How to Sell If You’re Not a Salesperson

I recently read To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink. I wanted to share some of the key lessons I took away, for anyone who is not a salesperson but who still needs to influence and persuade others — particularly product managers and team leaders. What are some specific approaches that we can use to sell our ideas and influence others?
Pink begins by introducing us to the concept of “non-sales selling.” In contrast to traditional sales, non-sales selling involves advocating for a direction and persuading others to provide their resources (time, money, and support).

Pink provides a framework for non-sales selling, which he contrasts with the traditional sales framework of ABC — “Always Be Closing.” In the traditional sales approach, the salesperson manipulates the buyer by feigning an artificial connection, withholding information, and using high-pressure tactics to get the buyer to “sign on the line that is dotted.” In essence, they are trying to trick and pressure the prospect into buying.
This traditional “Always Be Closing” approach obviously doesn’t work for a number of reasons within organizations — chiefly because the approach is based on deceiving and manipulating others. Since your interactions with other people in the org are not purely transactional, any attempts to manipulate and deceive will quickly develop a reputation for being untrustworthy.
Daniel Pink’s describes the new ABCs of selling: Attunement, Buoyancy, and Clarity. Here is what he recommends for each pillar of the new ABCs:
A: Attunement
What is attunement? Daniel Pink offers this explanation.
“Attunement is the ability to bring one’s actions and outlook in harmony with other people and with the context you’re in.”
It is essentially seeing things from the perspective of the person whom you seek to influence. It means taking the time and effort to understand someone first, before trying to be understood. Attunement requires us to temporarily surrender our point of view, our agenda and our ego, so that we can truly understand the other person’s perspective.
“When confronted with an unusual or complex situation involving other people, how do we make sense of what’s going on? Do we examine it from only our own point of view? Or do we have ‘the capability to step outside [our] own experience and imagine the emotions, perceptions, and motivations of another?’”
There one specific approach that Daniel Pink recommends for building attunement that resonated with me the most: increasing your power by reducing it.
Increase your power by reducing it
When we think of someone who is an effective salesperson, we may mistakenly conjure up an image of a smooth-talking, exceptionally confident, powerful seller. Instead of powerfully dominating a conversation, Daniel argues that you should actually consciously take a “lower power” position at first in order to build attunement and understand the other person clearly. As he explains:
There is “an inverse relationship between power and perspective-taking. Power can… scramble the signals you receive, distorting clear messages and obscuring more subtle ones.”
Rather than starting from a strong, forceful position which may blind you to the other person’s needs and perspective, Daniel advocates assuming that you’re not the one in power.
“The ability to move people now depends on power’s inverse: understanding another person’s perspective, getting inside his head, and seeing the world through his eyes. And doing that well requires… [assuming] that you’re not the one with power.”
“Start your encounters with the assumption that you’re in a position of lower power. That will help you see the other side’s perspective more accurately, which, in turn, will help you move them.”
This does not mean that you shouldn’t have a strong point of view, or that you should not demonstrate confidence, or that you should never speak forcefully or declaratively in a conversation. It just means that if you start the conversation that way, you may miss the opportunity to build attunement with the other person.
B: Buoyancy
What is buoyancy, and why is it important? Buoyancy is essentially optimism and being positive, in a grounded way. It’s important because much of sales involves dealing with rejection. As Daniel writes:
“Anyone who sells… must contend with wave after wave of rebuffs, refusals, and repudiations.”
In the face of such rejection, how can we remain buoyant and positive? Daniel offers two techniques for remaining buoyant:
- Interrogative self-talk
- Optimistic explanatory style
Interrogative self-talk

People often use different approaches for “psyching themselves up” before a big pitch or an important sales meeting to increase their optimism and positivity, such as power poses or visualizing excellent performance (see this article about Michael Phelps “watching the videotape”).
Pink advocates following the example of Bob the Builder: engage in interrogative self-talk.
“Bob’s self-talk is neither positive nor declarative. Instead, to move himself and his team, he asks a question: Can we fix it?”
Instead of simply declaring “I will,” Pink suggests asking the question of one’s self, “Will I?” He shares research from psychology that backs up his argument.
“Those who approached a task with… questioning self-talk outperformed those who employed the more conventional juice-myself-up declarative self-talk.”
“First, the interrogative, by its very form, elicits answers — and within those answers are the strategies for actually carrying out the task.”
Second, “interrogative self-talk, the researchers say, ‘may inspire thoughts about autonomous or intrinsically motivated reasons to pursue a goal.’”
Optimistic explanatory style
The way we handle rejections after we receive can make the biggest difference in how buoyant we are in the long run. Stories abound of successful entrepreneurs who were rejected by dozens of VCs — or, in the case of Salesforce.com, “[Marc] Benioff said he went to every venture capital firm in Silicon Valley — and was turned down every single time.”
How can you bounce back from rejection and remain buoyant and optimistic in the long run? Pink argues that it’s how you explain the failure to yourself after it occurs.
“People who give up easily, who become helpless even in situations where they can actually do something, explain bad events as permanent, pervasive, and personal. 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…
“The 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… Optimism is a catalyst that can stir persistence, steady us during challenges, and stoke the confidence that we can influence our surroundings.”
I wrote about resiliency and explanatory style after reading Learned Optimism, by Martin Seligman. By embracing the principles of optimistic explanatory style, we can all remain positive even after meeting with repeated rejections or negativity.
C: Clarity
The final component of the ABCs of non-sales selling is clarity. To develop clarity as part of persuasion, you have to be good at framing problems.
Framing problems
There are many different frames we can use to present problems and opportunities to our audience, according to Pink.
- The contrast frame: “We often understand something better when we see it in comparison with something else than when we see it in isolation… contrast often operates within, and often amplifies, every aspect of persuasion… The most essential question you can ask is this: compared to what?… [frame] your offering in ways that contrast with its alternatives and therefore clarify its virtues.”
- The less frame: “Curation is so important, especially in a world saturated with options and alternatives. Framing people’s options in a way that restricts their choices can help them see those choices more clearly instead of overwhelming them.” If you want to move people to action, don’t inundate them with choices.
- The potential frame: “People often find potential more interesting than accomplishment because it’s more uncertain, researchers argue. That uncertainty can lead people to think more deeply about the [option] they’re evaluating — and the more intensive processing that requires can lead to generating more and better reasons why the [option] is a good choice.” We can increase the chance that someone will think about and accept our proposal if we frame the option in terms of future potential, not just what it can do for them today.
Many of us engage in “non-sales selling” on a daily basis — usually to convince others to provide their resources (time, money, and support) to us. Information workers, doctors, lawyers, teachers — all of us engage in non-sales selling. How can we be effective when we need to sell our ideas or persuade others, particularly when we lack any kind of formal authority over them?
Daniel Pink provides us with the ABCs of non-sales selling:
- A: Attunement
- B: Buoyancy
- C: Clarity
To build attunement with our counterparts, we must be willing to reduce our own power temporarily in order to take the other person’s perspective. To create buoyancy, we can use interrogative self-talk and an optimistic explanatory style to remain positive and upbeat. And to provide clarity, we must frame problems and opportunities effectively in order to motivate action.
By applying the ABC principles of non-sales selling, we can all hopefully become more effective at motivating and influencing others.
