Professor Sweet and Daniel Pink put a lot of emphasis on non-sales selling. Many people are selling others on things constantly without having money involved. Pink likes to call it, “moving people and things.” I think this is a great way to think about non-sales selling, not only does it help you see and understand the action of “moving” people, but it also helps you prepare yourself to get into the mindset of non-sales selling. As I was googling non-sales selling, lots of links were popping up, many had titles like, “5 Important Reasons to Get Your Team Into the Non-Sales Mindset,” or “Why Non-Sales Selling is Important.”
One article I read by Lori Darly, discussed the importance of switching your mindset from non-sales to sales. She emphasized that by having a non-sales mindset (meaning you’re either afraid of sales or do not want to get into a selling mindset), one misses lots of opportunities for convincing people of something, or maybe influencing and selling your personal brand to someone. Darly was talking about how a sales attitude is a sharing attitude. She demonstrated this with the story of the Post-It Note, and hoe 3M had to share their product with the world because no one knew how to use it. Now Post-It notes have become a staple in our lives.
What I learned from this article and during the lectures from Professor Sweet, is that while many people are in non-sales selling, we still need to have a sales attitude. When people are in the business of moving people without an attitude of selling to their potential customers, the transaction may not reach the potential it would have if the “mover” had a sales attitude. By understanding that moving people requires a sales attitude, one can “diagnose” their customers, asking the right questions and making sure the process works out positively for both sides.
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