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Bram Lagrou: Picture a great salesperson. Go on, take a second and picture one
Someone confident, loud maybe. The first to walk up to a stranger at a networking event. Quick with a joke, fills the room, never stops talking, a natural.
Now here's the question, is that picture actually true?
Because if it is, a lot of brilliant people should never go anywhere near a sales role. The quiet ones, the thoughtful ones, the engineers, the accountants, the analysts who'd rather listen than talk.
And if it isn't true, then a lot of companies are hiring the wrong people, and a lot of good people are ruling themselves out of a career they could be great at.
Welcome back to Myth or Method on the Commercial Leader. This is where I take one [00:01:00] piece of sales wisdom that everyone repeats, and I put it under the microscope.
Today's myth: "great salespeople are born extroverts".
I'm Bram Lagrou. Let's find out.
In the first Myth or Method episode, we tested "Always Be Closing". If you missed it, the short version is this. The asking is worth keeping whilst the pressure is what costs you deals.
Today's myth is a close cousin because the picture of the pushy closer and the picture of the born extrovert are often the same person in our heads, and this belief does real damage.
it shapes who gets hired, it shapes who gets promoted into sales leadership roles, and it shapes how people see themselves. I've lost count of the number of technical experts who've said to me, "I'm not a salesperson, Bram. I'm just not the type."
[00:02:00] So let's be fair and start with what the myth actually gets right.
Selling does involve people, and in fact, lots of them. You need the energy to start conversations. You need to be comfortable picking up the phone and dial. You need to walk into a room of strangers and not hide in the corner. So extroverts often find that easier. It costs them less energy. They get a buzz from it.
So yes, extroversion can help you get in the door. The question is whether it helps you win the deal.
Here's where it gets interesting. For decades, researchers have tried to link extroversion to sales performance, and the results have been weak and contradictory.
Some studies found a small effect. Some found none at all. So in 2013, Adam Grant at the Wharton School tested it properly. He studied around 340 [00:03:00] salespeople at an outbound call center business in the US. He measured their personality. Then he tracked the revenue each of them brought in over the next three months.
If the myth were true, the extroverts should have won.
They didn't.
The top performers were the people in the middle. Grant calls them the "ambiverts". People who are neither strongly extroverted nor strongly introverted. The ambiverts brought in about 24% more revenue than the introverts and about 32% more than the extroverts.
Now read that again. The extroverts came last.
And here's the detail I personally love most. The most extreme extroverts and the most extreme introverts performed about the same. The loudest person in the room did no better than the quietest.
So Grant's explanation is simple. Ambiverts move [00:04:00] naturally between talking and listening. They're assertive enough to ask for the business, but they also listen properly. And they're less likely to come across as overly excited or overconfident.
A second piece of research points the same way.
Steve Martin, who teaches sales strategy at the University of Southern California, gave personality tests to around 1,000 top business-to-business salespeople. Then he compared them with average and below average performers.
Three findings stood out.
First, modesty. 91% of the top performers scored medium to high on modesty and humility. Not exactly the swaggering closer.
Second then, curiosity. More than eight in 10 scored extremely high on curiosity.
And third, the one that surprised everyone. [00:05:00] On average, the top performers scored around 30% lower on gregariousness than the below-average performers. Gregarious simply means wanting to be around people, enjoying social contact for its own sake.
So the best sellers in that study were less sociable, not more.
Now, I promised you a fair trial, so here's a twist.
Martin also argues that most top salespeople do have natural instincts that shape their success. So the born part of the myth may not be completely wrong. But look at which instincts. Curiosity, conscientiousness, humility, a drive to achieve, and the resilience to bounce back from a loss.
None of those is extroversion. So if anyone is born to sell, they're not born loud. They're born curious.
If you've listened to this show before, you know I [00:06:00] work with DISC every day. So let's look at this through that lens. The D and I styles are the more outgoing ones. Fast-paced, comfortable taking up space. The S and C styles, in contrast, are more reserved, more measured, more inclined to listen and think before they speak.
So what does that data say about DISC and sales results?
Honestly, there isn't much at all. The best I've found comes from Baylor University's Keller Center working with the assessment company TTI. In a study of residential real estate agents, high D's and high I's were more likely to be top performers than the high S and C's, and people whose strong traits were D and I combined did especially well.
So far, that sounds like the myth wins, but two other findings matter more.
When the researchers looked at everything together, the strongest predictor of performance [00:07:00] wasn't a disc style at all. It was self-efficacy, confidence in your own selling ability. High D's, for example, simply tended to have more of it. And in their first study, the researchers were surprised to find that people with high S scores also tend to perform better.
So even in the friendliest data for the myth, the real driver is confidence and skill, not volume.
Now let me add also what I've noticed myself across a lot of years working with a lot of sales teams. This isn't a published study, it's a pattern. In manufacturing, for example, the salespeople who land the really big wins tend to be D, I, or a mix of the two. They're bold. They go after the large accounts. They're comfortable with the risk.
But the steady, reliable performers, the ones who hit their number quarter after quarter often look different. Something [00:08:00] like an SI profile with either a bit of D or C. They build trust slowly. They follow through. Clients stay with them long term.
And then there's the pattern that fascinates me most. In accounting firms, the true rainmakers are often an unusual mix. High I and high C together. I've seen exactly the same thing in IT companies.
Why is this unusual? Because under this model, I and C are each other's opposites. The I loves the story, the vision, and the people, whilst the C loves the detail, the accuracy, and the proof.
Most people lean either one of those ways. Those rainmakers, they have both. So they can paint the big picture for a managing partner in the morning and go really deep dive into the technical detail with the CFO in the afternoon.
And think about who they're selling to. In professional services and IT, the [00:09:00] buyer is buying expertise. The C side earns them credibility. The I sides gets them chosen. That's not extroversion. That's range.
So here's the reframe I want you to take away today. Extraversion is a volume setting. Great selling is about range. A high I who can't turn the volume down will overwhelm a careful high C buyer. A high S who can't turn it up will never move a fast high D to a decision.
Let me tell you about Mel
Many years ago, I was Mel's sales trainer. Mel was an extreme extrovert. On DISC, she was completely off the chart, high I. She was loud, she was full of energy, and she was so loud and so energetic that she scared the introverts.
To Mel, she was just being herself. To the quieter people around her, [00:10:00] it was overwhelming to say the least. So as her trainer, I pointed this out to her. She needed to soften her voice, and she needed also to slow down.
She took it on board, to her credit, and Mel went on to become a top performer in the civil construction industry. Now, Mel didn't need a new personality. She kept her energy and her enthusiasm.
She just learned to turn the volume down when the person in front of her needed her to do so.
She didn't need to be less of an extrovert. She needed a wider range. That's what grants ambiverts have naturally, and Mel is the proof of the good news. Range can be learned.
There's another pattern I see again and again, and it's one the extrovert myth hides completely.
High I extroverts are brilliant at opening doors. They meet people easily. They spark interest fast. Give them a room full of [00:11:00] strangers, and they'll walk out with a dozen of conversations started. But opening a door isn't the same as converting.
Their risk is being slow to convert. Lots of pipeline, lots of opportunities, but not enough follow through, not enough discipline, not enough structure.
And when an I gets bored after a while, there's another risk. They move on to the next shiny, exciting object. The next prospect always feels more fun than the slow grind of the old one.
That's where the methodical S and C styles can win over time. You know the story of the tortoise and the hare. The hare races off, gets distracted, takes a nap.
The tortoise just keeps going step by step and wins. "Slow and steady wins the race" is what we say in Communication Mastery.
In sales more often than you think.
So what do you do [00:12:00] when you're not strong across the whole spectrum of sales? Most of us, generally speaking, aren't.
You can build range or you can specialize.
Some of the smartest businesses I've worked with do exactly that. They pair people with specific superpowers to the parts of the sales processes that suit them best.
Let me give you an example from B2C selling, in lifestyle products.
The marketer generates the inquiry. A call center person pre-qualifies that inquiry and books a site visit. A dedicated sales consultant meets the customer on site. They measure things up, quote them, and sign them up. If, however, the customer didn't sign on the spot, the same salesperson then follows up later and tries to close again.
If nothing happens after that, another person works through the database of lost opportunities on a regular basis and still lands a few jobs that everyone else had written off.
[00:13:00] Every step has a different person, and every person is doing what they do best. The same goes for the very front of the process, cold calling.
In my experience, cold calling is best left in the hands of a high I or a high D or a combination of the two. Both talk to strangers easily, both for different reasons.
To an I, a stranger is just a friend they haven't met yet. The D is driven by a goal. A no doesn't knock them off course. They just dial the next number. It's all a numbers game in their mind.
Now here's a nice twist.
Remember Grant's study? Those were outbound call center reps, and the ambiverts still won. So the I or the D may find it easiest to pick up the phone and start dialing, but once the stranger is on the line, listening still makes the difference.
Let me give you a great example of this pairing in action.[00:14:00]
One of my industrial clients had a woman on the team whose job was solely to call prospects and book meetings for the company's middle and senior managers.
On DISC, she was a high I with moderate S, and she was a gun. Her prospects were mostly people in operations roles, mainly male. They enjoyed talking to her. Her warmth and energy were infectious, and they happily agreed to meet with a stranger. She opened up lots of doors and those doors turned into a lot of new business revenue.
So here, extroversion worked a treat right where it belonged, at the front of the process.
But here's the part that I love.
The managers she booked those meetings for were mostly D, C, and S styles, and it was no accident. Their styles matched the kind of client the [00:15:00] business was going after. So the I opened the door, and the people who walked through it looked exactly like the client on the other side of the table.
That's not one salesperson, that's a team built around superpowers.
High D styles are often excellent at the end of the chain as closers. I remember a car salesman who sold the highest volume in his business. He had several people on the car yard doing the pre-qualifying, talking to people, vetting them out, making sure that whoever he passed on were genuine buyers. As the salesman had buyers readily lined up, he closed one after another.
You see the same thing in investment banking. The analysts do the detailed pre-work, the numbers, the models, the due diligence, and then the confident, direct outcome-focused closer is the one who locks in the client.
So [00:16:00] here's the point.
Everyone has a superpower, sometimes two. If you're not strong across the whole spectrum, you don't have to fake it. You can specialize in the parts of the sales process where you're naturally strong and build on those.
And that brings me to something I feel strongly about.
Many of you know the Challenger Sale. It's based on a big study by CEB, now part of Gartner, covering more than 6,000 sales reps. They found five seller profiles, and one of them, the Challenger, made up close to 40% of the star performers.
The relationship builder, in contrast, came last at around 7%.
It's good research and it supports today's verdict. The stars weren't the most likable or the most sociable. They were the ones who brought insight and took control of the conversation.
But here's my issue with it, and with most sales methodologies to be [00:17:00] frank. They take one winning profile and they teach it to everyone.
One process, one script, one style.
Think about that, what it means for your team. Your high S account managers get told to be more challenging. Your high C engineer gets told to tell more stories. Everyone gets pushed towards the same mold. Some of them will get there, many of them will feel like they're pretending, and it will feel like being fake, and buyers can feel that.
Communication Mastery works the other way around.
We start with who your salesperson already is. Then we teach them to read who the buyer is, and then they adapt three things: their pace, as in fast or slow, their priority, as in people or task, and their language.
Your high C keeps their depth. Your high I keeps their warmth and energy.
Your [00:18:00] high S keeps their patience, and They each learn to stretch towards the buyer in front of them.
You don't need a team of identical challengers. You need a team of people who can each adapt from their own starting point, and a sales process that puts each superpower where it does the most good.
So myth or method?
Great salespeople are born extroverts is a myth. The best evidence we have says that top performers sit in the middle. They're curious, they're modest, they listen, and they know when to talk and when to stop.
If anything is innate, it's curiosity and drive, not volume. And the thing that separates the best from the rest is something that you can build, either range or a role that plays to your superpower.
Here's how I'd use it depending on who you are.
If you're an [00:19:00] extrovert, your risk is talking past the sale. In your next three client meetings, ask one more question that feels natural and then wait. Let the silence do some work for you.
If you're more introverted, your listening is an asset, not a weakness. Your stretch is the other end of the conversation. Asking for the next step clearly, out loud, before you leave the room.
And if you lead a sales team, have a hard look at how you hired.
If your job ad reads like a description of the life of the party, you're probably screening out some of your best future performers, and you're not alone.
Research on CEOs shows that boards make the same mistake. They're twice as likely to pick the confident extrovert for the top job even though that trait makes no difference to how well the CEO performs.
Hire for [00:20:00] curiosity, hire for conscientiousness, And hire for the ability to adapt.
Then go one step further. Map your sales process from the first inquiry to the signed contract. Next to each step, write the name of the person on your team who's naturally best at it.
You may find you've got your door openers closing and your closers chasing leads. That's exactly the work we do with commercial teams through Communication Mastery, helping each of your people work from their natural strengths, their superpower in other words, read every stakeholder, and adapt so more of your team performs like your best.
If this is a conversation worth having, book a free discovery call. The link's in the show notes,
And keep the myths coming. If there's a piece of sales wisdom you want me to put under the microscope, send it my way. I read every message. See you next time. My name is Bram.
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