Think extroverts make the best salespeople? Think again

The Globe and Mail:

Outgoing, gregarious, good shmoozers: The people we think of as extroverts are the best people to put into sales roles, right?

Wrong, according to this fascinating piece in The Washington Post. The piece, by author Daniel Pink, points to research that has found that extroversion is one of the big traits that hiring managers look for when bringing on sales staff. The only problem, it notes, is that there is no research to support the notion that extroverts do best on the sales floor. In fact, any efforts to make the connection have come up with a “flimsy” correlation, at best, the Post piece says.

So, naturally that might make you think that means that introverts are the better candidates. Not so, either, the piece says, pointing to new research from a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Management, which is slated to be published later this year in the Psychological Science journal.

Read the whole story: The Globe and Mail