A LinkedIn poll caught attention recently with this question: “Who makes better B2B salespeople?” The options were:
- Former athletes – They live for competition & teamwork
- Theater kids – Natural performers who command attention
- Engineers – They speak the customer’s language
- Career salespeople – Nothing beats pure sales DNA
Within hours, hundreds of sales professionals were debating the merits of each option, sharing stories about their backgrounds, and defending their favorite candidate types.
Here’s the problem: This entire conversation reveals everything wrong with how most salespeople think about their role in the buying process, and it exposes the identity crisis in sales.
The Backwards Focus Problem
The poll focuses entirely on what the salesperson brings to the table – their competitiveness, their performance skills, their technical knowledge, or their supposed “sales DNA.” What it completely ignores is what actually matters: the customer and what they need from a salesperson.
This backwards thinking explains why so many talented people from impressive backgrounds struggle in sales while others with no “obvious” sales traits consistently crush their numbers.
The reality? Success in sales isn’t about what you say or how well you say it. It’s about what you ask and how well you listen to the answers.
What Buyers Actually Want
Here’s what the poll should have asked: “What do B2B buyers actually want from salespeople?”
The answer isn’t someone who can out-compete them, entertain them, or speak technical jargon at them. Buyers want salespeople who understand their world, ask intelligent questions about their challenges, and provide insights they haven’t considered.
They want someone who’s more interested in solving their problems than showcasing their own skills.
This is where the poll’s options fall short:
Former athletes bring competitiveness, but buyers aren’t looking for someone to beat them – they’re looking for someone to help them win.
Theater kids know how to command attention, but modern buyers are overwhelmed with people trying to get their attention. They’re more likely to value someone who gives them attention instead.
Engineers might speak technical language, but only when selling to other engineers. More importantly, technical knowledge without business acumen often leads to feature-focused presentations that miss the buyer’s real concerns.
Career salespeople might have experience, but if that experience consists of outdated techniques and seller-focused approaches, it’s actually counterproductive.
The One Trait That Actually Drives Sales Success
The best salespeople, regardless of their background, share one crucial characteristic: intellectual curiosity.
This is the trait that makes you want to know more about your prospect’s situation, ask better questions about their challenges, and dig deeper into their world. When you do, you discover needs, uncover pain points, and identify opportunities that your less curious competitors miss entirely – which means that you really don’t have competitors on that particular Buyer’s Journey.
Intellectual curiosity isn’t just nice to have – it’s the foundation of everything that works in modern selling.
Think about it: 80% of your chance to win or lose the sale is determined by the time you ask your last question. The salespeople who understand this – who are naturally driven to keep asking – are the ones who consistently outperform their peers.
How Curiosity Changes Everything
When you approach selling with genuine intellectual curiosity, everything changes:
Your prospecting improves because you’re researching prospects to understand their world, not just to find contact information.
Your conversations get deeper because you’re asking follow-up questions instead of jumping to your next talking point.
Your presentations become relevant because you actually understand what matters to this specific prospect.
Your proposals address real needs because you’ve uncovered the problems that keep your prospects awake at night.
Your follow-up creates value because you’re sharing insights and resources, not just checking in.
None of this requires being a former athlete, a natural performer, or a technical expert. It just requires being genuinely interested in understanding your prospect’s situation.
The Generational Reality Check
This focus on curiosity becomes even more critical when you consider today’s buying environment. Modern B2B buyers – especially Millennials and Gen-Z decision makers – have already done their research before they talk to you.
They’ve read your website, checked out your competitors, and probably know as much about your product features as you do. What they can’t get from Google is someone who asks thoughtful questions about their specific situation and helps them think through implications they haven’t considered.
The old-school approach of launching into a polished presentation is going to lose every time to the curious salesperson who helps them discover new angles on their challenges.
The Questions That Actually Matter
Intellectually curious salespeople ask different questions:
Instead of “What’s your budget?” they ask “What happens if you don’t solve this problem?”
Instead of “When are you looking to make a decision?” they ask “What would success look like six months after implementation?”
Instead of “Who else are you looking at?” they ask “What criteria are most important in your evaluation process?”
These aren’t clever techniques or manipulative tactics. They’re the natural questions that come from genuine curiosity about the prospect’s situation.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
In an age where buyers can research solutions online, compare vendors through reviews, and even make purchases without talking to salespeople, the value you bring isn’t product knowledge or presentation skills.
Your value is your ability to help prospects think through their situation more thoroughly than they would on their own. That requires understanding their world well enough to ask questions they haven’t thought of and provide perspectives they haven’t considered.
You can’t do that by performing, competing, or reciting technical specifications. You can only do it by being genuinely curious about their challenges and invested in helping them succeed.
The Bottom Line for Salespeople
Forget the LinkedIn poll categories. Forget worrying about whether you have the “right” background for sales. Focus on developing the one trait that actually drives success: intellectual curiosity about your prospects and their challenges.
Ask better questions. Listen more carefully to the answers. Dig deeper into their situation. Connect dots they haven’t connected. Do that consistently, and your background won’t matter. Your prospects will see you as the salesperson who actually understands their world – and that’s the only credential that really counts.
The next time someone asks what makes a great salesperson, the answer should be simple: Someone curious enough to ask the right questions and smart enough to act on what they learn.
Everything else is just noise.
