Myth Of The Sales Personality
The so-called “sales personality” is a myth. Belief in this myth may be as
responsible
for bad hiring
and disastrous promotions by employers, and poor
performance by
salespeople and sales managers,
as
anything else in the sales
talent management
equation.
When managers want to hire sales superstars, they tend to hire people with
stereotypical sales
personalities – people who are outgoing, talkative,
personable and gregarious. And because sales
managers – for a host of
reasons – prefer this personality type for
their teams, they convince
themselves
that customers will prefer them as well.
Unfortunately, the traits that make up the “sales personality” have little to do
with
success in the
game
of sales. It doesn’t hurt, of course, when a salesperson
has a
pleasant, extroverted personality,
but
there
are lots of outgoing, talkative,
personable
and gregarious people in the world with pleasant,
extroverted
personalities. Some
are teachers, some are physicians, attorneys, plumbers
and circus
performers. But
just because these folks share some pleasing personality
traits doesn’t mean they
have
the talent or
competencies to succeed as sales
professionals.
Anyone who has ever hired a salesperson can cite an example of a “sales personality”
who failed.
Hiring Mary, “Miss Personality Plus”, was a sure bet. Talk about
quintessential
sales personality
traits! Mary had them all. Everyone loved her,
especially her customers. Mary could stroll in to
see
any of her customers, almost
anytime, for a casual conversation.
No one would think of
treating
Mary
unkindly.
There was only one problem with Mary – she never closed a large order. Mary was
a
terrific
schmoozer.
She talked in great detail about her company’s products with her
customers, and most
customers revealed valuable, “inside information” to Mary.
Despite
these good relations, Mary’s
customers always awarded
their largest orders
to her biggest
competitors.
Mary is a classic example of the disconnect between personality traits and success in
the
sales
profession. Although Mary’s company believed in skills training for their
salespeople,
the training
never helped Mary
recognize sales opportunities or close
those opportunities.
She had a great
personality, but she lacked the
innate talent,
competencies and tendencies
to sell a warm blanket
to an Eskimo who is wearing
only a
T shirt
in an ice storm.
The manager who hired Mary, unfortunately, used an “off-the-shelf” personality
test as the
primary
methodology for evaluating Mary as a new hire. It is rapidly
becoming clear among
prominent
personnel psychologists that personality tests,
while useful in describing personality
traits or
emotional
intelligence,
are poor
predictors of job performance. These psychologists
concluded
that “the
validities
of personality measures are so low that using them for selecting
employees
should
be
questioned.”
Instead of measuring Mary’s personal characteristics, the hiring manager could
have used a
tool to
measure the competencies, conduct, traits and temperament
that predict actual job
behavior. It is
critical to know whether Mary can do the
job, and to predict with a high
degree of accuracy
whether
or not Mary will do
the job.
A statistically validated performance assessment could have given the manager
visibility
into Mary’s
work
DNA. How is Mary wired? Does she have high potential
for job
success as measured against
the
performance of proven, successful sales
professionals? Is she a potential leader? How would
her
strengths and weaknesses
affect performance
of the job? To maximize her potential, how should
Mary be
coached?
A statistically validated performance assessment would have revealed to the
manager that
Mary, a
very
nice person with a charming personality, did not possess
the innate talent to
perform the job she
was hired
to do. It would have revealed
that Mary’s temperament and
natural work conduct were
incompatible with
the
on-the-job behavior required for success.
Mary’s failure at her job could have been predicted with 85% accuracy by a
performance
assessment
designed to measure narrow job-related competencies.
In Mary’s case, belief
in the myth of the
“sales personality” caused an unfortunate
hire and poor job performance by someone with talents,
work
behaviors and
temperament that were better suited to another job.
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Copyright © 2008 Selling Up™. All Rights Reserved.
About the author: Steve Chriest is the founder of Selling Up™ (www.selling-up.com), a sales consulting
firm specializing in revenue and sales improvement for organizations of all types and sizes in a variety of
industries. He is also the author of Selling The E-Suite, The Proven System For Reaching and Selling
Senior Executives and Profits and Cash – The Game of Business. You can reach Steve at
schriest@selling-up.com.
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