Sales - personality VS Skills
Plenty of founders sell their own product and quietly believe they are bad at it. Not outgoing enough, not pushy enough, not a "natural". The research says that belief is mostly beside the point.
What the research found
Two large reviews pulled together decades of studies of salespeople: one covered work from 1982 to 2008, the other from 2009 to 2020. They agree. Personality had almost no link with who sold more. Of everything they measured, it was the weakest.
What did go with selling more was ordinary and learnable. Salespeople who listened and built a real conversation did better. So did those who changed what they said to suit the buyer in front of them, and those who knew their product, the alternatives and the customer's business. That last one counted most in complex sales: services, technology, bigger deals, slow decisions. Selling to businesses and selling to consumers came out much the same.
What it means for you
You don't have to become someone else. You have to prepare, and then pay attention. A quiet founder who knows the customer's business will usually do better than a charming one who doesn't.
Before your next call, answer three questions
Who decides? The person you speak to is often not the one who signs. Find out who decides and who only has a say.
What would change for them? People buy a change in their week, not a list of features. Work out what your offer would change for each person involved, in their terms.
Do they go first, or wait for proof? Some buyers like trying new things. Others want to see a customer like them using it before they move. Knowing which kind you are talking to decides what you bring to the call.
Then, on the call, ask more than you tell, and let what you hear change what you say next.
How Bamya CRM helps
Bamya CRM is a free AI-assisted CRM. With Bamya Call, the preparation for a call can be written from what the CRM already knows about the company and the person, so the three answers are in front of you when the call starts.
Research: Verbeke, Dietz & Verwaal (2011), Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science; Kerr & Marcos-Cuevas (2024), Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management. Both review many studies of employed salespeople. The links they report are associations, so they show what goes with selling well, not proof of what causes it.