“For me, it means really showing people. Transfer belief is selling.” – Alex Smith in today’s Tip 1736
Do you sell by being human?
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Sell By Being Human Podcasts
Alex Smith on Sales Success Stories Interview
To Sell Is Human Book
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes in the form of a clip from my most recent interview with Alex Smith on the Sales Success Stories podcast. Check this out:
You talked about You Sell by Being Human, which also happens to be the name of your podcast. So talk about what is that exactly? And maybe that’s also a good opportunity to just talk through the story of the pod as well.
Alex Smith: Yeah, amazing. It’s funny. This is a question that’s flipped on me, Scott. So I ask everyone, and honestly, I challenge everyone. I’d love to hear everyone’s answer to this question. So even you, Scott, anyone, think to yourself, when I say the phrase, sell something, but sell it by being human, what does that mean to you? And I ask every guest that. And I think I’ve heard amazing things like being authentic, being aligned, being curious, helping people, serving people, all sorts of great things. I’ve heard even people saying, Don’t sell it, which is funny to me. But there’s a great book, To Sell Is Human by Dan Pink, and we’ll get into tons of different things about it. But in that book, that’s really my guide in sales. And it’s not written by a sales guru or leader. If anyone’s familiar with Dan Pink, he’s an author, he’s a social scientist. I guess you could say. And he just realized, and this is someone who I’ve had the pleasure of actually talking to, which is freaking crazy, and we can talk this story about doing it.
But the premise of the book is everyone in the world is essentially in sales. And he did a study, and he asked people throughout all walks of life, educators, business owners, nurses, doctors, people that you would not consider in sales, how much of your job is influencing, changing, persuading, that thing. And it’s the majority. People aren’t doing the ABCs, Glengarry Glen Ross, which is an awesome movie. They’re not doing the Always Be Closing. He said they’re doing things like the new ABCs, which he said were attunement, really taking perspective, getting in someone’s mind and their heart, and understanding what they’re feeling and thinking. He called that attunement. That was the first A. B, boy, and C, he called. Staying just level-headed with a sea of nos, a sea of rejection. We all have to face it. How do you do that? And then C was clarity. He was talking about how the best sellers really help people make sense of all the information out there. So much information. We’re not as much sellers as we are curators of information. And that’s a powerful distinction of we’re not giving people information, we’re helping curate it for people and making it easy to buy.
So first off, that book is my guide. But when I hear the term sell something itself by being human, I just think to, we’re all human beings that have emotions, and we’re more alike than not. For me, it’s understanding that I want to lean on index on the person in salesperson, meaning I want the person to feel like I’m dealing with a real person in Alex. He’s not putting on a mask. He’s not a typical seller. He’s just him. He’s the same person I’m talking to on a Zoom in a sales meeting if I met Alex on the street. So for me, it means really showing people. Transfer belief is selling, that’s one definition. Sales is the transfer of belief. I think another is doing it through the lens of human connection and really helping people feel like he’s a real person. That’s what, to me, selling by being human is. And a lot of what that book talks about, and we can talk about that. But yeah, that’s what I’m thinking about as I hear that question.
Scott Ingram: For a link to the full episode on Sales Success Stories as well as links to connect with Alex, his podcast, and to Dan Pink’s book: To Sell is Human, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1736. Usually, I’d tell you come to come back here for another great sales tip, but I totally won’t be upset if you want to dig into my full hour and forty-minute-long conversation with Alex. Either way, thanks for listening!