Why Introverts Are Better at Sales Than Extroverts
inc.com
inc.com
Theres obviously a lot to learn from archetypal human behavior, but when it’s presented like this it just falls flat.
I have yet to meet a good salesperson who didn't research, listen, and react. That's part of the sales process.. to understood who you're selling to and why.
This is Sales 101 and has nothing to do with being a intro/extro-vert.
They analyze the hell out of the customer from an organizational perspective and really try to figure out what problem they need to get solved.
They are definitely extroverts. They are interesting people to be around, have great conversational and wining and dining skills, etc.
They know their limits when it comes to technology and see themselves as facilitators of deep technical discussions between the prospective customer's tech people and the internal staff. They are happy to take the backseat when it comes to tech discussions - while still listening, taking notes, etc. (That they'll then come back with to i.e. me to try to understand and figure out the next step.)
The best sales people I've worked with (in a software/services B2B
context - specifically when the customers are large companies) are
into long-term relationship and trust building.
An example where I have seen the type of relationship-building salesperson outperform the aggressive kind of sales person: sales to large, stable incumbent companies in Europe.
.. and that's why this job is so highly paid (the kind of people I'm talking about: ~300k/year or more).
Sales tactics, like aggressive selling or throwing everything at the wall see what sticks, does not work in enterprise sales. The enterprise sell is complex and nuanced based on all the decision makers and influencers. It helps to be less of a "classic-sales" person and more of a doctor. You want to diagnose, understand, and provide a recommendation. Often-times like a doctor, the client (patient) does not want hear or accept the solution (antidote). This is where the challenger mindset comes into play, the great sales folks are pushing for the "true solution" even if the client-team is not onboard. It can take time to get a champion on the client side who sees the light. Just to be clear enterprise sales only works if the solution is solving true business outcomes.
For selling to new clients, its important for the sales team to run a client diagnostic to understand if the product (solution) has a right to win. Its just the start of understanding the client. I will say getting to know the client and their hurdles is crucial and the clients are experts at their problems. But, they are not experts at solving it. That is why the sales person is there and why the product exists.
The difference between an introvert and an extrovert doesn't lie in one's abilities in that regard, or even in whether or not one enjoys social interaction, but rather in whether one finds social interaction to be energizing or exhausting.
The article seems to misunderstand this difference, too, but in a different way: by equating "extrovert" and "introvert" with what are often colloquially referred to as "A-type" and "B-type" personalities (or maybe "red" and "blue", or some other distinction along those lines). Just like with leadership positions ("A-types want to lead, but B-types are better at it"), the conventional wisdom is that "A-types" are more likely to actually want to be in a sales position, but "B-types" are more likely to actually win over a customer. Extroversion and introversion are probably correlated here, but I reckon it having more to do about one's approach to communication with others.
These kind of sales people are a better fit when the product has been in the marketplace for 1-2 years and has survived ~5-10 customers. By then it's a lot more packaged and well-defined. You still need a strong central sales "command structure" though.
I have actually met some (semi-)introverted sales people. They never made any sales, or got anywhere close to it.
But that doesn't mean they're all the frat boy stereotype, taking customers out wining and dining all the time, and then signing the deal on the golf course.
Rather they spend a lot of time and effort navigating large organizations, engaging technical people to talk with and work with the right people at the customer, and developing a relationship that will eventually lead to a sale.
I think it does.
Extroverts are 'outwardly focused' - meaning 'present' - paying attention to others, the world around them.
Introverts are 'inwardly focused', more in their heads.
Obviously, people can do both - but extroverts have a lifetime of skills in 'relationship management'. They know how to do small talk, how to set the mood, how to change the subject, how to engage with a difficult subject.
This is a common misconception, but that's actually not how the words "introversion" and "extraversion"[sic] are used either by Jung or by contemporary psychology. It's hard to classify the distinction in a single sentence, but to generalize: introversion and extroversion have more to do with how a person 'receives' external stimuli, not in how they react or respond to it.
Extroverts are not inherently better at "relationship management" skills like small talk, how to change the subject, or how to engage with difficult subjects.
Since this flies in the face of common sense (and my personal experience of 20 years in selling B2B software).. do you have any research to back up this claim? (Besides name-dropping Carl Gustav Jung.)
I'd recommend reading Susan Cain's Quiet as a starting point. It's very accessible for people without a background in psychology, and it references the original research where appropriate.
Yes - I understand the more precise popular definition.
But I believe that people who enjoy being around other people are far more 'present' than those who do not.
You may believe it, but that's not what the body of psychology research says.
Why? There's a huge amount of published research in the I/E scale in forms like the FFM. We have Ph.D.s on HN who are deeply involved in psychometrics and work with these models every day.
> But why can't extroverts be good at research and listening?
This is a much better point. They can.
The weird thing about this article is that the author uses a dichotomy like E/I, then seems to suggest that all customers dislike E salespeople. Or that, maybe, all E salespeople are the same type of person. That's simply not true.
> What if you're driven and enjoy a good balance of quiet time and social time?
This is also crucial, the question of personality type vs. personality type _development_.
He was simply saying that its relevance has been exaggerated and twisted. And that's, frankly, difficult to disagree with. The introversion-extroversion dichotomy has been turned into a popular psychology vehicle. But you can't judge the vehicle by the absurd places people take it.
In any event, like most such dichotomies, it's implicitly understood to be a generalization, and generalizations are not suitable for describing or predicting more specific behaviors.
As an anecdote, my heavily extroverted brother in law is the best salesman I know. He went door-to-door in San Diego selling pest removal services. He would net over $80,000 in commissions over a summer.
Maybe it's different in B2B, but in B2C the best salesmen I've seen have always been extroverts.
I'm an introvert myself and if you see me in social situations you'd never think that I am and most people don't realize it until they get to know me personally. This is why this article makes little sense to me.
Mark Roberge's book The Sales Acceleration Formula. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T7Q9E2S/
For others that don't know: https://www.salesfornerds.io
The article is BS. Author clearly hasn't spent much time with sales people.
I'm an introverted salesman. Meeting new people is no big deal. Shooting the shit isn't exactly rocket science.
However, if someone _mainly_ wants to shoot the shit, there's a good chance it's an annoying sell compared to other prospects--they're just looking for a deal, or checking a checkbox, and I'm offering deeper value than that.
I can get way more mileage out of a shit shooter who has an introverted admin assistant who told them to shoot the shit with _me_ in particular. That's what I'm always sniffing out, some depth to match what I'm selling. But this is a lifestyle business for me, no quotas, etc. Has to be fun and interesting.
Now, do people think I'm an extrovert _all the time_? Some probably do, I don't know.
I carry a basic certification in psychometrics, and really enjoy this topic. When I'm working with someone who's really introverted and they "ignore the we," I consider changing my approach a bit, but first, I decide whether it's worth my time. Some introverts have developed a healthy approach to the object, so the fact that I'm selling something is just another information portal in their mind. They know it's healthy to be open to brand new ideas, to some reasonable point where they have understood the factual properties of those ideas. Others are so subjective that all they can think about is how what I'm selling reminds them of their uncle and his failed business, and the fact that he was a dangerous driver, or something. As a fellow introvert, that's sad to me because such a characteristic feeds directly into the concept of personal development. Any strength so magnified, starts to become a liability if not balanced.
To me, this was because I was completely interested in their needs, and didn't care about the company's needs. I told them the best deals and gave them the straight info while being pleasant to talk to.
In short, yes, I think introvert salespeople come off as extroverts to their customers.
Introversion and extroversion are about whether the person recharges their batteries during quiet time or in social settings, respectively. But an introvert with full batteries can be just as good at sales as an extrovert.
Introvert means focused internally. As in you're oriented around what's happening in your head.
Extrovert means focused externally. As in you're oriented around what's going on outside your head.
We all have both sides of each personality and they can even be broken downtown into many subcategories probably to the point where everyone who ever existed has their own unique personality.
I've also seen many people mistake one for the other. So I wouldn't put too much stock into what you believe yours is.
It's easy and no big deal
My definition of introvert is "drained by other people" (vs. extrovert as "energized by other people"). I'm not shy... I'm outgoing, friendly, good at shooting the shit. But I get home and I'm tired.
Extroverts, by virtue of that energy-boost, are more likely to get into a enjoy sales... and do what it takes to be a good salesperson (research, etc.). So that means that the average introvert in sales is a "better" salesperson than the average extrovert, because the extrovert population is so much larger/deeper. There's no such think as a low-performing introvert in sales, because that introvert wouldn't be in sales in the first place.
It feels like saying "Power lifters are energized by weight lifting; frail people are drained by weight lifting."
Interacting with people (like lifting weights) is just work. People who are good at it make it look easy. People who are bad at it get tucker'd out.
1) Introverts may have a higher default level of arousal, so that social situations overstimulate them and make them tired. In this case extroverts would be the opposite, i.e. their default arousal is lower, so they seek social situations to raise their arousal level.
2) Introverts process social situations more deeply, and therefore expend more energy in the same social situation than an extrovert would.
That's mostly implied simply from "most salespeople are extroverts". And that comes from a culture that assumes pushy selling culture actually works. Confirmation and survivor bias.
I hate these articles that assign a label to an individual. We are complex beings that constantly evolve as we go through life and explore various experiences.
You know who's better at sales? The person that has had a wide-range of experiences, understand the domain he's selling in, and especially one that can put themselves in the clients' shoes because he has been on their side of the aisle. That person can sell, because he/she understand the value proposition of what they are selling better than anyone else.
Any time I see an article that throws people into groups "Millennials, baby-boomers, white, black, introverts, extroverts..." I just cringe at how stupid it is to categorize people based on a single trait.
The day we learn to stop putting labels on everything, is the day humanity will change forever.
We are more than a label. We are human beings.
IMO articles like this should be flagged with reason: "label bullshit".
Just my Friday $0.02 rant :)
I, personally, even hate when I actually buy something that I wanted, but was pressed by the seller at the same time. It takes away my joy of buying, of deciding, of choosing.
A salesperson started hassling me, pointing me at other hats, practically put one on my head before I took it from her hands. We left, didn't buy. They lost a sale because they were too pushy.
Show that you're available to the customer, listen to what they actually say (don't pull out the items they aren't looking at unless they are actually similar and/or better by some metric - less expensive, better material, something), and get out of the way.
An advertiser tries to make you want something that you were not previously interested in. These people are the bane of my existence. I don't go shopping unless I already want something, and whatever that may be is extremely unlikely to match the thing that the advertiser is trying to push that day.
Combining the two is a guaranteed-certain way to make me leave immediately, and avoid walking in to your store forevermore.
I'm a good example of how unfitting the definitions are. In my professional life I'm an extrovert. I refine my ideas by running them by other people or thinking out loud, I engage in office talk every time I think I can contribute (it's not always the case), I wastly prefer face-to-face communication, I couldn't function outside the open office space and I'm a member of every sort of club and social activity we have as well as being friends with pretty much everyone I've ever worked with.
In my private life I'm almost he exact opposite. My ideal Friday night is alone on my couch with a good book, and maybe my fiancée. It's not that I don't like spending social time with my/our friends, but it's usually a taxing experience that I need to rest after.
I score as ESTP on the Myers Briggs related tests professionally, but if I answered in regards to how I live my private life I'd be a clear ISTP. I've thought about whether one side was dominant or not, but I frankly can't say that one is.
He lays out the sales process in a very logical manner that I have not seen elsewhere. Before I read this book I too had the impression that sales was about manipulation and this book completely changed my view on it.
Can't say it's a task that appeals to me, but it does seem to be fairly effective.
B2B SaaS here too, and targeted cold calling is our most effective lead gen channel.
Because come on, the guy was on fire.
What if he tried entering my personal space like that?~
Once the appointment is set, the person who actually makes the sales visit is a specialist in selling the product.
If the product or service is highly technical, the sales person may be backed up by sales engineers, who join the sales process at the point that the prospect is making a more serious inquiry. Sales engineers may just respond to technical questions, or, they may actually develop prototype or demonstration implementations of the product.
Pairing up Appointment Setters with introverted technical sales personnel can be an effective strategy to maximize sales production.
In the end, companies that succeed have learned how to best sell their products and services, whether it's a smartphone cover and no humans are involved in a sales transaction except the customer, or whether it's a weapon system sold to the Air Force that keeps a sales team of 20 busy for years, or your local Toyota dealer.
There is no one-size-fits-all, but if you need to figure out how to sell your stuff, you can look at successful companies that reflect yours to learn what worked for them, and then assimilate what looks effective for your business, instrument the process, and iterate.
If anything, I've seen a greater separation of responsibilities, where sales people are supported by technical presales folks who can do a lot of the behind the scenes work.
As an aside, this makes me wonder: what jobs are a good fit for introverts, aside from maybe 3rd-shift security? Software development, for instance, is most definitely a job for extroverts. Introverts would never be happy with all the noise, talking, commotion, and lack of privacy involved in a modern software development job in an open-plan office.
Closing the deal often requires a blatant, highly assertive statement.
When I was a sales person in a computer shop, my best closing line was:
"So you want me to wrap it up for you?"
I would say this before the customer expressed any interest in buying the computer - It actually works though - It turns out that a lot of people prefer to fork out $1000+ than to create friction by saying "No".
The reason I doubt it: extroverts are 'present' focused on the person they are with. Introverts are more likely to be 'inwards' in their thoughts - less attentive to the social situation, not paying attention to emotional queues, not engaging.
Sales is mostly relationship management. Extroverts are usually better at dealing with people, finding common ground etc., introverts more likely to tackle intellectual issues.
Seriously. You're good at what you do because you're good at what you do. Generally, the people who rise to the top or perform better are the ones who really put their minds to doing whatever it is they do, which usually means taking careful study of their field and spending some time alone to focus.
Seriously. You're good at what you do because you're good at what you do. Generally, the people who rise to the top or perform better are the ones who really put their minds to doing whatever it is they do, which usually means taking careful study of their field and spending some time alone to focus.