Business LockerRoom Blog

Great Salespeople Are Born. AND Trained.

by Kelly Riggs

“The point here is that the qualities we associate with a good
salesperson are all internal; they’re born, not trained.”

From an article by Kevin McGirl (August 2015)

So, salespeople are born. NOT trained.

According to the author of the quote above.

Which explains the first question I asked my daughter when she had her first baby: “Congratulations, honey!! Is she a salesperson?”

Whaaa…?

She didn’t exactly know how to respond (and, in retrospect, maybe not the best first question to ask).

Straight up, I don’t agree with Mr. McGirl, but that’s not why I’m writing this article. It’s that I think the idea of a “born salesperson” is exactly what keeps companies (or specific managers) from training their salespeople and improving performance. After all, if salespeople are “born” to be salespeople, and will be successful simply because they were born to that role, why would you need to train them?

And that’s what he says: Salespeople are born, not trained.

Which is the absolute worst excuse imaginable for failure: “S/he is just not a born salesperson.”

There are several problems with McGirl’s statement, but let’s focus on one idea. He references the “qualities we associate with a good salesperson.” So, what are those qualities exactly? Initiative? Intelligence? Charm? Persistence? Here is the author:

A good salesperson, like Ricky Roma from Glengarry Glen Ross, has a certain easy charm; he gains a lead’s trust and persuades them to take action. A bad salesperson – like Jack Lemmon’s character from the same movie – is weak and unconvincing. A good salesperson, like Chris Gardner in The Pursuit of Happyness, is dogged and relentless to the point that nothing will divert them from chasing a deal; a bad salesperson, like Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, is all too eager to give up.

Yes, indeed. Your “good” salesperson has an easy charm, is persuasive, and is relentless. And it necessarily follows that, if you’re born with these traits, you will be a good salesperson.

Well, no. Not really.

How many people have you known fitting that description (charming, persuasive, and relentless) who completely sucked at selling? Conversely, how many people have you known that weren’t all that charming, but were great salespeople?

In fact, this whole line of thought leads me to ask this: “Which of the following makes for a better salesperson?” [Note: Follow the hyperlinks to see some prevailing opinions.]

•             Man or woman?
•             Extrovert or introvert?
•             People-oriented or goal-oriented?
•             Boomer or Millennial?
•             MBA or no college degree?

Research and opinions vary widely on which one is preferable for a good salesperson.

Oh, and by the way, here is a newsflash (particularly for Mr. McGirl): the very best salespeople are consistently less “charming” that their lower performing counterparts! This, according to Steve W. Martin, who interviewed thousands of top salespeople and administered personality tests to 1,000 top performers.

In his HBR article, “Seven Personality Traits of Top Salespeople,” Martin says:

One of the most surprising differences between top salespeople and those ranking in the bottom one-third of performance is their level of gregariousness (preference for being with people and friendliness). Overall, top performers averaged 30 percent lower gregariousness than below average performers.

In fact, according to Martin’s research, the traits that separate great salespeople are modesty, conscientiousness, achievement orientation, curiosity, lack of gregariousness, lack of discouragement, and lack of self-consciousness.

Weird. Turns out, three of the things that make you a great salesperson are things you don’t have. 

So, What About Training?

The reality is that certain traits are consistent among top salespeople. And you are probably born with those traits. But does that mean you were born to be a salesperson? More importantly, does it absolutely ensure that you will be a good salesperson?

No. And no.

First things first. The idea that it is internal traits ONLY that create a good salesperson is to assume that selling is not a profession; i.e., it does not require any additional skills. Which is exactly what McGirl is saying: No Training Required.

Like a Wal-Mart greeter, you don’t need to be able to do anything except use your pleasant personality and customers will come out of the woodwork to do business with you.

But anyone with more than a couple of weeks in sales knows that there are a host of skills inherent in the profession of selling. And these skills are taught. In fact, if we take two people with the exact character traits listed by Martin (or even McGirl for that matter), and we train one and don’t train the other, is there any doubt at all who would be the better performer? Without training, those intrinsic traits mean absolutely nothing.

Which, of course, means that salespeople are BORN (they have certain intrinsic characteristics) and they are TRAINED (there are certain skills they must acquire to be successful). One without the other is a non-starter.

That also means that you can train someone until your eyes bleed, and, if they are lacking in those requisite traits, then you are probably wasting your time.

Born AND trained.

Boiling it Down to a Single Factor

If we dig a little deeper into this debate, it gets a tad bit more complicated. Or less complicated, depending on how you look at it. It turns out that there may very well be a single determining characteristic that predicts success in selling.

That characteristic is “grit.”

In the recently released (May 3, 2015) book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, author and psychologist Angel Duckworth reveals the following research:

I asked hundreds of men and women employed at the same vacation time-share company to answer a battery of personality questionnaires, including the Grit Scale. Six months later, I revisited the company, by which time 55 percent of the salespeople were gone. Grit predicted who stayed and who left. Moreover, no other commonly measured personality trait— including extroversion, emotional stability, and conscientiousness— was as effective as grit in predicting job retention.

What is really interesting is that grit seems to be both inherent AND trainable. In other words, some people just seem to have it, but it is also possible to TRAIN grit into a person. I’ll leave it to you to read Ms. Duckworth’s outstanding book for more details. I highly recommend it.

Oh, and in case, you happened to notice that the quote above was about predicting job retention and not necessarily success, read further:

What else, other than grit, predicts success in the military, education, and business? In sales, I found that prior experience helps— novices are less likely to keep their jobs than those with experience. In the Chicago public school system, a supportive teacher made it more likely that students would graduate. And for aspiring Green Berets, baseline physical fitness at the start of training is essential. But in each of these domains, when you compare people matched on these characteristics, grit still predicts success. Regardless of specific attributes and advantages that help someone succeed in each of these diverse domains of challenge, grit matters in all of them.

Which means that maybe you should be MOST concerned about grit when interviewing for that open sales position! After all, grit is what causes the great ones to learn and practice and plan when all the pretenders have called it quits.

Conclusion

So, if you are responsible for hiring or managing salespeople (and maybe you thought great salespeople are born that way), here are three questions for you to consider:

1. As with any other profession, there are particular internal traits that create sales success. But you can’t succeed at selling without learning critical selling skills. What do you think those skills are?
2. Look at your top performers and compare them to your bottom performers. What internal characteristics are missing from the bottom performers?
3. Look at your top performers and “middle” performers (your A and B players). What critical selling skills do you need to address that would elevate the performance of both groups?

Addressing both sides of the equation will dramatically improve your company’s sales performance.

Big money says you need to add some better players – players with the traits necessary for selling success. HUGE money says you almost certainly need better selling skills on your team.

Yep. Turns out sales leaders aren’t “born” either.