is that the people who do the best are people who are ambivert, an ambivert, like ambidextrous. And one of the things that’s going on is that we’ve gotten introversion and extraversion wrong. We think of it as binary, when in fact, it’s a spectrum. And what the research shows very clearly, is that the people who do the best at sale are neither strongly introverted nor strongly extroverted. They’re in the middle, they are ambivert. And if we go back to this idea of being ambidextrous, think of it that way. They can use the left hand they can use the right hand. What does this mean? In terms of attunement, it means they know when to speak up, and they don’t want to shut up. They don’t want to push anyone to hold back. And so, as you say, this idea that strong extroverts are great at sales is flatly wrong. There’s no evidence of that, in fact, there’s evidence of the contrary. But it doesn’t mean that strong introverts are better, they’re actually a little worse. The people who do the best are people who are in the middle ambiverts. And the best news of all is that most of us are introverts. Most of us, I mean, they’re very strong introverts, nor are strong extroverts. We’re in the middle.

Host
Big, big stuff. Well, I want to shift the conversation right now to when the scientific secrets of perfect timing, why this book and why right now?

Daniel Pink
Well writing a book as you know, is a big undertaking you have to be you have to have something that you really love working on somebody that you want to live with, for many, many, many, many years about the rest of your life. And I actually wrote and threw away a couple of book proposals in that time, because I didn’t feel like the ideas were big enough folded up. Interesting enough, but it finally came around to this idea. And the main reason that I wanted to write this book, no joke is that I wanted to read it, I realized that I was making all kinds of wind decisions in my own everything from when should I exercise during the day? When should I do in the did my most important work those kinds of daily when decisions but also, you know, yearly when decisions why? Why does do a lot of people’s well being droop around midlife? Why do beginning matter? How can I make better endings of, of experiences. And so I realized that I was making these wind decisions that are really haphazard way. But it turns out, there’s a very, very complicated, but rich and deep body of science, on tonic from economic, social psychology to a lot of work in medicine and biology, that can allow us to make systematically better wind as it has in our life. And so I found from doing the research, and writing this book that I’m now making far, far, far better win decisions in my own life. The big idea here is the following that we tend when we make decisions about our performance, about our lives about our own happiness, we tend to focus on what should we do? How should we do it? Who should we do it with? And we make these questions alone, secondary question that sort of sitting at the kids table. And what what I found in doing the research is that when belongs at the grown up table, that these questions of when matter significantly, they matter on how we perform in our job, they matter on how happy we are with our lives, they matter in almost every dimension of of what we do. And so if we start taking these questions of when seriously, do we take questions of what and who and how I think people are going to live better lives and work a little bit smarter, interesting, there’s so many different dimensions of that, let me give you a couple of just like, you know, be really practical and tactical for your listeners here. So for instance, having studied this subject, I would never allow anybody in my family to willingly go into a hospital in the afternoon versus the morning. Here’s what happened. Doctors make four times as many anesthesia errors at 3pm, as they do at 9am incidents of hand washing declines dramatically in the afternoon, compared with the morning or higher number of surgical errors in the afternoon. And in the morning. Look at somebody like Alaska, adopted this fine half as many pilots in the same population in the afternoon exams, as they do in the morning, that there’s a rapid deterioration in performance in hospitals in the afternoon. So that’s one very specific, very practical takeaway on that. Another really practical, logical way is that is that we don’t, when we think about break, okay, we, the science of break is powerful. And what it shows us very clearly, is that we need to start treating breaks with much greater serious bite breaks during the day. The way I look at it is that, that, remember, 15 years ago, somebody who didn’t sleep, who pulled all nighters, who came into the office saying, Oh, I only got two hours of sleep last night, that person, we would look at it that hero, that person was so dedicated, so committed, and now that we understand the science of sleep, if you know that person is an idiot, that person is hurting his own performance, he’s hurting other people’s performance, the science of break through or the science of sleep was 15 years ago. And what it showed is that we need to start thinking of breaks as part of our performance rather than a deviation of performance. And a very specific practical thing you can do on that front is to make them break lit, right down to two or three breaks you’re going to take during the day, write it down, schedule it and treat it with the seriousness with which you schedule meetings. We also know a lot more about breaks. Taking a break with somebody is more is better than taking without somebody with with friend, going outside is better than being inside that moving is better than being stationary, that being fully detached is better than being only partly detached.

Host
How long?

Daniel Pink
There’s no magic number to that. Unfortunately, I wish that their work they do the research shows that something is better than nothing. So if you can get like a 15 minute break 20 minute break a couple times a day you’re gonna perform at a higher level.

Host
So is it the time of it that really matters, or is it the number, the how long someone’s been working?

Daniel Pink
That’s a great question. One of the things, let’s go back to handwashing, for example, one of the things that can tick and tick handwashing back up in the afternoon, if they can break. It’s unclear exactly what’s causing all of this. But one of the remedies seems to be giving people a break. So for instance, there’s some interesting research out of Denmark, showing the kids score systematically lower better life path when they take them in the afternoon versus the morning. And but a good remedy for that is giving kids a 20 to 30 minute break before they take the test. So part of it is basically our circadian rhythms, diurnal variation, and make them the afternoon a precarious time in general, and part of it, as you suggest, is just simply people being out of tap for a long time and losing some of their vigilance.

Host
Well where do you want people to go Daniel, to connect with you or check out the book?

Daniel Pink
I think you just come to my website, which is Daniel pink.com, Daniel pink.com. All things pink.

Host
And then last question here on the topic of self discipline, and timing. Do you feel like you personally are seeing data that would suggest that you’re more likely to do your tax return? Make the sales call? Do the workout, balance your finances early in the day than later in the day? Or do you is that kind of inconclusive or not? You? Have you not looked at anything enough to be able to even address it?

Daniel Pink
Yeah, no, I can’t address it. And, and again, some of it depends. So for instance, what we have are very similar to what we were talking about with introversion extroversion. So some of us are mark that is we ride relatively early, we peak during the early part of the day. And then we’re out a little bit others of us are out. And as we take longer, we wake up a little bit later, and we reach our peak later in the day. What the research shows is that most of us are in between most of us neither large nor out, but 30 Birds right in between, for people who are larks. And for people who are third birth, you’re generally better off doing your head down focus analytic work in the morning, that’s very, very clear to me, and save your some of your mundane work for the early afternoon, which is often a trap for people. And then maybe some of your more creative work for the rebound that which often occurs around four or five. So typically, the pattern of the day have a peak, a trough and a rebound. What’s interesting is that the people who are out and there are about one out of five of us are strong out, people who are out the pattern goes the reverse. So you basically have a recovery trough and peak. So they are often better off doing their heads down analytic work, the tax return, whatever, you know, maybe beginning at four or five in the afternoon there. But again, for most of us it’s you’re better off doing your head down analytic work in the morning, clearing the deck, doing what Cal Newport called your deep work then, and then pushing everything out till later in the day.

Host
Daniel, thank you so much, man, just for your work and your science and your data and your objective, creative but objective empirical view on the world. You’re constantly pushing us to think differently.

Daniel Pink
Thanks for having me, I enjoyed it.