To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others

negative events can clarify positive ones. They equip Hall not with weak-kneed dreaminess but with tough-minded buoyancy—the proper balance between downward and upward forces.

The very technologies that were supposed to obliterate salespeople have lowered the barriers to entry for small entrepreneurs and turned more of us into sellers.

We often understand something better when we see it in comparison with something else than when we see it in isolation.

But the most effective self-talk of all doesn’t merely shift emotions. It shifts linguistic categories. It moves from making statements to asking questions.

instead of doing only one thing, most of us are finding that our skills on the job must now stretch across boundaries.

The belief that sales is slimy, slick, and sleazy has less to do with the nature of the activity itself than with the long-reigning but fast-fading conditions in which selling has often taken place.

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.

clarity—the capacity to help others see their situations in fresh and more revealing ways and to identify problems they didn’t realize they had.

But now, as populations age and require more care and as economies grow more complex and demand increased learning, a new type of worker is emerging. We may be entering something closer to a “white coat/white chalk” economy,17 where Ed-Med is the dominant sector and where moving others is at the core of how we earn a living.