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- Should Smart People Do Sales?
Should Smart People Do Sales?
A 2008 study set out to find if smart salespeople are better or worse at selling
Good Morning! Earlier this week, Panera Bread announced they will be discontinuing their "charged" lemonades. With a whopping 302mg of caffeine in their large lemonades, it’s a tough week for our intern who drinks them on the daily to power through writing these newsletters. What should he switch to next? ⚡️
In today’s Follow Up:
Smart people and sales? 🧠
Sales tip of the day 💡
Sales news around the web 🗞️
Sales jobs, LinkedIn & a meme 😂
Are Smart People Better at Sales
Our whole lives, we’re told that being smart is important.
Smart people get better grades, get into good schools, and get better jobs.
But, are smart people better at sales?
A 2008 study set out to find if smart salespeople were better (or worse) at selling, compared to their dumb less intelligent colleagues.
The study found that having high general mental ability (intelligence) alone does not mean someone will be good at sales. But when you pair intelligence with different thinking styles and social skills, the results show us something interesting.
Having high intelligence alone can hurt your sales performance if you lack social skills.
The study found that:
The best salespeople scored high on both the intelligence and social skill scale. Their super smart and know how to talk to people.
The worst salespeople also scored high on the intelligence scale, but low on the social skills scale. These reps are smart but come across as smart jerks.
In most industries, sales reps are considered ‘knowledge brokers’, who help their customers make decisions based on information. While knowledge is important, the delivery of that knowledge is equally important.
How The Best Reps Think 🧠
The way someone thinks plays a part in how they’ll sell.
The study identified 2 thinking types:
Judicial: evaluate ideas and try to understand the ‘why’.
Legislative: creative thinking and trying to create new solutions.
The best sales reps are smart with a judicial thinking style. They want to learn more about problems and understand the ‘why’.
Reps who are smart and use a legislative thinking style perform the worst in structured sales roles but perform well in complex sales roles.
The TLDR:
Just being smart will not make someone good at sales.
People with high intelligence and great social skills tend to make the best salespeople.
If you’re dumb not smart, you can still be great at sales with high social competence.
When hiring sales reps, you should aim for high levels of intelligence, but also test for things like social skills and thinking styles.
Do you think smart people are better at sales? |
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Sales Tip of The Day 💡
Flip your sales pitch to include the ‘wow’ factor in the front, rather than the back.
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Grab your prospect’s attention by pitching the end result upfront, rather than the ‘how’.
Sales Around The Web 🗞️
Why everyone hates Workday, yet half of the Fortune 500 companies still use it.
Google is adding hundreds of new salespeople to their AI focused teams in order to sell more AI products.
1 in 10 B2B executives who are consuming content are looking to make a big purchase soon.
This sales manager fired an SDR, so she added his number and email to a list of promotional lists and spam alerts.
Cool Sales Jobs 💼
Sales Associate @ NJ Devils (Hybrid)
Inbound Sales Development Rep @ Instructure
Founding Business Development Rep @ Fractal
Account Executive @ Leadr
Checking In On LinkedIn
Is buying a Lambo the best purchase a CEO can make? 😅
Sales Meme of the Day
What did you think of today's newsletter? |
Social Skills & Smart’s 🤝