This article was first published in the March 2016 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
If you sell things for a living, you probably spend a lot of time focusing on what to say to your prospective clients. How you pitch, what you present, where in the conversation you attempt to close the deal. This is especially true if you're a sales-adverse introvert: you might believe you need the gift of gab in order to succeed. But in fact, it looks like that success belongs to those who know when to open their ears and when to open their mouth. They can introvert and extrovert -- as verbs -- in order to make a connection with the other person.
These people who find that happy Goldilocks-style middle ground -- an approach that's not too hot, not too cold, but just right -- are called ambiverts. These are people who fall in the middle of the introvert-extrovert spectrum. They feel an equal comfort with and desire for socialising and solitude. Recent research, conducted by Adam Grant (my Ideas Bank colleague) of Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, supports an integrated approach, one that demonstrates the value of drawing on both your introvert (listening) and extrovert (talking) energies.
Grant administered a personality survey to 340 call-centre employees and tracked their sales records for three months. He began with the hypothesis that extroverts, rather than outperforming their more introverted counterparts, would report less-than-stellar results. He was right: those who fell more in the middle -- the ambiverts -- outproduced people who fell on the extremes of the introvert-extrovert spectrum. The ambiverts earned 24 per cent more in sales than the introverts, and 32 per cent more than the extroverts. "Because they naturally engage in a flexible pattern of talking and listening, ambiverts are more inclined to listen to customers' interests and less vulnerable to appearing excited or overconfident," said Grant.
How is this information useful to introvert entrepreneurs? First, it shows that introverts already have a head start when it comes to sales. The typical buyer is more likely to be turned off by the salesperson who talks too much than by someone who listens too much. And remember: in the research, the introverts outperformed the extroverts. Since we tend not to respond to someone talking us into submission, introverts are likely to use a more balanced talking-listening approach when we're the ones making the pitch.
Second, most of us flirt with ambivert tendencies rather than being on the extremes. We shapeshift a bit depending on the situation, even though we still have a core energy that leans introverted or extroverted. If you're an introvert, that means you probably just have to sharpen a latent extroverted skill you already have, rather than starting from zero. We often have a healthy curiosity, so it might simply be a matter of asking the questions that come to mind in the moment, rather than keeping them to ourselves or trying to follow up later.
And finally, it helps us to release the expectation that one must be outgoing and be able to make small talk about everything under the Sun to be a good salesperson. The success of ambiverts affirms the introvert tendency to listen, while challenging us to speak up on behalf of our solution or big idea.
There's a call for both, in moderation. And when it comes to sales, we should heed the words of Epictetus: "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak."
Beth Buelow is the author of The Introvert Entrepreneur (Virgin Books)
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
