Buoyancy and Rule #1

I really enjoyed reading Pink’s chapter on buoyancy and thought it related well to the first core concept in Mattson’s book. Pink says buoyancy is staying afloat amid an ocean of rejection. This is the second essential quality in moving others. This aspect of selling involves three main components.

The first component occurs before and it is interrogative self-talk. This means rather than making positive or negative statements, asking yourself questions. This is because by asking yourself questions, it elicits answers and strategies for carrying out the tasks at hand, and it also inspires thoughts about intrinsically motivated reasons to pursue a goal. The second component occurs during and is the positivity ratio. “Positive emotions broaden people’s ideas about possible actions, opening our awareness to a wider range of thoughts and making us more receptive and more creative.” But Pink says that all positivity is also not good, there has to be the right amount, a “golden ratio” of it. He says that when for every three instances of felling gratitude, interest or contentment there is one instance of anger, guilt or embarrassment, that this ratio of 3:1 provides the optimal grounds for flourishing. Finally, the third component of buoyancy is the explanatory style and occurs after the sell. How we think about our day and explain it greatly affects how we succeed. Pink says that salespeople with an optimistic explanatory style, those that see rejections as temporary, specific, and external rather than permanent, universal, and personal survive in their jobs much longer and sell more.

I think this idea of buoyancy as a whole really relates to the first core concept: “You have to learn to fail, to win.” This concept explains how it is important to be okay with not closing a sale, with rejection, and failing because that is a part of selling and a part of life as well. Learning how to deal with that rejection in a sale- not taking it personally, thinking of ways you can change or improve the approach, distinguishing between the real you and the role you, and moving on confident to the next sale is very important. Or as Pink describes it, staying afloat and bouncing back up after each sale is very important for long-term success!