7| Are great salespeople born or made?
The question of whether great sales people are born or made is one of nature versus nurture - the debate of whether heredity or the environment most impacts human development. The relationship between nature and nurture and the importance of the two factors in oneās ability to close sales transactions has been argued by psychologists for years. Ā I believe the answer is both.
I agree that some salespeople seem to be more naturally suited for their job than others. Those who excel at sales are probably born with, or develop, a foundation of certain skills, such as assurance, empathy and reliability, that make a sales pitch feel more natural coming from them.
However, sales skills, just like any other skills, can be trained. Selling and negotiation techniques, time and territory management and policies and procedures are all skills that can be developed with training, practice and experience. I personally believe in the 10,000 hours rule that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his non-fiction book Outliers: The Story of Success, where he explores the factors that contribute to high levels of success. He states, that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to achieve mastery in any field. However, Gladwell also points out, that the 10,000 hour rule is not all that is necessary to achieve greatness; āThe point is simply that natural ability requires a huge investment of time in order to be made manifest,ā according to Gladwell. If you want to be great at anything, you not only need natural ability, but you also need to put in tremendous amounts of effort and practice into it. It isnāt enough to have natural ability, or merely be born with a hint of a talent in a specific field, in order to be great in it. Just like it isnāt necessarily enough to put in huge amounts of effort and innumerable hours into practicing something you are not naturally inclined towards or have the personality for.
While Gladwell believes that good salespeople can be made, but the truly great ones were born with the qualities that help make them great, Lisa Earle McLeod argues that what separates great salespeople from average ones, is a sense of purpose, or more precisely āselling with noble purposeā. Viewing customers as people and looking to add value to the customerās lives, is not only more successful, but also deepens job satisfaction and proves to be greatly more profitable.
The greatest sales experience that I probably ever had was at an Apple store in San Francisco. To me, the Apple Geniuses, are some of the greatest salespeople, and the reason that they stand out so much, I believe, is because they sell āwith noble purpose.ā They truly and genuinely believe in the product that they are selling.
Not too long ago, Apple disclosed their confidential training manuals, which not only outline all of the storeās policies but also give instructions to the smallest details on what to say and how to act in certain situations. The training extends even to the language that Apple store employees use. A list of banned words includes āunfortunatelyā and employees are encouraged to use phases such as āas it turns outā in order to sound less negative or unable to solve a customer problem.
Source: Apple - Emergency First Aid for Emotional Customers
This extensive training could suggest to some, that great selling can be taught, as Apple does it. But I believe that not only does Apple naturally hire employees with great people skills, and fire those that arenāt committed, but Appleās employees are in those jobs because they are truly passionate about them. I think that this trait of āselling with noble purpose,ā whether inherited or developed, is what really makes one a great salesperson. You might be selling iPhones, houses or cars, but if you really believe in your product, and the fact that it will improve your customerās life, then this passion will translate onto your customers. Ā
