There’s a seductive story in sales. One that gets told over pints, in hiring meetings, and in the quiet hierarchy of team favouritism. It’s the idea that some people are just born to sell. That you either have it or you don’t. That confidence, a bit of chat, and a magnetic presence will do the heavy lifting.
It’s a deeply charming story. It’s also a myth.
Because while a natural spark might get someone noticed, what sustains success in sales isn’t personality—it’s practice, process, and self-awareness. The evidence is clear, but the myth is persistent. Maybe because it’s flattering. Or maybe because it gives everyone else an excuse.
Let’s pull it apart.
The Charisma Myth Has Had Its Day
It’s not hard to see where the idea of the “natural” salesperson came from. Charisma is easy to spot and harder to measure. We remember the confident performers. The ones who can hold a room, tell a good story, and win people over with charm.
But sales has changed. Buyers are more sceptical. Sales cycles are longer. And most deals now require multiple stakeholders, layers of justification, and a compelling business case. Charm, on its own, doesn’t cut it.
Adam Grant, the organisational psychologist and Wharton professor, put the personality-performance myth to the test in a landmark 2013 study. He analysed 340 outbound sales reps and mapped their performance against personality profiles using the standard Big Five model. His aim: to test whether extroverts really do sell more.
They don’t.
In fact, the most extroverted reps—the ones most stereotypically thought of as “natural salespeople”—performed worse than those who fell in the middle. The sweet spot, it turned out, was ambiversion: people who could flex between assertiveness and listening, talking and observing.
Ambiverts earned 32% more revenue than extreme extroverts, and 25% more than introverts. As Grant concluded, it wasn’t about being outgoing—it was about being adaptable.
The top reps weren’t the loudest. They were the most attuned. They asked more questions. They listened better. And they struck the right balance between push and pull.
So while charisma might help you open a door, it rarely gets you through procurement.
Skill is Built in the Dirt
We love the idea of flair—of the dealmaker who instinctively knows what to say. But high performers know that instinct is mostly muscle memory. And muscle memory is trained.
Dr K. Anders Ericsson, the psychologist who pioneered the concept of deliberate practice, found that expert performers across domains—from music to sport to medicine—reached world-class standards not through repetition alone, but through purposeful, feedback-driven practice.
In sales, that means reviewing calls. It means planning questions. It means rehearsing objection handling. It means refining messaging over time, adapting to industries, personas, and buyer types—not “going with your gut.”
The RAIN Group, in their analysis of over 700 B2B purchases, identified that top-performing sellers consistently do three things: they educate with new ideas, they collaborate with buyers on solutions, and they deliver value in the sales conversation itself.
None of those behaviours are innate. All of them are trainable.
Gartner’s 2023 “Future of Sales” report underscored this further: 89% of high-performing sales teams use a structured methodology, compared to just 41% of underperformers. The gap isn’t talent—it’s systemisation.
Instinct might help you survive. Discipline is what scales.
Systems Trump Swagger
It’s tempting to put sales success down to personality. The lone-wolf high performer, going off-script and bringing in huge deals, has a certain cinematic appeal. But in the real world, consistency beats volatility every time.
Research by CSO Insights shows that sellers who follow a well-defined process achieve win rates 18% higher than those who don’t. Where those processes are reviewed and optimised regularly, win rates jump by 28%.
There’s a misconception that process stifles creativity. In reality, it frees it.
With a reliable structure for qualification, discovery, and value articulation, sellers are free to focus their creativity where it matters—on insight, not improvisation.
Even soft skills, long assumed to be in the realm of personality, turn out to be highly trainable. TalentSmart’s study of over one million people found that 90% of top performers score high in emotional intelligence—a skillset that includes empathy, self-regulation, and social awareness. Crucially, EQ training can improve performance in a matter of weeks, with measurable changes in sales outcomes.
In Forrester’s 2021 B2B Buyer Survey, 74% of buyers said they prefer to work with reps who understand their business, compared to just 14% who preferred reps who were “engaging” or “entertaining.”
Buyers don’t want banter. They want relevance.
The One Trait That Might Be Innate
If there’s one thing that consistently shows up in top sellers, it isn’t extroversion or ego. It’s self-awareness.
The ability to reflect. To take feedback. To spot your own patterns. To realise when a conversation is going off-track, and adjust in real time.
And unlike charisma, self-awareness doesn’t always announce itself. But it shows up in results.
Zenger Folkman’s 2020 study of over 6,000 leaders found that self-aware individuals were 38% more effective at leading high-performing teams. Salespeople with high self-awareness score higher in both trust and coachability—two traits closely correlated with revenue growth and client retention.
Self-awareness also plays a central role in emotional intelligence. The best reps don’t just read the room—they read themselves in the room. They know when to push, when to pause, and when to shut up and let the silence do its work.
Can self-awareness be taught? Yes, but not in a workshop. It’s built over time, through feedback loops, coaching, personal reflection, and often—failure.
In that sense, self-awareness is the outcome of a developmental journey, not a prerequisite.
So let’s stop mistaking talent for temperament. The best salespeople aren’t born. They’re made—in the rewrites, the feedback sessions, the call reviews, the rejections, the resilience, and the thousands of quiet, diligent hours that nobody sees.
Charisma might help you open the conversation. But only craft closes the deal.
