Are Salespeople Born... Or Made?

Are Salespeople Born… Or Made?

Sales Management

04/02/2012

The question of whether a top performing salesperson is born with the ability or if they, through will and determination are made, is one that has been asked for many years. Through an in-depth survey conducted by sales guru Alen Majer; polling readers of his blog, there were some very interesting results populated. The results from what the public thinks the answer is are as follows: 57% stated that they are trained, 19% stated they are born with it, and 24% stated that it was not important if they know how to sell. In a separate study conducted by Steve Martin, an author to the Harvard Business Review, collected similar information from over 1,000 top salespeople to analyze their personality traits and how those traits influenced the top performers' selling styles, and in turn, their success. He wanted to find out if top salespeople are born with the prerequisite sales instincts, or can someone learn to become successful in sales without them. The results of his study indicated that over 70% of top salespeople are born with "natural" instincts that influence their sales success. Conversely, less than 30% of top salespeople are self-made, and for every 100 people who enter sales without these natural sales traits, 40% fail or quit, 40% will perform at near average, and 20% will perform above average. Based on the results, most people not in sales (ordinary consumers) believe they are trained to sell and that anyone could perform well if they try. However, the numbers of the second study are compelling and show that the majority of the top performers in sales are born with a special set of skills that others just don't have. The study also showed that almost all of the