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Book: To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others by Daniel H. Pink
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Authors: Daniel H. Pink
Tags: Psychology, Business
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either of the word clouds: empathy.
“You can’t train someone to care,” she told me. To her the ideal salespeople are those who ask themselves, “What decision would I make if that were my own mom sitting there trying to get service or buy a car?” It sounds noble. And maybe it is. But today, it’s how you sell cars.
Joe Girard is a reason why we had to live by caveat emptor . Tammy Darvish survives—and thrives—because she lives by caveat venditor .
The decline of information asymmetry hasn’t ended all forms of lying, cheating, and other sleazebaggery. One glimpse of the latest financial shenanigans from Wall Street, the City, or Hong Kong confirms that unhappy fact. When the product is complicated—credit default swaps, anyone?—and the potential for lucre enormous, some people will strive to maintain information imbalances and others will opt for outright deception. That won’t change. As long as flawed and fallible human beings walk the planet, caveat emptor remains useful guidance. I heed this principle. So should you. But the fact that some people will take the low road doesn’t mean that lots of people will. When the seller no longer holds an information advantage and the buyer has the means and the opportunity to talk back, the low road is a perilous path.
Caveat venditor extends well beyond car sales to refashion most encounters that involve moving others. Take travel. In the old days—that is, fifteen years ago—travel agents maintained an information monopoly that allowed the unscrupulous ones to overcharge and mistreat their customers. Not anymore. Today, a mom with a laptop has about the same access to airfares, hotel rates, and reviews as a professional. Or consider selling yourself for a job. You can no longer control all the information about yourself, some of which you selectively include in your sales document, the résumé. Today, a company might still look at that résumé but, as CNN notes, the company will also “browse your LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, read the gory details in your blog and hit Google to find out more about you—good or bad—all in one sitting.” 9
The new rules of caveat venditor also govern the booming Ed-Med sector. Today, it’s possible for a motivated secondary school student with Internet access to know more about the causes of the Peloponnesian War or how to make a digital film than his teacher. Physicians, once viewed as imperial dispensers of specialized knowledge, now might see patients who’ve researched their ailment and arrive with a clutch of studies and a course of action. Today’s educators and health care professionals can no longer depend on the quasi-reverence that information asymmetry often afforded them. When the balance tilts in the opposite direction, what they do and how they do it must change. Ed-Med, beware.
A Tale of Two Saturdays
Steve Kemp is a man in a suit who sells used cars. His business, SK Motors (“Where everybody rides!”) in Lanham, Maryland, sits on a colorless patch of Maryland State Route 564, down the road from a roller rink and Grace Baptist Church. Kemp is an old-fashioned businessman—a cheerful fellow, ruddy and heavyset, who belongs to the local Rotary Club and whose service shop offers free detailing to the teacher of the month at a neighborhood school. And SK Motors is an old-fashioned place. Its inventory of about fifty used cars—from a Mercedes-Benz SL to a Hyundai Elantra—sits in an asphalt lot ringed with starter flags. At the edge is a compact one-story, five-room structure that serves as the office.
One sunny Saturday morning, two salesmen, Frank and Wayne, sip coffee in the front room, waiting for the first customer on what is always the busiest day of the week. Frank is a soft-spoken African-American man who’s seventy-four years old but looks fifty-five. He’s been selling cars since 1985. Wayne is about the same age, white and cantankerous, with a baseball cap and plaid shirt.
Onto
“You can’t train someone to care,” she told me. To her the ideal salespeople are those who ask themselves, “What decision would I make if that were my own mom sitting there trying to get service or buy a car?” It sounds noble. And maybe it is. But today, it’s how you sell cars.
Joe Girard is a reason why we had to live by caveat emptor . Tammy Darvish survives—and thrives—because she lives by caveat venditor .
The decline of information asymmetry hasn’t ended all forms of lying, cheating, and other sleazebaggery. One glimpse of the latest financial shenanigans from Wall Street, the City, or Hong Kong confirms that unhappy fact. When the product is complicated—credit default swaps, anyone?—and the potential for lucre enormous, some people will strive to maintain information imbalances and others will opt for outright deception. That won’t change. As long as flawed and fallible human beings walk the planet, caveat emptor remains useful guidance. I heed this principle. So should you. But the fact that some people will take the low road doesn’t mean that lots of people will. When the seller no longer holds an information advantage and the buyer has the means and the opportunity to talk back, the low road is a perilous path.
Caveat venditor extends well beyond car sales to refashion most encounters that involve moving others. Take travel. In the old days—that is, fifteen years ago—travel agents maintained an information monopoly that allowed the unscrupulous ones to overcharge and mistreat their customers. Not anymore. Today, a mom with a laptop has about the same access to airfares, hotel rates, and reviews as a professional. Or consider selling yourself for a job. You can no longer control all the information about yourself, some of which you selectively include in your sales document, the résumé. Today, a company might still look at that résumé but, as CNN notes, the company will also “browse your LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, read the gory details in your blog and hit Google to find out more about you—good or bad—all in one sitting.” 9
The new rules of caveat venditor also govern the booming Ed-Med sector. Today, it’s possible for a motivated secondary school student with Internet access to know more about the causes of the Peloponnesian War or how to make a digital film than his teacher. Physicians, once viewed as imperial dispensers of specialized knowledge, now might see patients who’ve researched their ailment and arrive with a clutch of studies and a course of action. Today’s educators and health care professionals can no longer depend on the quasi-reverence that information asymmetry often afforded them. When the balance tilts in the opposite direction, what they do and how they do it must change. Ed-Med, beware.
A Tale of Two Saturdays
Steve Kemp is a man in a suit who sells used cars. His business, SK Motors (“Where everybody rides!”) in Lanham, Maryland, sits on a colorless patch of Maryland State Route 564, down the road from a roller rink and Grace Baptist Church. Kemp is an old-fashioned businessman—a cheerful fellow, ruddy and heavyset, who belongs to the local Rotary Club and whose service shop offers free detailing to the teacher of the month at a neighborhood school. And SK Motors is an old-fashioned place. Its inventory of about fifty used cars—from a Mercedes-Benz SL to a Hyundai Elantra—sits in an asphalt lot ringed with starter flags. At the edge is a compact one-story, five-room structure that serves as the office.
One sunny Saturday morning, two salesmen, Frank and Wayne, sip coffee in the front room, waiting for the first customer on what is always the busiest day of the week. Frank is a soft-spoken African-American man who’s seventy-four years old but looks fifty-five. He’s been selling cars since 1985. Wayne is about the same age, white and cantankerous, with a baseball cap and plaid shirt.
Onto
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