I'm a big fan of Daniel Pink. I've repeatedly promoted on my blog a white board video he produced on how to motivate people.

As a result, I was excited to learn he was the author of To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth about Moving Others, a book recommended to me by someone who attended one of my fundraising trainings. The "trainee," who was trying to transition out of a high tech sales job into the nonprofit world, told me that Pink's book on sales matched up nicely with what I was saying. She said Pink's book would be a great read for aspiring fundraisers.

I read the book to see if I should be recommending it.

Pink would definitely agree that fundraising is a type of sales. He defines sales as including "non-sales selling," which includes anyone "persuading or influencing others to give up something in exchange for what you've got." The book repeatedly cites studies on fundraising to support tactics he believes make for more effective sales.

Overall, I'm glad I read it. There were numerous "that's interesting" moments and a couple takeaways that will stick with me. But at the same time, I was underwhelmed.

The first part of the book makes the case that we're all in sales, with an interesting history about how changes in society have led more and more jobs to embody aspects of sales - defined as broadly as possible. He calls this "the rise of non-sales selling."