Can information about a sales professional’s DNA predict how sales professionals actually interact with customers? Why should we use genetics to study sales professionals? Let me answer these questions with some facts.

For a few years already we - Wouter van den Berg, Loek Worm, Rick Bagozzi and Wim Rietdijk - are studying the behavior of sales professionals using genetic markers. We have come to call this study “The Rotterdam Sales Leadership Study.” In this study sales professionals provide their profile and their DNA by donating saliva. This is then send to a research lab in the Netherlands. The participating sales professionals receive a personal feedback rapport that explains their DNA score on a specific set of genes. Let’s call this the intimate part of our study. Sales professionals who participate in our study like to have their DNA tested because it provides them with information about their temperament, which is innate. The participating sales professionals learn what building stones their character is made off, the building stones from which they (we) as humans build their (our) “character”. The rapport gives an insight in the character of the person as it is at one particular moment but which people (we) shape over time. 

An important distinction: some sales professionals talk and other listen?

Some years ago already, my former professor Bart Weitz (then at Wharton School now at the University of Florida), made a crucial distinction between sales professionals who just talk when they meet customers and those who engage in conversations with customers. He called it the “selling orientation” versus the “customer orientation”. When selling orientated sales professionals meet a customer, they seem to perceive the customer as someone “to be manipulated” (almost as an object) and as someone to whom one should sell something no matter whether the product fits their needs or not. The second group of sales professionals interact in a different way: these people actually passionately seek to understand the needs of the customer, they ask deep questions and try to match the needs that are revealed during the conversation with their products portfolio.

Is that an important distinction? Sales professionals who talk a lot in the end might manipulate customers who succumb to the professionals’ sales pressure. These sales professionals might generate more sales in the short term but over time customers do not like to meet these sales professionals as they feel uncomfortable with them. Sales professionals who are interested in the customer (those with the customer orientation) are liked more by their customers hence customers develop long-term relationships with the sales professional and of course the professional develops a relationship with them. Needless to say such a distinction matters (a lot).

Asking a fundamental question: a biological explanation why sales professionals have a selling versus customer orientation?   

We sought to provide different explanations for these two different sales orientations. First, we must realize that many researchers propose that sales professionals who display a customer orientation have an intrinsic motivation or like to develop long-term relationships. But such explanations are tautological; in other terms, wanting to develop a long-term relationship never can be an explanation for a long-term relationship that develops from customer orientation (which is an outcome). What if this selling versus customer orientation is a reflection of something more fundamental, namely something biological?

We studied sales professionals with a customer orientation using more fundamental biological explanations. To our amazement, these sales professionals were more likely to be passionate about the products they were selling and they were constantly on the look out for problems which customers have (or could have) and which their products could help them solve these problems – hence their products are solutions. In addition, customers felt excitement when they talked with them during sales conversation as they felt that they were being understood by the sales professional. In the end we concluded that these sales professionals are very curious people. People who are constantly looking for new nuances and constantly want to learn from what they see and hear, feel a great amount of satisfaction. In a business context this learning from customers in order to propose a solution is called “opportunity recognition”.

Why do customer orientated sales professionals get excited about finding or recognizing opportunities? There is a biological explanation to it! We know from Neuroscience that when people learn they produce dopamine within their dopamine system within the brain. More concretely, neurons in the dopamine system produce dopamine which is absorbed by another neuron via the dopamine receptors which in turn trigger a chain of reactions such as learning and excitement that comes with learning. Sorry, that is how the brain works, it is a biological fact. Now a bit more difficult, our brain consists of different types of the dopamine receptors, there are type 1 and type 2 receptors. These types of receptors (their interaction) in turn affect how the brain learns and how it is being regulated.

The receptors are produced by people’s genes but depending on one’s DNA some people produce more or less of these receptors. We did focus on two genes namely the dopamine 2 and 4 gene (known as type 2 dopamine receptors) because the first is known to have a variant that is associated with a lower flexibility during learning (almost repetitive behavior) and the second has a variant that is associated with a tendency to explore new ideas and environments. Guess what we discovered? Sales professionals with a variant of the dopamine 2 receptor tended to have a selling orientation (hence they are repetitive), whereas the sales professional who carried a variant of the dopamine 4 receptor tended to have a customer orientation (hence they are natural explorers).

What does that imply? Sales professionals who are customer oriented tend to be more curious; apparently this tendency seems to be innate. What is an implication of this finding? Remember the distinction between temperament and character: sales professionals who are customer oriented have learned by sales training and experiences to dig deeper in the customer’s needs (character), however, their temperament urges them to keep digging deeper and create more nuances. So how should managers interact with these sales professionals? Better have a sales manager who is also curious because soon or later the sales professional knows more about the market than the sales manager and the sales manager will be unable to have a good conversation with the sales professional.

What about the sales professional with a selling orientation? These are sales professionals who do not easily switch their behavior; probably they might want to switch their sales orientation but they cannot do so. So there is a deeper reason why customers do not like them: these customers unconsciously notice that they behave like an addicted sales professional! In the end they become a night mare for many customers. 

Professor Willem Verbeke

Erasmus School of Economics, Rotterdam

Do you have sales call anxiety? Of course you have. Here’s what to do.  

Many salespeople suffer from sales call anxiety even if most wouldn’t like to admit it. One example of sales call anxiety is when you don’t like asking the hard questions that really count in a sales meeting. Those questions should help you find out what the customer’s real pain or real issue is. Instead, you end up talking about side issues that are not so important, or about things you do like talking about – just your own products or your own company.

How do you get respect as a salesperson? To answer this tough question, I always get salespeople to think about a visit to the doctor. Let’s focus on the questions the doctor might ask you.  

The doctor asks: “How much do you drink?” You answer: “A little bit.” Hmm…You know that “little bit” is not even close to the truth. If your doctor lets you get away with this “little bit” answer, would you respect him?  

Suppose the doctor now goes on and asks: “But how often do you drink?” And you reply: “Um… well, just about every day.” Would you respect this doctor now? 

 Suppose the doctor asks further: “But how many glasses do you really drink in a day?” And you answer: “Three glasses of wine.” Would you respect this doctor now? Maybe a bit, I guess.  

So now the doctor asks: “But how big are these three glasses a day?” Suddenly you find yourself admitting: “They’re big glasses… altogether they add up to a whole bottle of wine.”  

Now that’s a big difference! According to your first answer, you only drink a little bit but according to your last answer you’re drinking at least five bottles of wine a week. That’s a lot, in fact, if I were you I’d watch out for your liver. But seriously now, the point I’m making is that most patients (including you) will have more respect for the doctor who probes for the in-depth answers rather than one who settles for only superficial replies. The doctor you respect asks the harder questions.  

That’s how you get your customer to respect you. This little medical case tells us something about how customers might be perceiving you, especially if you stick to just asking the easy questions. If you don’t ask good questions, customers probably won’t respect you. In fact, they might feel they are wasting their time with you. Customers like straight talking, because that helps them express their own pain. In fact, by asking the hard questions, you will help your customer to rephrase how they see their own pain (sometimes referred to as needs and issues). This ability to rephrase the customer’s pain differently is what we call shaping. 

So, why don’t salespeople ask the hard questions? This has something to do with our fear conditioning, which is the dark side of sales call anxiety. What is fear conditioning? Think about the following story: You’re walking down a street and see a nice house. It looks good and that makes you feel good too, doesn’t it? Suddenly a huge dog runs out of the nice house, barking wildly and bites you. Ouch! How do you feel about this house now? It’s become a “scary house” because now you connect your fear of the scary dog with the house it came out of. This connection, or association, is a conditioning process that occurs in the brain: the neurons between the amygdale (which activates when we feel emotions) and the hippocampus (which activates when we recall facts) get connected. Each time you recall that house your amygdale (emotions/fear) gets activated and this activates the production of cortisol, a hormone.  

Scientists have discovered that cortisol affects our memory. It works to reinforce our perception of the “scary house.” Each time you think of this house (you don’t actually have to see it) your brain produces cortisol and this amplifies the memory in a negative way. Even talking about the house will set off the same fear response, because words can also trigger cortisol production, which, in fact rules our behavior. The secret, of course, lies in knowing how to stop this self-defeating fear response. 

Talking in a fearless context: One way to overcome fear is to practice talking in a situation where you feel no fear (= no cortisol production). The problem is, as you prepare yourself for this ideal sales conversation you’ll probably recall (hippocampus = memory of facts) what happened last time you tried talking to a customer and, whoops, there you go again, feeling anxious and fearful about the customer. That’s bad.  

Believe me, you can beat this. One good way is to find a way of thinking or talking about your customers in a non-threatening way – in other words, you’ve got to be able to talk about them without producing cortisol. Now, one person who you can share your ideas with might be your colleague. But get this: I often talk to salespeople and many of them tell me that they are more scared of talking with colleagues than with customers.  

Okay, so we don’t like showing our vulnerabilities to colleagues, perhaps even making mistakes, because they might gossip with other colleagues and this might hurt your reputation in your firm.  

Coping with anxiety: Still, it is very important to find a colleague you can trust, someone with whom you can share your fears and ideas about customers. If you can share your ideas and feelings in a non-threatening way you will stop that negative cortisol production in your brain that creates the fear response. In a safe situation you can script how you will approach a customer in real life. You might ask the harder and deeper questions! Then you won’t just overcome your fear, you will also gain the respect of your customer.  I hope you can find colleagues in your company who are mature enough to admit that they, too, have issues about customers. Share your feelings, thoughts and fears, then you can stop suffering from sales call anxiety.   

Recently we at Professional Capital had a chance to train 10 European Account Managers from different nations in France. It was a great experience, we met very intelligent and successful account managers and we were once again able to learn from interactions and discussions with them. In the end we felt that most of our ideas were validated, on this blog I'd like to share some of them with you.

1)    Back to fundamentals: there is an important need to go back to the basics of selling; what sales people basically do is help people at a client company to get things done in such a way that their projects thrive, this of course helps their company. To do so requires a lot of creativity but most important humility, taking responsibility and entrepreneurship.

2)    Making ideas versus falsely taking credit: Many account managers realize that most of the ideas come from customers and they take these initial ideas inside the firm (that is their task or duty). But then they realize that most of their colleagues grasp their ideas only to scream that they invented them using Blue Ocean Strategy language.  It frustrates many account managers.

3)    Selfish desires versus rationalizations: Many account managers are baffled by the rationalizations people at business schools teach; some speak about work life balance while in fact they notice that people working at a client firm live in a  selfish way. Account managers are at times intimidated by this language.

4)    Conversations with customers is key: Many account managers know that many of the ideas they get from customers come from  them carefully watching what people say and do. These observations are made during conversations which mostly take place in private. Therefore account managers know that they have to become trusted advisors and keep working with the customer.

5)    Winning by choosing and bending the rules: Many account managers know that the key to success is selection of accounts. Yet they cannot make choices as they are pushed by CRM systems to fill the pipeline. Therefore they have to bend the rules gently.

6)    Knowledge is an endogenous part of key account management: Many account managers have no clue some accounts are key accounts. They are key accounts because the company learns from those accounts and more importantly they gain expertise in the field and customers then come to them. Being an expert allows them to selectively sift through what is important and what is not.

7)    Business School language is poisoning: Most account managers are baffled by the business school language that some teachers preach after stealing it opportunistically from others. This language makes people blind and dumb. Again business is about basics and instinct.

8)    Neuroscience leads the way: Many account managers are interested in neuroscience: they like to know some basic ideas, they especially like to learn how they can use it. Others hate to be confronted with these new ideas. We however believe that some insights in neuroscience can help you be a better account manager.

9)    Account manages do not change the firm; they help the firm to change slightly: firms consist of silos of people. This is a natural thing because people have identities and are proud of themselves. So we should not abolish this natural structure but use it to our advantage. Account managers make projects possible and act as entrepreneurs, operating in and between silos.

10)    Selling inside is more difficult than outside, although many account managers find selling outside more difficult than inside. Indeed colleagues see account mangers as strangers but that is exactly the key to their business; they ought to work that way. Thus the most important skill account managers should practice is networking.

11)    Successful account managers bend the rules: Many account managers are confronted with many rules but they like to change these rules.

12)    Not the managers with the loudest voice in class are the best in practice: what we see during courses is that managers who speak the loudest are not always the strongest. Those that pick up what they can use thrive.

All this points to one important thing: in a training one meets people who already have been working for a long time but they realize that they have probably been doing some things the wrong way for a long time as well as doing things right.

Reactions: verbeke@professionalcapital.nl