What Makes a Good Salesperson?

Reading Reflection: What Makes a Good Salesman

Written by Sabrina Whittaker

Brief: What Makes a Good Salesman is a 2006 Harvard Business Review piece by David Mayer and Herbert M. Greenberg based on American psychologist Robert McMurray’s The Mystique of Super-Salesmanship, from 1961. Mayer and Greenberg are both C-suite-level businessmen.

The article looks at which human qualities transcend background, interests, and experience-level to unify great salespeople. The central argument is that we should respect the natural fact that we’re all built differently. Although the use of language such as “polished […] coal”, “mediocre,” and “inherently [unable] to succeed” is questionably offensive, I can appreciate the sentiment of the article. Instead of viewing our differences as a weakness, or something to consider strange, we should consider human variety evidence of humanity’s strength. The diversity in our interests, backgrounds, and skill levels allow for the entire spectrum of specialization/generalization. 

In this essay, we discuss how Mayer and Greenberg’s perspective applies to today’s business environment. We’ll explore their assertion that ego drive and empathy are essential qualities in salespeople by examining them alongside the importance of interest, experience, and the desire to improve consistently.

If you are a business owner that intends to change the world while growing as a person, stick with me.

Our Key Points

• The diversity in human interests is a superpower. Business owners ought to develop confidence in their ability to contribute to the positive development of humanity and must wholeheartedly believe that we are better together.
  
  
• The general desire to improve the quality of someone’s situation, including your own, is valuable in sales because it encourages dedication to the entire sales process, not an individual task. Simply put, it is a more effective and appropriate way to sell.
  
  
• You don’t need existing expertise to begin gaining experience. Instead, to succeed in a new area, you need a baseline for measuring growth. So, in the immortal words of Arthur Ashe, “start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”
  
  

The Diversity in Our Interests is a Superpower

One of the article’s chief complaints is the tendency of personality tests to favor group conformity over individual creativity. Personality tests are especially detrimental to the hiring process for sales positions. Mayer and Greenberg suggest “each new applicant should be placed in the area where [they] can be most creative and productive.” This is an excellent strategy but requires an alternate method for identifying where and how well people will perform.

When people derive meaning from their work, they express increased motivation, higher satisfaction with their position, and commitment to their career development. New hires and trainees allowed to explore their interest become engaged learners that retain more information over time because it is self-serving. Similarly, ego drive represents self-interest and assists salespeople with maintaining a commitment to career development in the absence of other motivators. Commitment is vital to success in any area, but since ego drive, the inner need to persuade someone for personal gratification, increases our commitment level, it is especially critical to sales.

Our skills are filtered through our interests because skills, not interests, are at our core. They’re transferrable bits of ourselves that we apply as needed to problem-solve. For example, an analyst is a particular type of researcher that compiles and interprets data then presents it as valuable information to an interested party. Analysts exist in virtually every industry and may display interdisciplinary focuses in their work. Their interest varies widely. From scientific research to sociology and business, analysts assist with process improvements, problem-solving, and the interpretation of data. People often report becoming an analyst because of their lifelong curiosity and love of puzzles.

In the context of interests, analysts are evidence of three key things:

• Skills, such as data analytics, are transferable across interests and disciplines.

• A person’s interest does not predict their skill set or likelihood of success.

• Our drive to practice a skill or ability is linked to personal gratification.

These points are also valid for the sales skill.

We must let people roam. In the words of Mayer and Greenberg, “we fail when we judge success on interest, not ability.” People and businesses can succeed in any discipline because shared interests do not indicate a shared aptitude for communicating, problem-solving, or selling. The critical piece is that they have the ego drive required to succeed in an area. To lower the cost of hiring and training, hiring managers should consider all related abilities and look for candidates who show ego drive.

You Must Have the Desire to Improve

We defined ego drive and its role in creating a great salesperson during our exploration of interests. Now we’ll talk about how ego drive and empathy relate to the desire to improve.

Mayer and Greenberg make it clear that some people aren’t cut out for sales. In contrast to economic assumptions of rationality, it isn’t everyone’s goal to maximize opportunities. Some incredibly capable people would rather not make the ask. In the “Need to Conquer” section of the article What Makes a Good Salesman argues that salespeople should have an ego that is simultaneously encouraged to learn from and avoid failures. Contrastingly, you must have enough empathy to understand potential buyers' thoughts, pain points, and motivations.  

Occasionally, we fail to account for cognitive biases or the tendency for loss aversion when judging economic decision-making. Due to the nature of business, individual salespeople are likely to fail far more than they succeed. To combat this, salespersons must recognize that our subconscious thoughts drive behaviors. Every day we make countless decisions based on reviews we don’t process consciously. Frankly, we make too many decisions a day to rederive the source of every idea. Thus, you won't succeed without a legitimate desire to improve the quality of life for another person or the ability to identify needs.

If you’re a business owner or salesperson who feels an intense need to conquer, it is important to remember people are drawn to value. Provide it. As a general rule, if an outcome benefits you more than money alone, you ought to value it higher. You’ll recall this is why ego drive works as a motivator for salespersons. When you don’t NEED a particular outcome, you do not concern yourself with bringing it to past.

It follows that salespeople who aren’t invested in providing a legitimate solution to buyers are unlikely to take appropriate action because

• You bulldoze people when you have the drive but no empathy. 
• You are the “nice guy” when you have too much empathy and no drive

Both scenarios result in lackluster selling and a low return of investment relative to time and energy spent. So how can businesses leverage ego drive and empathy to identify, hire, and train better salespeople?

You Don’t Need Expertise to Gain Experience

So far, we’ve covered a few topics identified as current concerns for hiring managers and pointed out the unfortunate side effects of using personality tests to select potential sales hires. Although critical to success, we've found that interest and the determination to succeed are not good indicators of a successful candidate. Instead, they should serve as guides for identifying preferred qualities, namely ego drive and empathy. In support of these notions, Mayer and Greenberg discuss the fallacy of experience. They argue that “experience is more or less easily gained, but real sales ability is not at all so easily gained.” What then is the role of education and experience?

It goes without saying that education is important. The far-reaching benefits of education and training include increased confidence, competence, productivity, and much more, which is why the eLearning industry has grown over 900% since 2000 and is expected to grow to over $240 billion by 2022. An incredible 80% of employers utilize it to train new employees. The creation and distribution of online content concerning professional development and the human experience certainly affects sales professionals, but can training substitute for natural abilities and inclination?

What Makes a Good Salesman’s stance is a firm no and instead argues that someone’s lack of experience in sales doesn’t reduce the possibility of them possessing the appropriate ego drive and empathy levels necessary to connect with potential buyers. Mayer and Greenberg reported that within their research, they found that some people “were rigid, opinionated, and for the most part, seriously lacking in empathy.”, going on to say, “this type of [person] rarely responds to training, no matter how thoroughgoing the program.” The takeaway for businesses and sales professionals is to go where your skillset is valued and grow from there.

Summary

Using Mayer and Greenberg’s What Makes a Good Salesman, we explored which human qualities transcend background, interests, and experience-level to unify great salespeople. In the end, through the analysis of related concepts such as interests, dedication to improvement, and experience, we found that empathy and ego drive are the most essential qualities in salespeople.

If you're a business owner seeking growth, visit SabrinaWhittaker.com and book a consultation with Sabrina Whittaker.

References

• https://hbr.org/2006/07/what-makes-a-good-salesman
• https://hbr.org/2016/12/if-your-boss-could-do-your-job-youre-more-likely-to-be-happy-at-work
• https://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/12/job-satisfaction
• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191308510000067
•  https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/24/as-the-need-for-highly-trained-scientists-grows-a-look-at-why-people-choose-these-careers/
• https://findstack.com/elearning-statistics/