Is there a “Sales Gene?”  Are salespeople born rather than made?  This debate has been going on for ages and will certainly trouble the Sales community for the years to come.  A recent study, though, from Juanjuan Zhang of MIT Sloan School of Management claims that there is a relationship between Sales performance and genetics.

Zhang and his three co-researchers have studied 117 salespeople at a telemarketing company in Asia over the course of thirteen months, where they cross-referenced employee DNA with performance indicators, such as revenue produced and the ability to identify selling opportunities.  The research team devised a score that connected the genetic makeup of the salespeople with their phenotypes, which is their observable traits like hair and eye colour, level of education and so on.  After comparing the genetic data with the phenotype data, they concluded that the employees with stronger sales performance had similar genetic backgrounds that made them better adaptive learners.

The above study is the latest addition to over twenty-five years of research concerning the individual characteristics that lead to success in Sales.  Most of these studies have determined that people with high levels of work pace, assertiveness and resilience, consistently show up in the profiles of top performers when it comes to Sales.  Since the above characteristics are developed early in life and are mostly stable over time, they are considered to form a “Sales Gene”.

This discussion has practical implications for organisations, because, if after all, Sales success is determined by innate talent, then the focus of attention should be shifted on attracting and recruiting the right talents for their Sales teams, rather than investing in Sales training.

In my view, Genetics may play a role in contributing to certain personality traits, but Sales performance overall is not determined only from that.  I believe that success in Sales is the product of a range of other factors as well, such as learned skills, experience, motivation-inner drive, even environmental and social influences, rather than a single genetic predisposition.  If we were to use a sports analogy, we can think of people who have the “Sales Gene”, as having an athleticism that could help them perform at almost any sport, but every top athlete knows that this would not be enough.

With regards to the approach of organisations towards this issue, without a doubt, it is imperative that they identify and select people that possess the right characteristics and mindset.  In addition to that, Sales leaders should be continuously helping their salesforce to further develop their natural talents through training and coaching programs that focus on knowledge and technique, and equip them with the right tools that will make their lives easier and will enhance their productivity.