Name: To Sell Is Human
ISBN: 9781594631900

To Sell Is Human

Look out for Daniel Pink’s new book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing #1 New York Times Business Bestseller #1 Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller #1 Washington Post bestseller From the bestselling author of Drive and A Whole New Mind, and teacher of the popular MasterClass on Sales and Persuasion, comes a surprising--and surprisingly useful--new book that explores the power of selling in our lives. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, one in nine Americans works in sales. Every day more than fifteen million people earn their keep by persuading someone else to make a purchase. But dig deeper and a startling truth emerges: Yes, one in nine Americans works in sales. But so do the other eight. Whether we’re employees pitching colleagues on a new idea, entrepreneurs enticing funders to invest, or parents and teachers cajoling children to study, we spend our days trying to move others. Like it or not, we’re all in sales now. To Sell Is Human offers a fresh look at the art and science of selling. As he did in Drive and A Whole New Mind, Daniel H. Pink draws on a rich trove of social science for his counterintuitive insights. He reveals the new ABCs of moving others (it's no longer "Always Be Closing"), explains why extraverts don't make the best salespeople, and shows how giving people an "off-ramp" for their actions can matter more than actually changing their minds.

What Hacker News says

verdvermDec 2025

Resumes and freelance profiles are not sales in the traditional sense. If you want to do better in freelance, you'll want to reframe how you think about it.

Putting that aside, I highly recommend the book "To Sell Is Human" that reframes "sales" as something more, i.e. convincing a child they need to brush their teeth before bed is also "sales"

It was one of the books that helped me through this, The Challenger Sale if you want to read something more akin to traditional sales.

Another avenue you should consider is getting a professional resume / career coach. A good one will ask you questions about what you want in a job before looking at what you've written. They bring experience and have seen 1000s of resumes to know what works, and are tuned into how that changes over time.

> But I just. Can't. Get. Moving.

Another book recommendation, "The Now Habit"

books are going to be much better than what you read online

1. they get you away from the portal to that anxiety

2. they are long, thorough, well thought out, with many examples/anecdotes for you to potentially connect the dots through

thread

baskinatorMar 2025

Good book on the topic of selling - https://www.danpink.com/books/to-sell-is-human/

thread

arcbyteFeb 2024

To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink is a great book for integrating sales into your mindset by realizing how much of it you already do on a day to day basis. As a consultant engineer it's completely changing my mindset.

thread

jtthe13Feb 2024

I recommend "to sell is human" by Daniel Pink to anyone unease about starting basic commercial interaction. I have received good feedback so far from those I recommended it to...

thread

verdvermSep 2023

The Challenger Sale - Matthew Dixon & Brent Adamson

The Little Red Book of Selling - Jeffery Gitomer

Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey Moore

To Sell is Human - Daniel Pink

These are all especially good if you are a technical person first

You'll learn the most by trying to sell every day, building that habit as a technical person is probably the bigger challenge than the selling part.

thread

tikkunJul 2023

For enterprise sales, definitely Founding Sales by Kazanjy and the entrepid how to sell guide. (Foundingsales.com + https://www.entrepidpartners.com/how-to-sell-guide). I’d probably say start with a quick read through of the entrepid one to get an overview and then do 1x read through of founding sales and then treat founding sales like your reference manual.

Other sales books like fanatical prospecting, challenger sale, spin selling, to sell is human are all good, but they’re better imo for optimizing your sales skills once you already have all the basics and are closing deals and want to improve.

For getting started and closing your first 3-5 deals for any kind of software sales selling products for $5k+ per year per customer, the Kazanjy book and the Entrepid book.

thread