Selling While Shy: Introverts in Sales

While it sounds counter-intuitive to declare introverts make the best salespeople, their characteristics may truly make them a perfect fit for a sales job.

Last month, Procurious looked at the work of Susan Cain, and assessed whether introverts could thrive in procurement. Now, on the other side of the coin, with help from College Match Up, we look at why introverts actually might be the best sellers too.

Best Sellers

Introverts make up 50.7 per cent of the personality types in the United States. An illustrated chart of the introverted personality types shows the percentage of different introverts in the general public.

Sales jobs are expected to increase by 5 per cent in the next decade, and by 2024 there are a projected 778,000 new jobs to be created. As these jobs are created, new people will be searched for to fill them, and industry specialists will be looking for a particular skill set for a good salesperson.

Traditionally, the most defined skills for people in a sales role have included:

• Assertiveness,
• Self-awareness,
• Empathy,
• Problem-solving skills,
• Optimism.

Not exactly a set of attributes that you would associate with introverts or introverted people. So why would introverts be useful, and potentially better, in these roles?

Key Attributes

Well, introverts are often quiet and thoughtful which works well in a sales setting, because customers are often put off by the high-energy assertive employees.

Introverts themselves prefer to be helped by other introverts, and at the same time, introverts communicate best one-on-one, which is great for a sales role, because they can really connect with their customers.

Introverts are known to form few deep attachments rather than many, shallow friendships. In a sales environment, this works because they can form deeper relationships with their customers than extroverts, leading to people trusting them more.

Finally, introverts are known for being reflective. This again ties into the sales environment, as they will be looking back on their performance and working out how they can do things better next time.

Need Convincing?

So, what kind of career options are there for introverts who want to try working in sales? Introverts might try out being advertising agents, real estate brokers, sales engineers, or travel agents to name a few.

If you still need convincing, you can check out this infographic from College Match Up:

So what do you think? Do you think that introverts would make better sales people? Could there be a way to leverage an introvert relationship between buyers and suppliers? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.