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To Sell Is Human

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Most of what we think we understand about selling is constructed atop a foundation of assumptions that has crumbled. — location: 75 ^ref-46760

we’re devoting upward of 40 percent of our time on the job to moving others. — location: 84 ^ref-21009

seller beware—where honesty, fairness, and transparency are often the only viable path. — location: 94 ^ref-59455

“attunement”—bringing oneself into harmony with individuals, groups, and contexts. — location: 97 ^ref-64889

“buoyancy”—a quality that combines grittiness of spirit and sunniness of outlook. — location: 99 ^ref-7441

actually believing in what you’re selling has become essential on sales’ new terrain. — location: 102 ^ref-18987

“clarity”—the capacity to make sense of murky situations. — location: 103 ^ref-14497

One of the most effective ways of moving others is to uncover challenges they may not know they have. — location: 105 ^ref-61283

your perfectly attuned, appropriately buoyant, ultra-clear pitches inevitably go awry. — location: 111 ^ref-63491

Make it personal and make it purposeful. — location: 113 ^ref-26590

The ability to move others to exchange what they have for what we have is crucial to our survival and our happiness. — location: 119 ^ref-59345

a crackle of interest that soon becomes a ripple of desire. — location: 143 ^ref-2952

America’s sales force outnumbers the entire federal workforce by more than 5 to 1. — location: 225 ^ref-7575

The U.S. private sector employs three times as many salespeople as all fifty state governments combined employ people. — location: 225 ^ref-63063

much of what we do also seems to involve moving. That is, we’re moving other people to part with resources—whether something tangible like cash or intangible like effort or attention—so that we both get what we want. — location: 269 ^ref-13287

People are now spending about 40 percent of their time at work engaged in non-sales selling—persuading, influencing, and convincing others in ways that don’t involve anyone making a purchase. — location: 281 ^ref-57580

the older someone is, and presumably the more experience that person has, the more she says that moving others occupies her days and determines her success. — location: 313 ^ref-48591

Without any background in production, operations, or management, — location: 346 ^ref-24408

He projects that middle-class employment of the future won’t be employees of large organizations, but self-sufficient “artisans.” — location: 375 ^ref-25245

Interacting with customers around problems isn’t selling per se. But it sells. — location: 437 ^ref-34834

It simply requires every new hire to read two books. — location: 439 ^ref-43360

account of the September 11 attacks, so they’re better attuned to what happens when governments can’t make sense of information; — location: 439 ^ref-49345

British drama instructor’s guide to improvisational acting, — location: 440 ^ref-58513

A world of flat organizations and tumultuous business conditions—and that’s our world—punishes fixed skills and prizes elastic ones. — location: 452 ^ref-61593

“You must also be able to sell your services within the company.” — location: 458 ^ref-45671

“People who don’t have the power or authority from their job title have to find other ways to exert power.” — location: 463 ^ref-17033

“As teachers, we want to move people,” — location: 486 ^ref-56317

“Moving people is the majority of what we do in health care,” — location: 487 ^ref-46179

“Medicine involves a lot of salesmanship,” says one internist who prefers not to be named. “I have to talk people into doing some fairly unpleasant things.” — location: 496 ^ref-27961

to move people a large distance and for the long term, we have to create the conditions where they can move themselves.” — location: 501 ^ref-58991

not looking at the student or the patient as a pawn on a chessboard but as a full participant in the game. — location: 505 ^ref-2871

“People usually know themselves way better than I do.” So now, in order to move people to move themselves, she tells them, “I need your expertise.” Patients heal faster and better when they’re part of the moving process. — location: 524 ^ref-57101

“People want a fair deal from someone they like.” — location: 683 ^ref-37665

facing scorching skepticism. — location: 691 ^ref-51164

qualities she looks for most are persistence—and something for which a word never appeared in either of the word clouds: empathy. — location: 707 ^ref-20661

Attunement is the ability to bring one’s actions and outlook into harmony with other people and with the context you’re in. — location: 833 ^ref-40795

an inverse relationship between power and perspective-taking. Power can move you off the proper position on the dial and scramble the signals you receive, distorting clear messages and obscuring more subtle ones. — location: 855 ^ref-41073

perspective-takers fared best, — location: 880 ^ref-18568

Perspective-taking seems to enable the proper calibration between the two poles, allowing us to adjust and attune ourselves in ways that leave both sides better off. — location: 887 ^ref-48570

find a happy medium of consistent but subtle mimicking that does not disrupt your focus. — location: 921 ^ref-43020

People therefore looked to cues in the environment to determine whom they could trust. “One of those cues is the unconscious awareness of whether we are in synch with other people, and a way to do that is to match their behavioral patterns with our own.” — location: 930 ^ref-34827

when restaurant servers touch patrons lightly on the arm or shoulder, diners leave larger tips. — location: 943 ^ref-17373

more likely to dance with men who lightly touched their forearm for a second or two when making the request. — location: 945 ^ref-16605

when the canvassers touched people once on the upper arm, the percentage jumped to 81 percent. — location: 947 ^ref-5193

humility,” she told me. “They take the attitude of ‘I’m sitting in the small chair so you can sit in the big chair.’” — location: 960 ^ref-34460

Extraverts, in other words, often stumble over themselves. They can talk too much and listen too little, which dulls their understanding of others’ perspectives. They can fail to strike the proper balance between asserting and holding back, which can be read as pushy and drive people away. — location: 1014 ^ref-14006

delicate balance of inspecting and responding. — location: 1020 ^ref-17749

know when to speak up and when to shut up. — location: 1021 ^ref-38683

his favorite opening question is: Where are you from? — location: 1033 ^ref-32728

Watch, Wait, and Wane: — location: 1042 ^ref-55203

“You are forced to care about the worldview of the other person.” — location: 1084 ^ref-25658

People are more likely to move together when they share common ground. — location: 1118 ^ref-49973

the nos he was piling up were just part of the process, — location: 1158 ^ref-40693

Each day, when he makes his rounds, Hall confronts what he calls “an ocean of rejection.” — location: 1163 ^ref-11838

to stay afloat amid that ocean of rejection is the second essential quality in moving others. — location: 1166 ^ref-12699

“Just getting myself out of the house and facing people” is the stiffest challenge, — location: 1170 ^ref-31757

the salesman saturates his own mind with belief in the commodity or service offered for sale, as well as in his own ability to sell.” — location: 1177 ^ref-8241

But whether the talk is chest-thumping or ego-bashing, it tends to be declarative. It states what is or what will be. — location: 1184 ^ref-40016

to move himself and his team, he asks a question: Can we fix it? — location: 1189 ^ref-25477

It moves from making statements to asking questions. — location: 1193 ^ref-42470

the self-questioning group solved nearly 50 percent more puzzles than the self-affirming group. — location: 1198 ^ref-8365

Those who approached a task with Bob-the-Builder-style questioning self-talk outperformed those who employed the more conventional juice-myself-up declarative self-talk. — location: 1204 ^ref-13352

Mere affirmation feels good and that helps. But it doesn’t prompt you to summon the resources and strategies to actually accomplish the task. — location: 1213 ^ref-17751

Questioning self-talk elicits the reasons for doing something and reminds people that many of those reasons come from within.* — location: 1218 ^ref-56125

the first component in buoyancy is interrogative self-talk. — location: 1220 ^ref-61827

Those who’d heard the positive-inflected pitch were twice as likely to accept the deal as those who’d heard the negative one—even though the terms were identical. — location: 1243 ^ref-1757

Where negative emotions help us see trees, positive ones reveal forests. — location: 1253 ^ref-63023

positive emotions can expand our behavioral repertoires and heighten intuition and creativity, — location: 1254 ^ref-25923

inserting a mild profanity like “damn” into a speech increases the persuasiveness of the speech and listeners’ perception of the speaker’s intensity. — location: 1264 ^ref-55737

Once positive emotions outnumbered negative emotions by 3 to 1—that is, for every three instances of feeling gratitude, interest, or contentment, they experienced only one instance of anger, guilt, or embarrassment—people generally flourished. — location: 1278 ^ref-17760

He also seeks positive interactions throughout his day. — location: 1286 ^ref-12315

These experiences help him “keep going, keep going” after other visits, where he leaves muttering under his breath at people’s rudeness. — location: 1289 ^ref-52077

how he thinks about his day—in particular how he explains its worst aspects—can go a long way in determining whether he succeeds. — location: 1296 ^ref-26927

Even when conditions returned to normal, and they once again possessed the ability to seek gain or avoid pain, they didn’t act. They had learned to be helpless. — location: 1304 ^ref-43242

People who give up easily, who become helpless even in situations where they actually can do something, explain bad events as permanent, pervasive, and personal. — location: 1307 ^ref-29362

They believe that negative conditions will endure a long time, that the causes are universal rather than specific to the circumstances, and that they’re the ones to blame. — location: 1308 ^ref-56789

“My boss is always mean” or “All bosses are jerks” or “I’m incompetent at my job” rather than “My boss is having an awful day and I just happened to be in the line of fire when he lost it.” — location: 1310 ^ref-42826

A pessimistic explanatory style—the habit of believing that “it’s my fault, it’s going to last forever, and it’s going to undermine everything I do”16—is debilitating, — location: 1311 ^ref-51548

“Agents who scored in the optimistic half of explanatory style sold 37% more insurance than agents scoring in the pessimistic half. — location: 1323 ^ref-289

salespeople with an optimistic explanatory style—who saw rejections as temporary rather than permanent, specific rather than universal, and external rather than personal—sold more insurance and survived in their jobs much longer. — location: 1329 ^ref-2954

he explained the rejections as temporary, specific, or external. — location: 1334 ^ref-18140

tough-minded buoyancy—the proper balance between downward and upward forces. — location: 1340 ^ref-60584

“flexible optimism—optimism with its eyes open.” — location: 1340 ^ref-3963

“But I think there’s going to be a chance to get her next time.” — location: 1355 ^ref-50319

The more you explain bad events as temporary, specific, and external, the more likely you are to persist even in the face of adversity. — location: 1384 ^ref-40537

What are the overall consequences and why are those consequences not nearly as calamitous as they seem on the surface? — location: 1388 ^ref-56076

how you see rejection often depends on how you frame it. — location: 1407 ^ref-8860

If part of the reason was that some of your work this year wasn’t up to your typical standards, get a little angry with yourself. You screwed up this time. Then use that negative emotion as the impetus to improve. — location: 1413 ^ref-34586

restricts our ability to choose. — location: 1442 ^ref-39749

make our choices and consequences more concrete—for — location: 1443 ^ref-32553

we often think of that future self as an entirely different person. — location: 1467 ^ref-16100

we think of ourselves today and ourselves in the future as different people. — location: 1472 ^ref-27520

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. — location: 1474 ^ref-30776

the ability to move others hinges less on problem solving than on problem finding. — location: 1480 ^ref-21671

trying to find a problem: What good drawing can I produce? — location: 1490 ^ref-63511

experts deemed the problem finders’ works far more creative than the problem solvers’. — location: 1492 ^ref-49331

problem finders “were 18 years later significantly more successful—by the standards of the artistic community—than their peers” who had approached their still-life drawings as more craftsmanlike problem solvers. — location: 1496 ^ref-11640

people most disposed to creative breakthroughs in art, science, or any endeavor tend to be problem finders. These people sort through vast amounts of information and inputs, often from multiple disciplines; experiment with a variety of different approaches; are willing to switch directions in the course of a project; and often take longer than their counterparts to complete their work. — location: 1503 ^ref-62482

If I don’t know my problem, I might need some help finding it. — location: 1522 ^ref-20902

his best salespeople think of their jobs not so much as selling candy but as selling insights about the confectionery business. — location: 1532 ^ref-43152

“The most important thing they do,” he told me, “is find the right problems to solve.” — location: 1537 ^ref-48300

The superintendents ranked “problem solving” number one. But the employers ranked it number eight. Their top-ranked ability: “problem identification.”10 — location: 1543 ^ref-50063

they must be skilled at curating it—sorting through the massive troves of data and presenting to others the most relevant and clarifying pieces. — location: 1546 ^ref-51153

they must be good at asking questions—uncovering possibilities, surfacing latent issues, and finding unexpected problems. — location: 1548 ^ref-20463

Clarity depends on contrast. — location: 1568 ^ref-44478

We often understand something better when we see it in comparison with something else than when we see it in isolation. — location: 1571 ^ref-52039

the most essential question you can ask is this: Compared to what? — location: 1573 ^ref-9849

“Adding an inexpensive item to a product offering can lead to a decline in consumers’ willingness to pay,” — location: 1590 ^ref-29706

In many instances, addition can subtract. — location: 1591 ^ref-25411

framing a sale in experiential terms is more likely to lead to satisfied customers and repeat business. — location: 1608 ^ref-18304

Instead, point out what the car will allow the buyer to do—see — location: 1609 ^ref-42849

In the Wall Street Game, 33 percent of participants cooperated and went free. But in the Community Game, 66 percent reached that mutually beneficial result. — location: 1620 ^ref-60086

Merely assigning that positive label—helping the students frame themselves in comparison with others—elevated their behavior. — location: 1628 ^ref-34952

“adding a minor negative detail in an otherwise positive description of a target can give that description a more positive impact.” — location: 1635 ^ref-4125

people processing the information must be in what the researchers call a “low effort” state. — location: 1637 ^ref-11682

negative information must follow the positive information, — location: 1639 ^ref-13233

Being honest about the existence of a small blemish can enhance your offering’s true beauty. — location: 1643 ^ref-32729

emphasize our potential. — location: 1648 ^ref-46435

“the potential to be good at something can be preferred over actually being good at that very same thing.” — location: 1655 ^ref-61993

People often find potential more interesting than accomplishment because it’s more uncertain, — location: 1656 ^ref-28995

That uncertainty can lead people to think more deeply about the person they’re evaluating—and the more intensive processing that requires can lead to generating more and better reasons why the person is a good choice. — location: 1657 ^ref-37475

don’t fixate only on what you achieved yesterday. Also emphasize the promise of what you could accomplish tomorrow. — location: 1659 ^ref-13306

Twenty-five percent of students deemed least likely to contribute actually made a contribution when they received the letter with a concrete appeal, a map, and a location for donating. — location: 1671 ^ref-10810

destination. A specific request accompanied by a clear way to get it done ended up with the least likely group donating food at three times the rate of the most likely who hadn’t been given a clear path of action. — location: 1673 ^ref-14347

Clarity on how to think without clarity on how to act can leave people unmoved. — location: 1676 ^ref-10563

the most effective tools for excavating people’s buried drives are questions. — location: 1685 ^ref-45314

irrational questions actually motivate people better,” — location: 1687 ^ref-17876

asking her to locate herself on that 1-to-10 scale can expose an apparent “No” as an actual “Maybe.” — location: 1695 ^ref-44238

as your daughter explains her reasons for being a 4 rather than a 3, she begins announcing her own reasons for studying. — location: 1696 ^ref-24212

“it takes the jolt of the unfamiliar to remind you just how blind you are to your regular surroundings.” — location: 1703 ^ref-8970

put together a list of the best sources of information. Then set aside time to scan those sources regularly. — location: 1715 ^ref-18709

creating meaning out of the material — location: 1717 ^ref-55958

regularly maintaining your own blog. — location: 1718 ^ref-52712

recommends tending to this list of resources every day. — location: 1718 ^ref-25032

“Putting content curation into practice is part art form, part science, but mostly about daily practice,” — location: 1722 ^ref-59526

maybe in advance of that awkward upcoming meeting with your ex-spouse or annoying boss, — location: 1728 ^ref-43924

http://www.rightquestion.org. — location: 1739 ^ref-37168

Influence: Science and Practice — location: 1741 ^ref-39350

The opposite of clarity is murkiness. And murkiness’s close cousin is mindlessness—the — location: 1748 ^ref-65348

altering “choice architecture” — location: 1751 ^ref-44048

When you want to figure out what kind of problem someone has, ask a “Why?” question. Then, in response to the answer, ask another “Why?” And again and again, for a total of five whys. — location: 1756 ^ref-60929

in an attempt to understand the law—or, for that matter, just about anything—the key was to focus on what he termed the “one percent.” Don’t get lost in the crabgrass of details, — location: 1763 ^ref-61978

think about the essence of what you’re exploring—the one percent that gives life to the other ninety-nine. — location: 1765 ^ref-15573

three key abilities: to pitch, to improvise, and to serve. — location: 1789 ^ref-6403

the catcher (i.e., the executive) used a variety of physical and behavioral cues to quickly assess the pitcher’s (i.e., the writer’s) creativity. — location: 1802 ^ref-23662

passion, wit, and quirkiness as positive cues—and — location: 1803 ^ref-14878

slickness, trying too hard, and offering lots of different ideas as negative ones. — location: 1803 ^ref-12852

landing in the creative category wasn’t enough, — location: 1805 ^ref-48723

The more the executives—often derided by their supposedly more artistic counterparts as “suits”—were able to contribute, the better the idea often became, and the more likely it was to be green-lighted. — location: 1807 ^ref-13985

The most valuable sessions were those in which the catcher “becomes so fully engaged by a pitcher that the process resembles a mutual collaboration,” — location: 1808 ^ref-18908

“Once the catcher feels like a creative collaborator, the odds of rejection diminish,” — location: 1810 ^ref-36091

“At a certain point the writer needs to pull back as the creator of the story. And let [the executive] project what he needs onto your idea that makes the story whole for him.” — location: 1812 ^ref-49744

“in an unsuccessful pitch,” another producer explained, “the person just doesn’t yield or doesn’t listen well.” — location: 1813 ^ref-19052

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. — location: 1815 ^ref-15147

we need to broaden our repertoire of pitches for an age of limited attention and caveat venditor. — location: 1834 ^ref-41163

define the one characteristic they most want associated with their brand around the world, and then own it. — location: 1843 ^ref-62099

The question pitch — location: 1855 ^ref-8216

several scholars have found that questions can outperform statements in persuading others. — location: 1862 ^ref-57288

when the underlying arguments were weak, presenting them in the interrogative form had a negative effect. — location: 1867 ^ref-7504

By making people work just a little harder, question pitches prompt people to come up with their own reasons for agreeing (or not). — location: 1879 ^ref-4157

when people summon their own reasons for believing something, they endorse the belief more strongly and become more likely to act on it. — location: 1880 ^ref-11406

Participants rated the aphorisms in the left column as far more accurate than those in the right column, even though each pair says essentially the same thing. — location: 1903 ^ref-5856

Pitches that rhyme are more sublime. — location: 1918 ^ref-54141

every e-mail we send is a pitch. It’s a plea for someone’s attention and an invitation to engage. — location: 1922 ^ref-52541

participants based their decisions on two factors: utility and curiosity. — location: 1928 ^ref-47596

other. Utility worked better when recipients had lots of e-mail, — location: 1931 ^ref-58298

“curiosity [drove] attention to email under conditions of low demand.” — location: 1932 ^ref-17108

trying to add intrinsic motives on top of extrinsic ones often backfires. — location: 1934 ^ref-40325

your e-mail subject line should be either obviously useful (Found the best & cheapest photocopier) or mysteriously intriguing (A photocopy breakthrough!), but probably not both (The Canon IR2545 is a photocopy breakthrough). — location: 1936 ^ref-23098

subject lines should be “ultra-specific.” — location: 1940 ^ref-51897

The mark of an effective tweet, like the mark of any effective pitch, is that it engages recipients and encourages them to take the conversation further—by — location: 1957 ^ref-29135

by responding, clicking a link, or sharing the tweet with others. — location: 1958 ^ref-37324

The types of tweets with the lowest ratings fell into three categories: Complaints (“My plane is late. Again.”); Me Now (“I’m about to order a tuna sandwich”); and Presence Maintenance (“Good morning, everyone!”). — location: 1966 ^ref-55590

readers assigned the highest ratings to tweets that asked questions of followers, confirming once again the power of the interrogative to engage and persuade. — location: 1969 ^ref-2129

They prized tweets that provided information and links, especially if the material was fresh and new and offered the sort of clarity discussed in Chapter 6. — location: 1970 ^ref-20904

high ratings to self-promoting tweets—those ultimate sales pitches—provided that the tweet offered useful information as part of the promotion. — location: 1971 ^ref-12550

Pixar code—and, — location: 1988 ^ref-63291

template for an irresistible new kind of pitch. — location: 1989 ^ref-41599

Once upon a time — location: 1990 ^ref-28124

Every day, — location: 1991 ^ref-47800

One day _______. — location: 1991 ^ref-42049

Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. — location: 1991 ^ref-40450

Until finally _______. — location: 1991 ^ref-37282

What do you want them to know? What do you want them to feel? What do you want them to do? — location: 2055 ^ref-59160

Go first if you’re the incumbent, last if you’re the challenger. — location: 2090 ^ref-21694

Many people are surprised by the disconnect between what they think they’re conveying and what others are actually hearing. Knowing is the prelude to improving. — location: 2103 ^ref-24256

at the heart of what she teaches is listening. — location: 2115 ^ref-38583

Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre. — location: 2160 ^ref-60946

the stable, simple, and certain conditions that favored scripts have now given way to the dynamic, complex, and unpredictable conditions that favor improvisation. — location: 2162 ^ref-57000

follow three essential rules of improvisational theater: (1) Hear offers. (2) Say “Yes and.” (3) Make your partner look good. — location: 2166 ^ref-62807

“The bread and butter of improv,” says Salit, “is hearing offers.” — location: 2179 ^ref-40564

emphasizes slowing down and shutting up as the route to listening well. — location: 2192 ^ref-53970

Listening without some degree of intimacy isn’t really listening. — location: 2200 ^ref-4491

It’s passive and transactional rather than active and engaged. — location: 2201 ^ref-27613

“listen without listening for anything.” — location: 2203 ^ref-41174

we quickly realize that what seem outwardly like objections are often offers in disguise. — location: 2211 ^ref-5269

“Offers come in all shapes and sizes,” says Salit. But the only way to hear them is to change the way you listen and then change the way you respond. — location: 2215 ^ref-5885

“Good improvisers seem telepathic; everything looks prearranged. This is because they accept all offers made.” — location: 2220 ^ref-4508

“Yes and” carries a particular force, which becomes clearer when we contrast it with its evil twin, “Yes, but.” — location: 2227 ^ref-34544

Instead of swirling downward into frustration, “Yes and” spirals upward toward possibility. — location: 2246 ^ref-23627

There are certainly plenty of times in life to say “No.” — location: 2247 ^ref-43188

There's a whole other book for that

“‘Yes and’ isn’t a technique,” Salit says. “It’s a way of life.” — location: 2249 ^ref-48557

reframe these encounters as positive-sum games, where one person’s victory didn’t depend on another’s defeat. — location: 2256 ^ref-61427

If each party looks past the other party’s position to its actual interests and invents options for mutual gain, negotiations could end with both sides better off than when they began. — location: 2257 ^ref-11600

the only way to truly influence others is to adopt “a frame of mind and heart that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all human interactions.” — location: 2262 ^ref-12538

Make your partner look good. — location: 2271 ^ref-10111

helping your fellow performer shine helps you both create a better scene. — location: 2272 ^ref-64096

Making your partner look good doesn’t make you look worse; it actually makes you look better. — location: 2272 ^ref-28506

enables, clarity, the capacity to develop solutions that nobody previously imagined. — location: 2274 ^ref-8420

when both parties view their encounters as opportunities to learn, the desire to defeat the other side struggles to find the oxygen it needs. — location: 2291 ^ref-42892

“To win an argument is to lose a sale.” — location: 2295 ^ref-26135

If you train your ears to hear offers, if you respond to others with “Yes and,” — location: 2301 ^ref-57087

if you always try to make your counterpart look good, possibilities will emerge. — location: 2301 ^ref-63785

when you have a conversation, take five seconds before responding. Seriously. Every time. — location: 2308 ^ref-2873

“Those who say ‘Yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have. Those who say ‘No’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.” — location: 2319 ^ref-61805

Find a partner. Then choose a controversial issue that has two distinct and opposed sides. Before you begin, have your partner decide her position on the issue. Then you take the opposite stance. She then makes her case, but you can reply only with questions—not with statements, counterarguments, or insults. — location: 2335 ^ref-13369

Creating Conversations: Improvisation in Everyday Discourse — location: 2346 ^ref-59761

improving others’ lives and, in turn, improving the world. — location: 2394 ^ref-23874

Make it personal and make it purposeful. — location: 2396 ^ref-26590

Make it personal. — location: 2397 ^ref-3411

assessment, the patient’s photograph automatically appeared next to the image. After they’d made their assessments, the radiologists completed a questionnaire. All of them reported feeling “more empathy to the patients after seeing the photograph” and being more meticulous in the way they examined the scan. — location: 2404 ^ref-12021

in the name of professionalism, we often neglect the human element and adopt a stance that’s abstract and distant. Instead, we should recalibrate our approach so that it’s concrete and personal—and — location: 2426 ^ref-9418

not for softhearted reasons but for hardheaded ones. — location: 2428 ^ref-34958

Many of us like to say, “I’m accountable” or “I care.” Few of us are so deeply committed to serving others that we’re willing to say, “Call my cell.” — location: 2449 ^ref-18538

Make it purposeful. — location: 2454 ^ref-13125

“Our findings suggest that health and safety messages should focus not on the self, but rather on the target group that is perceived as most vulnerable.” — location: 2482 ^ref-28945

not only should we ourselves be serving, but we should also be tapping others’ innate desire to serve. Making it personal works better when we also make it purposeful. — location: 2487 ^ref-33701

discussing purpose in one realm (car-sharing) moved people to behave differently in a second realm (recycling). — location: 2496 ^ref-1962

The stories made the work personal; their contents made it purposeful. — location: 2510 ^ref-54111

This is what it means to serve: improving another’s life and, in turn, improving the world. That’s the lifeblood of service and the final secret to moving others. — location: 2510 ^ref-16288

respond “to any problem by listening first,” and to “accept and empathize” rather than reject. — location: 2520 ^ref-53842

“The best test, and the most difficult to administer, is this: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?” — location: 2526 ^ref-10187

the successful seller must feel some commitment that his product offers mankind as much altruistic benefit as it yields the seller in money.” — location: 2535 ^ref-42882

The true “salesman is an idealist and an artist.” — location: 2536 ^ref-41000

Move from “upselling” to “upserving.” — location: 2542 ^ref-37312

Upserving means doing more for the other person than he expects or you initially intended, taking the extra steps that transform a mundane interaction into a memorable experience. — location: 2550 ^ref-20036

Anytime you’re tempted to upsell someone else, stop what you’re doing and upserve instead. Don’t try to increase what they can do for you. Elevate what you can do for them. — location: 2552 ^ref-3341

Really good salespeople want to solve problems and serve customers. They want to be part of something larger than themselves.” — location: 2571 ^ref-32258

“Why not always act as if the other guy is doing the favor?” — location: 2578 ^ref-28909

the wisest and most ethical way to move others is to proceed with humility and gratitude. — location: 2580 ^ref-41773

making it personal—the sign transformed the experience of being in that space. — location: 2592 ^ref-50376

By removing the cloak of anonymity and replacing it with this form of personal connection, you’re more likely to genuinely serve, which over the long haul will redound to everyone’s benefit. — location: 2610 ^ref-24610

If the person you’re selling to agrees to buy, will his or her life improve? When your interaction is over, will the world be a better place than when you began? — location: 2615 ^ref-35877

“The Name of the Game: Predictive Power of Reputations Versus Situational Labels in Determining Prisoner’s Dilemma Game Moves,” — location: 2881 ^ref-10474

he is rather shy, masking this trait with studied confidence.” — location: 3408 ^ref-3734