Selling: Separating the Swindlers from the Samaritans
Expressing vulnerability in ways that are unrelated to competence may build prestige, but it’s only a
starting point for givers to exercise influence. To effectively influence people, we need to convert the
respect that we earn into a reason for our audiences to change their attitudes and behaviors. Nowhere
is this clearer than in sales, where the entire job depends on getting people to buy—and buy more. We
often stereotype salespeople as manipulative and Machiavellian, thinking of great sellers as
intimidating, confrontational, self-serving, or even sometimes deceitful. Daniel Pink finds that the first
words that come to mind when we think of salespeople are pushy, ugh, and yuck. In one study, people
ranked the forty-four most commonly chosen MBA occupations in terms of how socially responsible
they were. Salesperson ranked forty-third, barely above stockbroker at the very bottom of the social
responsibility list. This sets up the expectation that top salespeople must be takers, yet in the opening
chapter, we saw a preview of evidence that many highly productive salespeople are givers. How do
givers sell effectively?
Bill Grumbles is a powerful executive, but if you met him, you probably wouldn’t realize it. He
speaks so softly that you might find yourself leaning forward just to hear him. After working his way
up to a vice presidency at HBO, he became the president of worldwide distribution for TBS.
Throughout his career, Grumbles has gone out of his way to help and mentor others. Today, he spends
his time coaching business students on leadership and volunteering to give them career advice. Early
on, powerless communication actually helped him rise to the top of HBO’s sales charts.
Back in 1977, HBO was an unknown brand; most Americans didn’t even have cable. Grumbles
was in his late twenties, and he was sent to open an HBO sales office in Kansas City. He had no sales
experience, so he started doing what he did best as a giver: asking questions. His questions were
sincere, and customers responded. “I would be on a sales call, and I’d look at the walls, around the
office, and see their interests. I’d ask about their grandchildren, or their favorite sports team. I would
ask a question, and customers would talk for twenty minutes.” Other salespeople were bringing in one
contract a month. Grumbles was four times as productive: he brought in one contract a week.
By asking questions and listening to the answers, Grumbles showed his customers that he cared
about their interests. This built prestige: customers respected and admired the concern that he
showed. After one of his early sales calls, a customer took him aside to tell him he was a “great
conversationalist.” Grumbles laughs: “I’d hardly said a thing!”
Asking questions opened the door for customers to experience what the psychologist James
Pennebaker calls the joy of talking. Years ago, Pennebaker divided strangers into small groups.
Imagine that you’ve just joined one of his groups, and you have fifteen minutes to talk with strangers
about a topic of your choice. You might chat about your hometown, where you went to college, or
your career.
After the fifteen minutes are up, you rate how much you like the group. It turns out that the more
you talked, the more you like the group. This isn’t surprising, since people love to talk about
themselves. But let me ask you another question: How much did you learn about the group?
Logically, learning about the people around you should depend on listening. The less you talk, the
more you should discover about the group. But Pennebaker found the opposite: the more you talk, the
more you think you’ve learned about the group. By talking like a taker and dominating the