A short podcast/microchapter by Brian Johnson summarizing Dan Pink's 'To Sell Is Human' and highlighting the new ABCs of selling: Attunement, Buoyancy, and Clarity. The episode focuses on buoyancy—how to stay resilient amid rejection—introducing strategies before, during, and after pitches, and explains Barbara Fredrickson's concept that levity plus gravity produces optimal positivity (buoyancy) with a recommended positivity ratio around 3:1.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome Back to another Arete Plus 1°1 of 451 microchapters from the new book Arete Activate your heroic potential. Thousand pages of goodness. You got one yet? Let's go. This is called levity plus gravity equals buoyancy. To SEL is human and the new ABCs Dan Pink tells us that to cell is human. Although only one in nine Americans is technically in sales, he says that the other eight in nine spend a ton of their time in non sales selling. In fact, the research he commissioned shows that we spend around 40% of our time or 24 minutes out of every working hour trying to move people to do things. Whether that's pitching an idea to colleagues or trying to change someone's behavior. Then there's the personal time we spend selling or moving others from selling our kids on a philosophical idea. Mistakes are awesome. Or your spouse on how to optimize your nutrition. Sugar isn't awesome in that context he tells us we need some new ABCs of selling. As you may know, the ABCs of the old school hardcore sales approach are always be closing abc. That to say the least, is not where it's at now. Dan says it's all about attunement, buoyancy and clarity. Abc. Here's the super quick look. Attunement is basically the ability to connect with others. We get there via three things. Humility, trying to figure out what the other person is thinking. This is more effective by the way, than trying to figure out what they're feeling and strategically mimicking their movements and words but doing it subtly and acting like a human being without being weird about it. Then we have buoyancy. That's actually what I want to focus on today. More on that in a moment. Then we have clarity. We need to be able to concisely communicate the essence of our offer. Finding the 1% of what really matters while asking good questions, etc. So all that to arrive at buoyancy. Buoyancy is how we stay afloat in the ocean of rejection we all feel when we try to sell people on our ideas and or products, etc. Dan offers us tips to stay buoyant before, during and after our pitch. Before we want to make sure our self talk is empowering. And during we want to keep our positivity ratios optimized. 1 to 1 isn't going to do it, nor will 2 to 1. Research shows that 3 to 1 is the sweet spot. Note 11 to 1 isn't going to work either. Now after we want to make sure our explanatory styles are rocking a la Martin Seligman's wisdom. Unlearned optimism. Check that out. Now we're ready for the point of this plus one degree. You know that positivity ratio, positive to negative things we want to target 3 to 1. Too little positivity isn't going to work and very important and too much positivity isn't going to work either. I love the way Dan frames Barbara Fredrickson's wisdom on this, and I quote, Fredrickson sees the healthy positivity ratios as a calibration between two competing poles, levity and gravity. Levity is that unseen force that lifts you skyward, whereas gravity is the opposing force that pulls you earthward. Unchecked levity leaves you flighty, ungrounded and unreal. Unchecked gravity leaves you collapsed in a heap of misery. Yet when properly combined, these two opposing forces leave you buoyant. Levity plus gravity equals buoyancy. How's your levity and how's your gravity? Here's to your buoyancy.
