Genetics Schmenetics

This kind of rubbish really winds me up. There I was, reading a Harvard Business Review bought between flights. Suddenly I got all excited. They were writing on Sales.

Then I read the piece. All one hundred words of it.

Genes are not the explanatory panacea that renders nature versus nurture debates moribund.

So if you don’t possess this DRD4 marker, relax, you don’t need to give grief to your parents, nor switch to a career in Human Resources. Or worse, banish yourself to Marketing.

Then we get to the real satan. The boffins clearly define ‘selling’ as something detrimental to anyone buying. The act of Sales appears to be barbaric, survive at all costs, plunder and pillage.

Just consider their final sentence.

“sales orientation”—
the tendency to try to persuade customers to buy a given product rather than listen to their needs

Unbelievable. It’s no wonder we never get any good press if this is what a Business School no less thinks of us.

And there’s me thinking that true superstar salespeople are so in no small part because they fit the bill for “customer orientation”,

a willingness to interact with customers and learn about their problems in order to meet their needs

Did these 65 (yes, only 65) studied sellers all have beady eyes, a permanent smile and can roll their tongue too? I despair.