Marketing: Would You Hire a Shy Salesperson?

Sales. It’s all About Motivation.

As many of you know, my theory is that shy people make better net workers because they tend to listen to their prospects more than talk at them. I was thinking about this the other day and it occurred to me that this may relate to sales people, also.

Since we know that the two most important components of sales are: 1) listening to the prospect to determine their needs and 2) building relationships–why would the theory work? The only major objection I came up with is would they be too shy to ask for the order? That part I haven’t figured out yet, but since I have heard that good sales people are made and not born and if you could train shy people to ask for the order wouldn’t that be a perfect combination? Seems like an interesting thought.

I asked a friend what she thought about my theory and her comment was that I could test it in my company, but not hers. She is definitely not buying into my shy salesperson theory. Which is another interesting twist as she is very outgoing and almost what I could call aggressive so it made me wonder if a shy person would make her uncomfortable.

I’d like to toss it out to you the readers of this theory, what do you think?

Would you hire a shy person and if you are a shy person would you be up for ‘asking for the order’ training?’ Or am I just thinking too much?

Betty Otte, SCORE Orange County
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28 Comments June 8, 2009