Feb/108
Do you have the right personality for sales?
WARNING: This post is a bit of a rant – if you are feeling a bit squeamish at this moment, you may want to read this post later!
I participate in the Question and Answer forum and in sales groups on LinkedIn with great regularity and enthusiasm. One question theme that comes up again and again is about sales and personality. So what is the right way to think about the idea that someone does or does not have a good personality for sales, and how might personality related factors impact their effectiveness as a sales person?
The answer to the second question is a little bit trickier, so let’s start there. Most people who believe that personality factors influence sales effectiveness seem to equate personality related factors with the ability to communicate well with prospects. As such, those who have the “right” kind of personality or the right personality factors are better able to connect (or bond) and communicate with their prospects. Personality based sales assessments, and the idea of the “natural born salesperson” cater to this (here it comes) MYTH!
So what is the reality here? Most communication experts will tell you that in most cases, the key component that causes communication to fail is on the listening side of the equation. Problems occur when people either don’t stop talking long enough to listen; interrupt the other person; or don’t jump in, but follow their own line of thinking internally as the other person continues to talk.
Active, effective listening is a SKILL that can be taught. If communication is most often derailed on the listening side of the equation, and listening can be taught (as opposed to being a personality trait that one either has or doesn’t have), then it just can’t be said that personality is the most important factor in business related, effective communication.
Sure it helps when the salesperson and the buyer can “connect” on some personal level, but to take that a step further and postulate that this ability to make a personal connection is among the key drivers of sales success – as many seem to believe – is a step too far! The idea that this kind of connection is an essential factor in sales or business communication is folklore. It is certainly nice, but not as critical as an unexamined speculation might lead you to believe.
This is not to say that people with extreme personality issues can be effective communicators, but as soon as you move away from the extremes, personality becomes a marginal factor in business communications. Period!
So what about the first part – that there are specific personalities that are good for sales and others that are bad for sales? At first glance, this also seems to make sense. Many people have a stereotypical image of salespeople in their mind, and it is not a long leap of logic to go from stereotype to personality type. In reality, anyone who has worked with more than a few successful salespeople over the course of their career has seen that a wide variety of people with very different personalities can succeed in sales, and those who seem to fit the stereotypical sales persona sometimes fail and sometimes succeed. It is hard to meet someone with a lot of experience with salespeople who makes a strong case for personality as a key driver of sales success, because they have seen that personality can vary against the metrics of success.
So does personality matter? Here is how to think about it. If you understand the bell shaped curve, then you can believe that many arguments that make sense on either end of the curve tend to fall apart in the middle.
This is the case with the myth of the sales personality. If personality could somehow be plotted on a bell shaped curve (I have no idea how you could actually do that, but imagine with me for a minute), then those people at the edges might have difficulty selling because of the extreme nature of their personalities.
However, for those in the “fat / tall” part of the bell-shaped curve, there are many other factors upon which their sales success depends, and the success they find in sales will vary based on these other factors. Sales success won’t necessarily correlate to the findings on our imaginary personality bell-shaped graph.
Salespeople are not born, and there is no correct sales personality. Professional selling is a skill, and a skill that can be taught. Psychopaths may struggle, but the average person with the desire to succeed and the commitment to do what it takes to get there is trainable, regardless of their non-extreme personality type.
Do you disagree? If so, please comment – but in your comment, please do provide an example of a personality type that is a bad personality for sales. I am eager to hear what you come up with, and to compare that to the many successful salespeople I have worked with and the wide diversity of personality types that they represent.
Author: David Masover
David Masover has over twenty years of business-to-business sales experience, including more than eight years in sales management, training, and consulting. He has consulted and negotiated in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Masover is co-founder of Branders.com, the world's largest online seller of promotional products, and is currently engaged in private sales consulting in Budapest, Hungary.Leave a comment
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4:52 am on February 9th, 2010
David,
I am always glad to hear from you and enjoy discussing sales.
I have researched sales skills and personality when I was working on my Masters in Industrial/Organization Psychology, and after when I was matching candidates with jobs as a recruiter.
Let’s drop the idea of personality types and look at common personality traits most successful sales people have. It’s a little like your bell curve.
Yes, most importantly sales is a skill that can be learned. Yes, there is also range of personality traits that most sales people share. No, there is no such thing as a natural born sales person.
Yes, good sales people are good listeners, but they also have to develop the skill to ask the right questions.
I have found in correlational studies of successful sales personality traits is that successful salespeople tend to score high or moderate in the aggressive “driver” traits and either high or moderate in the social traits. It is a mix, one is usually higher than another, though they are most always there is some combination.
Sales people also tend to score lower on the analytical traits. They don’t tend to make good accountants, scientists or engineers. Sitting in a lab or crunching numbers all day bores sales people to death.
The creative traits tend to be low to moderate in sales people. Certain sales people evangelizing the vision of “the next big thing” or selling art may have these traits, but need also to score pretty high on the driver side to be able close the deal.
As you said, that leaves a pretty wide range of personalities to fit into a sales career.
1:56 pm on February 9th, 2010
Kevin,
Thank you for your very thoughtful and detailed comment. Typically, this conversation involves sales managers who believe that they can hire great salespeople based on their gut feelings or with people trying to sell a personality based sales assessment test. It is helpful to get your educated, impartial input – thank you!
For me the key word in your comments is “tend”. It is entirely reasonable to correlate findings and to make an association. For me, the problems come up when people try to suggest a casual relationship between these traits and sales success. These traits are neither causal nor predictive. Is the information useful? Certainly, but that is a far leap from some of the claims from the “gut sensitive” managers and personality assessment salespeople who claim a much stronger relationship between the findings and the meaning of the findings.
-David
6:31 pm on February 15th, 2010
David,
I agree with Kevin’s comment about it not so much being a particular personality type as it is personality traits that are important. I wrote a blog about this topic a couple of weeks ago. If a person does not have certain personality traits, such as having a strong work ethic, self motivation, organizational skills, pays close attention to detail, confidence, and a good sense of people, they will be a mediocre or worse salesperson. I speak from my own personal experience as a salesperson, as well as, my experience hiring, training, and managing salespeople for many years.
10:09 pm on February 15th, 2010
Kim,
Thank you for your comment. I read the blog post I think you referred to (Top 10 Qualities Needed to be Successful in Sales from December 30, 2009 – if I got that wrong please correct me).
It is impossible to disagree with any of those points, or with the points in your comment. They are simply true and obvious to me as well – no arguments here! But are those personality traits or skills? If they are personality traits, are we born with them or develop them early, or are they things that can be shaped as a part of our personality later in life (i.e. are the things we talk about as “personality traits” hard wired or are they pliable?)
I don’t mean to pick nits here, but so many people seem to believe that there is a (big) part of what makes a salesperson great that they are born with. I’m yet to be convinced, in spite of the truths embedded in your list – I agree with the list, I’m just not so sure that those things can only come from non-learned experiences hard-wired into who we are as people. I would love to hear your thoughts on this!
8:23 am on February 16th, 2010
Well said. As Zig Ziglar always says. He has never met a born salesman. Very insightful, thank you.
3:31 pm on February 16th, 2010
Eddie,
Thanks for the comment. I would guess that Zig Ziglar has met an awful lot of salespeople, wouldn’t you?
All the best,
-David
11:21 am on February 18th, 2010
David,
I have just found this blog and glad to read your lines. Let me immediately agree and disagree at the same time. There is no natural born sales person – agree and sales “things” can be learnt – agree , but until a certain level. If you do not have the “personality ingredients” you can still develop yourself and be relatively successful – with a lot of work and learn – BUT you never ever will be outstanding.
I believe there are 3 main factors of outstanding success – no matter which filed of life you are working in.
1. Ingredients ( DNS, genetics, skills, gift, talent etc – natural born)
2. Hardwork ( DRIVE, learn, development, efforts, focus, practice, experiences etc – can be gained, learnt)
2. Luck ( circumstances, opportunities, etc )
If you have 1 AND 2: sooner or later Luck comes. If one is missing from the first two – you can be an average. If you have 1 OR 2 AND Luck comes: you can be even quite successful. BUT to be real successful and outstanding you need BOTH: 1 AND 2.
Sales can be learnt until a certain level. But if you lack of natural born ingredients it is better to find other fields of life where you have them.
4:42 am on February 19th, 2010
Jeno,
Thank you for your comment. In the many conversation I have seen about this topic, many believe that there are things a person is born with that can make the difference between good and great for a salesperson (and for other things as well). I still fall into the group that believes that sales greatness does not require anything that a person is born with, but it is hard to argue against the idea that those things may certainly help make the ride easier!
Are you in Budapest? If so, we should meet at a Kavezo and see what other business issues we can solve together (I have lived in Budapest for almost 6 years now) ! Contact me at david@davidmasover.com.
-David