To Sell Is Human promotes using positivity or, in social work lingo, client-centered care to provide a context that perhaps the client has not considered. The ABCs of moving others has a familiar ring and is important to social work as we work to empathetically understand our clients’ perspectives. The uncertainty of what is possible forces deeper thinking that leads to better reasons why the person would be the best choice and also shows promise of what can be accomplished in the future. Research shows that people most often find potential more interesting than accomplishments.

Pink believes that to sell yourself, it is important to emphasize the promise of what you can accomplish tomorrow instead of fixating only on what you achieved yesterday. “Problem-finding can be more important than problem-solving,” he adds on page 127. This quality is described in the book as a conceptual shift and as “the capacity to help others see their situations in fresh and more revealing ways and to identify problems they didn’t realize they had” (p. The author’s research about buoyancy shows that asking yourself, “Can I do this?” and answering specifically is more effective than telling yourself, “I can do this.” Clarity is the third quality necessary to move others. Pink writes that leading with your ears instead of your mouth can move others through attunement to someone else’s point of view. I liked the information supporting Pink’s ABCs that reveal the most valuable qualities in moving others: Attunement, Buoyancy, and Clarity. Social workers spend a great majority of our time on the job to influence or persuade others. These jobs require “non-sales” selling, and we (as social workers) are in this group. Pink points out in Part 1 of To Sell Is Human that the fastest growing industries in the world are educational services and healthcare. Pink, Riverhead Books, 2012, 253 pp., $16.00 U.S., $17.00 CAN, ISBN: 978-1-59463-190-0.ĭaniel Pink combines research, interviews, and observation to ask the reader to consider that we are all selling all the time by moving people to part with resources, “whether something tangible like cash or intangible like effort or attention” (p.

Daniel pink to sell is human