Do You Need a Big Ego to be a Successful Salesperson?
7 Minute Read
“People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do”
- Isaac Asimov
Like many of my articles, this one stemmed from a pertinent question asked in a training session by a thoughtful sales professional. It’s an important question, because many shy away from the profession at the thought that you need to be this egotistical individual in order to do well. Or, they try to create a new construction of self that portrays high-ego characteristics to the outside world. So what’s this all about? Do you need a big ego to be successful in sales, or in life?
What is the ego?
We must start here. I have to say, this article was originally much longer, because I dove down a rabbit hole of psychological theories about the ego that – albeit interesting - didn’t much contribute to the question at hand. There are many theories ranging from psychology to theology and philosophy around what, exactly, the ego is. I ended up in my office in the early hours of the morning questioning my own consciousness, so I’m not going to subject you to that rabbit hole today.
In popular culture, we conceptualise the ego as our sense of self – the part of us that identifies who we are and assures us in times of doubt. It’s a level of certainty about our identity and consciousness, so it’s no surprise that we associate it with self-confidence. This is the definition we shall stick with here.
Many traits are synonymous with the stereotypical ‘big ego’. Usually, when we remark on the size of someone’s ego it is aimed towards someone we see as arrogant, overconfident, persistently self-absorbed and focused only on their own individual wants. Someone with a big ego is seen as one who will do whatever needs to be done – regardless of the cost to others – in order to achieve whatever their desires entail. They want to be known as better than everyone, they inflate their own value and fool themselves into believing their own importance at an unhealthy level. It is easy to conflate the ‘big ego’ idea with narcissism or even sociopathy when we take these behaviours to their most extreme.
For the purposes of this discussion, we can, therefore, look at the ego as on sort of a continuum – the larger it is, the larger our sense of self, confidence and importance becomes.
The detriment of the inflated ego…
Many would look at the stereotype of the salesperson as a person with a big ego. As much as we are continuing to move past the nasty stereotypes of the past, there are still ideas out there that you must be this overconfident, arrogant individual to be successful. The thing is, not only is this a terrible long-term strategy for customer retention and referrals, it’s simply not the case for the current market. It’s also not what you want to be remembered for in your business. So it’s time to debunk this myth.
Today, being customer-centric is imperative: Selling is, after all, facilitating someone to make the right choice for them. At its core, selling is not about the salesperson - it’s about the customer. The best salespeople, then, are not all about themselves. They’re able to step away from the self and focus on collaboration, listening, understanding, and working with their customer.
Having a big, inflated ego means you are necessarily more self-centric than customer-centric in your processes.
When our ego is too big, we place our own sense of importance and needing to be right above the wants and needs of our customers. We struggle to accept anything other than our own view, and instead of conceding, our ego will interrupt and demand that others accept our rightness. A salesperson with an inflated ego, then, is usually not a very good salesperson at all.
An inflated ego can, and will, hinder you because it can potentially manifest into the following behaviours:
- Presuming you know more about the customer than you do, or that you know better than the customer about their own situation;
- Not attempting to genuinely understand the customer, with more talking than listening;
- Making the customer consultation more about you than the customer;
- Not investing the time and energy into your work and generating a sense of entitlement and complacency;
- Skipping parts of the sales process;
- Not accepting failure or mistakes, being resistant to criticism;
- Blaming others when things go wrong, unable to reflect on potential personal flaws;
- Not accepting leadership or training;
- Resisting tasks because they ‘aren’t my job’ or are below you;
- Thinking the rules don’t apply to you, because you’re in a league of your own;
- Never growing (because if you know it all, there’s no more to know); and
- In some cases, taking unethical actions because you think you can get away with them.
If you have a really large ego, you’re probably always looking to preserve and protect that sense of self and self-importance, which is how many of these defensive or abrupt characteristics tend to develop. No one likes a challenge to their ego, so the bigger the ego, the bigger the defensive response when it is being threatened.
Does this mean successful salespeople have no ego?
Not necessarily. Considering the definitions we’ve used above, I would assert that there is a requirement of some ego to be successful in sales. You need to be confident in who you are, and have a stable sense of certainty and resilience that can help you through the inevitable ups and downs of the sales profession. You need to be assertive enough to know your value, so you don’t doubt what you’re able to bring to your customers. If you always doubt yourself, that leads to your customers doubting yourself and your product. Ego is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. The important thing is to distinguish confidence from arrogance; assertiveness from defensiveness; and a healthy ego from one that holds you (and everyone around you) back.
Managing the ego
Put simply, you know your ego is too big when it starts to impact on your ability to take in the views and ideas of others. It’s when you aren’t able to grow because that little voice in your head won’t let you accept that you may have been wrong, and preserving that grand sense of self comes above everything else.
Some of the greatest traits of a sales professional include curiosity, seeking to understand, listening and asking great questions. Each of these qualities require us to step outside of ourselves and step away from our ego. The greatest salespeople are also lifelong learners, who know that there is always more to learn, more that can be achieved, and skills that can be improved. An inflated ego stops this process in its tracks, because you can’t grow if you’ve decided you’re at the top already. In most situations, achievement and growth come from the setting aside of our ego in favour of greater connection, understanding and learning.
Additional thoughts…
One must recognise the limitations of this article. We discuss the behaviours associated with big and small egos, but at the end of the day, the ego is an introspective part of our identity. Sometimes, for example, people present themselves as overconfident and self-important in an attempt to hide the fact that they are desperately insecure and unsure of themselves (this, by the way, aligns pretty well with the textbook narcissist). Other times, a toxic work environment might threaten the healthy ego of someone who then, in response, demonstrates higher-ego traits. It’s a very complex concept, and requires a lot of introspection and observation to get to a realistic conclusion for any specific circumstance.
In sum
So, do you need a big ego to be a great salesperson? Absolutely not. You need a sense of self and confidence, yes, but the greatest successes will come from setting that big, inflated ego aside and opening yourself up to true connection, understanding and lifelong development.
What do you think?
Sonia
This blog post was originally posted on my training website, Statusone.com.au, on Jan 3, 2019. I have since been moving some of my favourite blog posts from there over to here, as this is now my ‘content hub’ and I want you to have access to some of the cool stuff I’ve written about before. You can still check out the Status One site if you’re interested in corporate training if you want. Also, don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter below for updates and weekly exclusive content.