When it comes to the world of work, no one does a better job of blending firsthand observation with curated science and packaging the mix in an insightful narrative than Daniel H. Pink. From his groundbreaking Free Agent Nation to his bestselling A Whole New Mind and Drive, Pink not only challenges his readers to rethink conventional wisdom, but provides them with the framework and tools to do so.

In January, I reviewed his bestselling book To Sell Is Human, which argues that sales and non-sales selling are ultimately about service, a refreshing change from the traditional view that reduces sales to a simple exchange of resources. Selling is about moving others, and moving others doesn’t require that we neglect the nobler aspects of our human nature, but rather that we embrace them fully.

I caught up with Pink to ask him a few questions and gain even more insight on sales.

You say that, "like it or not, we're all in sales now." Why?

In the U.S., we've got one in nine workers who earn their livings selling products, services or experiences. That's a lot of people. But the bigger story is that those other eight in nine are also in sales. They're spending huge amounts of their time on the job—upwards of 40 percent on average—persuading, influencing and convincing others. Thanks to a host of forces, "moving" others is a big part of what they do on the job. Nowhere is this truer than for entrepreneurs and small-business owners.

In the book you argue that sales has changed more in the last 10 years than in the previous 100. What's going on?

Big changes in information. For a long time, sellers had a huge information advantage over buyers. That information asymmetry defined the sales relationship. It was a world where buyers didn't have much information, not many choices and no way to talk back. It was a world of "buyer beware."

But today, buyers have lots of information, lots of choices and all kinds of ways to talk back. Today's world is "seller beware." Sellers are now on notice. And that calls for a fundamentally different set of personal qualities and tactical steps.

To sell effectively, do you have to be extroverted?

No. Here's what the research shows: Extroverts are more likely to go into sales, more likely to get hired in sales jobs, and more likely to get promoted in them. But the correlation between extroversion and sales performance is essentially zero. This doesn't mean that introverts necessarily have an edge. Some exciting new research from Adam Grant shows that the most effective sellers are "ambiverts"—neither strongly introverted nor strongly extroverted.

Strong introverts don't assert enough and have trouble striking up conversations. But strong extroverts, the people we think are the "naturals," talk too much, listen too little and come on too strong. Ambiverts, though, occupy the modulated middle. They know when to push and when to hold back, when to speak up and when to shut up. The best news: Most of us are ambiverts.

Sales involves lots of rejection. What's one way to deal with that?

Change what social psychologists call your "explanatory style." In a landmark study of insurance salespeople, the great Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania found that the best predictor of success was how these salespeople explained failure. To overcome the sting of rejection, they found ways to recontextualize rejection.

Seligman advises us to focus on the three Ps. Is the rejection personal? Look for ways it's also external. Is it pervasive? Look for evidence that it doesn't always happen. Is it permanent? It's usually not. The more we explain rejection—honestly—as external, occasional and temporary, the better off we'll be.

Are there lessons from the research about how we should frame choices for customers to maximize the likelihood that they'll buy?

Sure. For instance, there's some great research out of Stanford that adding weak, negative information about, say, a product at the end of a list of positive attributes about that product can make people more likely to buy. Why? The small blemishes trigger a comparison with the long list of positives, which makes those more attractive.

Also, some research shows that for pitching professional services, potential is more persuasive than past performance. So next time you're selling yourself, don't fixate on what you achieved yesterday. Emphasize the promise of what you could accomplish tomorrow.

Small-business owners and startups spend a good bit of time pitching ideas and business models. Is there a tip or technique you suggest for mastering the elevator pitch?

Not one, but six. A one-size-fits-all pitch no longer works. In the book I suggest the Pixar 6-sentence storyline pitch, the 140-character Twitter pitch, the email subject line pitch, the rhyming pitch, the question pitch, and the one-word pitch. For the rhyming pitch, think Johnnie Cochran’s use of this sentence in the O.J. Simpson trial: If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit. For the question pitch, recall Ronald Reagan’s effective use of the question during the 1980 election: Are you better off now than you were four years ago? As for the one-word pitch, what company comes to mind when you hear the word "search"?

Read more articles on sales.

Check out To Sell Is Human, follow Dan Pink on Twitter and read his blog.

Photos from top: Getty Images, Rebecca Drobis