Introverts, Extraverts, and Ambiverts, oh my!

In my sales class, we have recently learned about introverts, extraverts, and ambiverts in relation to sales. One would typically think that extraverts would be the best at sales, right? Well, apparently not. Extraverts face a lot of struggles when selling, including being too quick to speak, getting to excited, not listening well enough, being impatient, being overly friendly, making assumptions, and downright scaring or intimidating people. Don’t get me wrong, though. Introverts have struggles of their own, such as not being assertive or talkative enough, being too hesitant, not having enough confidence in themselves, having problems with networking, and flying under the radar.

You may know where I am going with this…The best salespeople are neither introverts nor extraverts. They are ambiverts! Ambiverts are people who have a mixture of introverted and extraverted tendencies. They surely do not make for perfect salespeople, but they are generally the best due to the mixture. Put simply, ambiverts find the balance between inspecting and responding rather easily.

I myself generally say that I am an extravert with a hint of introversion, but when we took a little personality quiz in class, I found myself with the result of ambivert. This is definitely not to say that I think I’m a great salesperson. I think I’m just not at a point where I’ve very comfortable with selling, and I haven’t practiced enough to have a fantastic skillset. It’s funny…sometimes I think that my ambiverted-ness is simply comprised of a mixture of the weaknesses of introversion and extraversion. One second, I’m too scared to talk to someone and the next second, I’m talking their ear off. Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Their ear doesn’t usually fall off, it just gets loose. (That was a joke).

Despite my mild selling insecurity, I am confident that I could be good at it in the future, and I am excited to keep learning and practicing.