Kiwi culture works against sellers

By Dita De Boni

A full 80 per cent of sales people fail because of a "fear of dejection" according to visiting American behavioural psychologists George Dudley and Shannon Goodson.

They say rather than a fear of rejection - "a term more suitable for organ transplant patients", says Mr Dudley - dejection is a more apt expression for a near-universal, but not terminal, human fear of initiating contact for the purpose of selling.

The duo from Texas, who have researched the psyches of salespeople for nearly 30 years, also say the typical New Zealander's aversion to self-promotion has compounded our salesforce's fear of cold-calling and even stymied New Zealand's ability to sell itself on the world stage.

In their 30 years of studying how fear inhibits sales, the pair have come up with 12 different types of "call reluctance" behaviours such as "role rejection" and "doomsdayer personality", which block the ability of people to make first contact with strangers.

Companies worldwide pay big bucks to the two scientists to help them develop a more confident sales force, or as Dudley and Goodson put it, "remove the emotional static" from salespeoples' psyches.

Shannon Goodson says not only companies, but also shy corporates unable to ask for dates can benefit from overcoming "inhibited social contact initiation syndrome", or ISCIS, as it is known by the pros.

The two scientists have been including New Zealand in their research for many years and say their studies have shown up some bitter-sweet results for corporations.

A study the couple completed recently focused on more than 3000 salespeople from across the globe, including New Zealanders, and showed our salespeople to be far less prone to exaggeration than Australians or Americans.

However, the bad news is that our humble nature is not helpful to our salespeople, who have a higher propensity to get stage fright, be anxious about giving presentations, view their own profession negatively and be reluctant to cold-call customers - attributes unwelcome in the high-pressure, contact-driven world of sales.

"The good things about the Kiwi sales force is that cultural civilities are still important, unlike the US," Mr Dudley says. "But the flip side is that you are not as careful about who you bring into the sales force and it's tied to the attitude that sales is not legitimate, [salespeople] feel that underneath they shouldn't really be doing that job, that it's bad to be promoting yourself and your product."

To make matters worse, Mr Dudley also claims that sales organisations in New Zealand have "mindlessly tried to graft US sales training on to people here who have profound cultural differences".

He says his latest research shows sales people concerned with being seen as pushy and who tried to form relationships with their customers, were far less effective sellers than more dominant types.

"You get the love, but someone else comes in a gets the customer's business," he says.

"What we've always been told is that the meek shall inherit the earth, that self-promotion is tasteless, tacky and undesirable.

"But as long as it is done ethically, there is nothing wrong with remembering that humility doesn't have to mean invisibility."

He says New Zealanders need to develop a more prideful sense of who they are and what they can do.

"They need to remove their emotional restraints and take their rightful place within the world economy."