Quick – Who makes the best salesperson – an extrovert or an introvert?

Quicker answer – Neither…..

If you are like most people, we asked, you said extroverts make the best salespeople. They make great salespeople for a few reasons. First, since they have to interact with a wide range of individuals, they are typically outgoing, sociable, and comfortable initiating interactions with others. Second, they are persuading others to buy their product or service, so they are typically confident and express high enthusiasm and energy. And finally, unlike their counterparts (introverts), they are more likely to not take “no” for an answer. The reality is that repeated studies across various industries have shown inconsistent and weak connections between extroverts and sales performance.

In his study, Rethinking the Extraverted Sales Ideal: The Ambivert Advantage, author Adam Grant states that “there is reason to believe that in sales, extraversion may have diminishing returns and increasing costs”. He points out that extroverts are more focused on their own perspectives instead of focusing on the customer’s perspective. In addition, extroverted salespeople, with their enthusiasm and overly confident personalities, are often perceived by prospective customers as manipulative. The customer works to maintain control and protect themselves by scrutinizing the message more carefully, presenting objections, and resisting or rejecting the salesperson’s influence.

In Grant’s study, introverts also did not do well. What did emerge was something very interesting. Rather than the extremes, Grant found the greatest success with those in the middle—the ambiverts. Ambiverts are those roughly in the middle. In real revenue-generating terms, introverts earned an average of $120/hour in revenue while their outgoing colleagues earned $125/hour in revenue. The ambiverts did better than both, earning an average of $155/hour in revenue.

Grant suggests that many hiring managers are missing out on potential star performers by overlooking the lesser extroverts and that “organizations stand to benefit from training highly extraverted salespeople to model some of the quiet, reserved tendencies of their more introverted peers.” Something to consider the next time you are looking for your next high-performance sales team member.

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