December 10, 2009
Salespeople – Born Or Made?
The nature vs. nurture debate is one for which I am most intrigued. My Bachelor’s degree is in psychology and this topic was a popular debate topic in my courses. Yesterday I came across this article from CNNMoney.com – Are entrepreneurs born or made? As I look at the stats, I tend to interpret the result as saying entrepreneurs are made:
Shane and his fellow researchers compared the entrepreneurial activity of 870 pairs of identical twins — who share 100% of their genes — and 857 pairs of same-sex fraternal twins — who share 50% — to see how much of entrepreneurial behavior is genetic and how much is environmental.
The mathematics behind quantitative genetic modeling are rather complicated, but the upshot was fairly straightforward: Entrepreneurs, the researchers concluded, are about 40% born and 60% made.
The 40% is a significant number; one that ties into salespeople also. The article contains an excellent example as to where it derives its significance:
But he doesn’t totally dismiss nature’s role. “For someone without aptitude, I don’t think those things can be taught,” he says. “I can’t make a librarian into a Broadway performer.”
I believe strong salespeople are nurtured and developed within the right sales environment. Yet, there is a nature/born component to strong salespeople also – the 40% born and 60% made split seems accurate to me. The critical factor in the “40% born” side is their aptitudes. We describe aptitudes as intrinsic talents. These are talents that salespeople possess – they are not learned. They can be refined, but they cannot be created. Salespeople either have these intrinsic talents or they do not.
For instance, it is difficult, almost impossible, to make a successful salesperson out of someone who lacks the aptitude Handling Rejection. Few territory reps are successful without having a strong Personal Accountability aptitude. Hire a remote salesperson with low Initiative and you will have trouble.
One facet of our assessments is to measure a salesperson’s aptitudes in comparison to their present sales skills. This comparison reveals areas where they may have underdeveloped sales skills today, but they possess the aptitude…it simply needs to be refined into a skill.
