In events, webinars and sometimes just casual chat, we get asked all the time about the old cliché that salespeople are ‘born and not made’. We have written about this before but very much in the spirit of an often whimsical debate. However, what looks like a fun theoretical discussion gets far more serious when it comes to your Sales Talent Strategy.

It may seem trivial but this notion – that successful sales people are that way purely and simply because of nature and genetics – can become embedded in the thinking about commercial talent in a business. It’s quaint and convenient:

• ‘Let’s not challenge ourselves, too hard to fix this problem.’
• ‘Let’s leave it to the instinct and gut of the sales leader.’
• ‘Mary/Pete are naturally good with people – they would be great at sales.’

When it comes to your sales talent strategy, It’s also a cop-out.

Have a think about whether we would hold this thesis about any other profession: people never say accountants are only born and not made. Or doctors. Or lawyers. How could anyone be expected to be born with the complex skills required in these and so many other professions? So why salespeople?

Think about what we do for people in those other disciplines: we provide them with the developmental infrastructure to build on whatever natural acumen that they might have. All with the purpose of making them complete professionals.

Taking this notion – that high-performance sales skills are innate and cannot be developed – as rote and embedding it in your thinking is also a huge risk. Lets get back to some fundamentals: you might have codified the skills you are looking for. If you take the view that these people are only born and not made, in practical terms you really are waiting for a unicorn to walk through your door and arrive in your business with a complete skill set that they have inherited at birth. Not hard to work out the likelihood of that happening.

There is a global commercial talent shortage out there. You are unlikely to be finding enough of the right sales people for your business anyway. You have absolutely no chance if your working assumption is that you’re only going to be able to resource your commercial teams with people who are born with whatever skills you decide your business requires. Some people say that ‘Hope is not a Strategy.’ Well, genetics and exponential pro-creation don’t make for a great talent strategy either.

Getting beyond this myth will really help you overcome the sales talent challenges you are facing. Get past the idea that, if somebody doesn’t walk in to your business with all the natural ability you expect them to have, they cannot be developed into a high-performing professional salesperson.

It is not true and it is holding you and your business back.