Penguin Classics, that more-than-1,500-titles collection of English-language literary classics, has a new free app for iOS devices available on Tuesday.
The paperback publisher, celebrating 65 years of the Classics collection this year, has created a catalog of its titles (which basically includes every author you have heard of, ever) and put it into an easily searchable database.
Not only can readers find book information by title and author, they can discover unknown classics by searching by subject, genre, time period and region. So, for example, if you wanted to find a nature-theme bildungsroman in 18th century America, you would find several books that fit that bill, including Kipling’s “Captains Courageous” and “The Morgesons” by Elizabeth Stoddard.
Of course, not all options combine so productively — try searching for postmodern psychological literary criticism from Haiti and you will come up snake eyes.
Each book page contains a summary, as well as a link to buy the paperback edition from Penguin USA’s online store. Social-media buttons can broadcast your love of “Homer’s Odyssey” or Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities” to your friends, and a “More Like This” button will direct you to related titles.
Most enjoyable, however, are the quizzes contained within the app. There are 65 books in the app that have quizzes associated with them so you can test your knowledge of Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence” (“To what animal does Archer compare May and the rest of Old New York?”) or Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” (“What do Huck and Jim find inside the floating house?”). The app also has quizzes that ask questions across all 65 titles (you can choose a quiz that takes one, five or 10-minutes long) if you want to relive that comp lit class you took freshman year.
http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/a-gateway-to-great-books-on-your-iphone/
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Auditors Sharpen Queries In China
Auditors are learning that, in China, they sometimes must go the extra mile to verify even the most basic things about clients—like how much cash they have.
Hong Kong audit firm BDO Ltd. recently dropped a client after raising questions about the accuracy of information provided by the firm, going so far as to allege the company had directed the auditor to a fake website.
Problems with bank "confirmation"—the process by which an auditor checks with a company's bank to verify its balances—have arisen in about 10 recent disputes between U.S.-traded Chinese firms and their auditors, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. (There are hundreds of Chinese firms traded on U.S. exchanges.) The auditors have found irregularities through their confirmation efforts or encountered other difficulties in confirming a client's bank accounts, according to SEC filings.
When BDO tried to verify the online bank accounts of Chinese biotech China-Biotics Inc., for instance, the company's staff directed the auditors to a bank website that BDO said—in a letter to China-Biotics last week in which BDO announced it was dropping the account—was "a suspected fake." China-Biotics filed that letter with the SEC on June 23. BDO said there were errors in a bank document concerning the company's bank interest income; China-Biotics said the errors in the document were clerical mistakes by the bank, and the company supplied BDO with what BDO characterized in its resignation letter as a "corrected" version of the document.
As a result of these and other issues, according to the letter filed with the SEC, BDO wanted to confirm the company's bank balances and transactions with the senior management of the head office of its bank, the Bank of Communications. But China-Biotics never arranged the meeting, despite repeated requests from BDO, the firm said. The company's chief financial officer and its audit-committee chairman have resigned, and trading in China-Biotics shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market has been halted since June 15 in the wake of the auditor's concerns. A BDO representative declined to comment. The Bank of Communications didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. China-Biotics couldn't be reached for comment.
In some cases, auditors may not have done all they should to seek bank confirmations independently, according to U.S. regulators. In other cases, auditors have suggested in SEC filings that officials at some companies' banks may be helping the companies manipulate the process, verifying bad information to mislead auditors into thinking a company's books are OK.
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, for instance, said it received confirmations from bank staff about one client, Longtop Financial Technologies Ltd., that "were said to be false" or had "significant differences" in deposit balances and company borrowings compared with previous confirmations. Those descriptions of the problematic information were contained in a letter Deloitte wrote when it resigned from the Longtop account in May. Longtop couldn't be reached for comment. Details on the bank involved weren't available.
Regulators are concerned, too, as accounting questions raised by auditors and investors beset dozens of Chinese companies. James Doty, chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which regulates U.S. audit firms, told a Senate panel in April that the board had found "even simple audit maxims, such as maintaining the auditor's control over bank confirmations, may not hold given the business culture in China."
A spokesman for the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the country's bank overseer, said in a statement that Chinese banking regulation and supervision "have always been stringent." All levels of a bank are required to provide accurate confirmation information, the CBRC said, and false confirmation is "absolutely prohibited." "The CBRC will deal with this matter seriously and welcomes public supervision and any sharing of evidence," the statement said. The China Securities Regulatory Commission didn't reply to requests for comment.
In a bank confirmation, an auditor submits a written request to an official at the company's bank to verify the firm's assertions about deposit and loan balances, often on a standard form developed by the accounting industry. The bank official responds directly to the auditor to confirm the amounts. Except for authorizing the bank to release information, the company can't be involved in the process in any way. The PCAOB oversees and enforces auditing rules for U.S-traded Chinese firms just as it does other U.S.-traded companies.
As accounting problems have emerged, auditors in China have taken greater precautions. Some say they are doing more to maintain control of confirmation paperwork, such as observing as bank officials confirm numbers. In addition, the PCAOB is preparing to tighten rules on the confirmation process for all auditors it oversees. When auditors don't do what they should on confirmation, "the possibility of fraud certainly increases," said Martin F. Baumann, the PCAOB's chief auditor and director of professional standards.
Frauds involving bank confirmation are neither new nor limited to China. At Satyam Computer Services Ltd., U.S. regulators said a failure by PricewaterhouseCoopers affiliates in India to confirm Satyam's accounts enabled the company's fraud to go undetected. PwC agreed to a $7.5 million settlement but didn't admit or deny wrongdoing and said at the time that it had "worked hard to learn the lessons of the Satyam matter." Satyam said when it settled SEC charges in April that it was in the company's "best interests" to resolve the allegations and noted that the misconduct occurred under previous management.
Bank-confirmation problems are "potentially more of an emerging-markets problem," Mr. Baumann said, with "collusion going on between banks and issuers" in countries that don't yet have a tradition of strong corporate governance and independent oversight. In China, he said, "it appears that banks often have a very close relationship with the company."
In Longtop's case, Deloitte resigned as auditor in May after it said it had made follow-up visits to some of the company's banks that uncovered the allegedly false confirmations and discrepancies. When Deloitte attempted a second formal round of confirmations as a result, Longtop officials interfered by seizing Deloitte working papers and telling the banks that Deloitte wasn't really its auditor, the firm said in its resignation letter.
At China MediaExpress Holdings Inc., another client Deloitte dropped, this time in March, there was "a loss of confidence in bank confirmation procedures carried out under circumstances which [Deloitte] believed to be suspicious," according to China MediaExpress filings. Deloitte requested the confirmations be redone at the banks' head office, according to the filings. But Deloitte felt "the Company was not in good faith willing to proceed with the course of action requested," according to the filings. China MediaExpress declined to comment, but in the filings said, "the Company believes that it was working to address these items at the time of [Deloitte's] resignation."
Jeff Willemain, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu's managing director of quality and regulatory matters, said in a statement that Deloitte's member firms "continue to advocate for improvement" of the confirmation process, including "putting more onus on confirming parties to ensure prompt, accurate and complete responses. Further, there should be consequences for parties who knowingly falsify confirmations."
MaloneBailey LLP, a Houston firm that has a big roster of small Chinese audit clients, has resigned from auditing at least four of them this year, in part because of confirmation problems, according to SEC filings. George Qin, a MaloneBailey partner who runs the firm's China practice, says some bank officials have interfered in the auditor's attempt to confirm its clients' accounts. "I can tell you there are serious problems in China with regard to certain bank employees who collude with companies," Mr. Qin said. "I think that's very troublesome." But he said he didn't think the problems were systemic and said MaloneBailey currently has "about 16" Chinese clients.
The PCAOB's proposed revisions to its confirmation rules are unrelated to the current issues in China. The revisions would require auditors to confirm companies' cash balances—which isn't specifically required under current rules—and a broader range of accounts receivables, or money owed to the company, than is the case now. The revisions also would go into greater detail about what auditors should do to maintain control over the confirmation process, including taking "local customs" into account. A PCAOB representative said, however, that the board's existing rule is "sufficiently robust" to require auditors to do confirmations appropriately in China, and the pace of the changes doesn't need to be accelerated because of the recent problems. The proposals are pending but are expected to be finalized and approved in the coming months.
The effort was begun last year, before the China accounting blowups, but even then, "we thought there would be greater risk in certain environments, and it turns out we were right," Mr. Baumann said. "If you're in an environment where you can't rely as much on an individual's honesty, the auditor has to assess the risk of that."
Even apart from the PCAOB's efforts, some auditing firms say auditors need to toughen their procedures. McGladrey & Pullen LLP, of Bloomington, Minn., which audits one Chinese firm and has other clients with Chinese subsidiaries, said in a newsletter this month that auditors may need to hand-deliver a confirmation request to the bank themselves and wait there while the bank officer completes it. Mr. Qin said MaloneBailey is handling confirmations similarly.
McGladrey also called for "extra diligence" in auditing accounts receivable, because fraud often shows up there first, before it is hidden in exaggerated cash balances.
Robert Dohrer, McGladrey's national director of assurance services, said in an e-mail interview that the alert was intended to remind its people that the auditor "really needs to think through the credibility of audit evidence obtained."
—Dinny McMahon
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303627104576413842132347276.html
Hong Kong audit firm BDO Ltd. recently dropped a client after raising questions about the accuracy of information provided by the firm, going so far as to allege the company had directed the auditor to a fake website.
Problems with bank "confirmation"—the process by which an auditor checks with a company's bank to verify its balances—have arisen in about 10 recent disputes between U.S.-traded Chinese firms and their auditors, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. (There are hundreds of Chinese firms traded on U.S. exchanges.) The auditors have found irregularities through their confirmation efforts or encountered other difficulties in confirming a client's bank accounts, according to SEC filings.
When BDO tried to verify the online bank accounts of Chinese biotech China-Biotics Inc., for instance, the company's staff directed the auditors to a bank website that BDO said—in a letter to China-Biotics last week in which BDO announced it was dropping the account—was "a suspected fake." China-Biotics filed that letter with the SEC on June 23. BDO said there were errors in a bank document concerning the company's bank interest income; China-Biotics said the errors in the document were clerical mistakes by the bank, and the company supplied BDO with what BDO characterized in its resignation letter as a "corrected" version of the document.
As a result of these and other issues, according to the letter filed with the SEC, BDO wanted to confirm the company's bank balances and transactions with the senior management of the head office of its bank, the Bank of Communications. But China-Biotics never arranged the meeting, despite repeated requests from BDO, the firm said. The company's chief financial officer and its audit-committee chairman have resigned, and trading in China-Biotics shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market has been halted since June 15 in the wake of the auditor's concerns. A BDO representative declined to comment. The Bank of Communications didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. China-Biotics couldn't be reached for comment.
In some cases, auditors may not have done all they should to seek bank confirmations independently, according to U.S. regulators. In other cases, auditors have suggested in SEC filings that officials at some companies' banks may be helping the companies manipulate the process, verifying bad information to mislead auditors into thinking a company's books are OK.
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, for instance, said it received confirmations from bank staff about one client, Longtop Financial Technologies Ltd., that "were said to be false" or had "significant differences" in deposit balances and company borrowings compared with previous confirmations. Those descriptions of the problematic information were contained in a letter Deloitte wrote when it resigned from the Longtop account in May. Longtop couldn't be reached for comment. Details on the bank involved weren't available.
Regulators are concerned, too, as accounting questions raised by auditors and investors beset dozens of Chinese companies. James Doty, chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which regulates U.S. audit firms, told a Senate panel in April that the board had found "even simple audit maxims, such as maintaining the auditor's control over bank confirmations, may not hold given the business culture in China."
A spokesman for the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the country's bank overseer, said in a statement that Chinese banking regulation and supervision "have always been stringent." All levels of a bank are required to provide accurate confirmation information, the CBRC said, and false confirmation is "absolutely prohibited." "The CBRC will deal with this matter seriously and welcomes public supervision and any sharing of evidence," the statement said. The China Securities Regulatory Commission didn't reply to requests for comment.
In a bank confirmation, an auditor submits a written request to an official at the company's bank to verify the firm's assertions about deposit and loan balances, often on a standard form developed by the accounting industry. The bank official responds directly to the auditor to confirm the amounts. Except for authorizing the bank to release information, the company can't be involved in the process in any way. The PCAOB oversees and enforces auditing rules for U.S-traded Chinese firms just as it does other U.S.-traded companies.
As accounting problems have emerged, auditors in China have taken greater precautions. Some say they are doing more to maintain control of confirmation paperwork, such as observing as bank officials confirm numbers. In addition, the PCAOB is preparing to tighten rules on the confirmation process for all auditors it oversees. When auditors don't do what they should on confirmation, "the possibility of fraud certainly increases," said Martin F. Baumann, the PCAOB's chief auditor and director of professional standards.
Frauds involving bank confirmation are neither new nor limited to China. At Satyam Computer Services Ltd., U.S. regulators said a failure by PricewaterhouseCoopers affiliates in India to confirm Satyam's accounts enabled the company's fraud to go undetected. PwC agreed to a $7.5 million settlement but didn't admit or deny wrongdoing and said at the time that it had "worked hard to learn the lessons of the Satyam matter." Satyam said when it settled SEC charges in April that it was in the company's "best interests" to resolve the allegations and noted that the misconduct occurred under previous management.
Bank-confirmation problems are "potentially more of an emerging-markets problem," Mr. Baumann said, with "collusion going on between banks and issuers" in countries that don't yet have a tradition of strong corporate governance and independent oversight. In China, he said, "it appears that banks often have a very close relationship with the company."
In Longtop's case, Deloitte resigned as auditor in May after it said it had made follow-up visits to some of the company's banks that uncovered the allegedly false confirmations and discrepancies. When Deloitte attempted a second formal round of confirmations as a result, Longtop officials interfered by seizing Deloitte working papers and telling the banks that Deloitte wasn't really its auditor, the firm said in its resignation letter.
At China MediaExpress Holdings Inc., another client Deloitte dropped, this time in March, there was "a loss of confidence in bank confirmation procedures carried out under circumstances which [Deloitte] believed to be suspicious," according to China MediaExpress filings. Deloitte requested the confirmations be redone at the banks' head office, according to the filings. But Deloitte felt "the Company was not in good faith willing to proceed with the course of action requested," according to the filings. China MediaExpress declined to comment, but in the filings said, "the Company believes that it was working to address these items at the time of [Deloitte's] resignation."
Jeff Willemain, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu's managing director of quality and regulatory matters, said in a statement that Deloitte's member firms "continue to advocate for improvement" of the confirmation process, including "putting more onus on confirming parties to ensure prompt, accurate and complete responses. Further, there should be consequences for parties who knowingly falsify confirmations."
MaloneBailey LLP, a Houston firm that has a big roster of small Chinese audit clients, has resigned from auditing at least four of them this year, in part because of confirmation problems, according to SEC filings. George Qin, a MaloneBailey partner who runs the firm's China practice, says some bank officials have interfered in the auditor's attempt to confirm its clients' accounts. "I can tell you there are serious problems in China with regard to certain bank employees who collude with companies," Mr. Qin said. "I think that's very troublesome." But he said he didn't think the problems were systemic and said MaloneBailey currently has "about 16" Chinese clients.
The PCAOB's proposed revisions to its confirmation rules are unrelated to the current issues in China. The revisions would require auditors to confirm companies' cash balances—which isn't specifically required under current rules—and a broader range of accounts receivables, or money owed to the company, than is the case now. The revisions also would go into greater detail about what auditors should do to maintain control over the confirmation process, including taking "local customs" into account. A PCAOB representative said, however, that the board's existing rule is "sufficiently robust" to require auditors to do confirmations appropriately in China, and the pace of the changes doesn't need to be accelerated because of the recent problems. The proposals are pending but are expected to be finalized and approved in the coming months.
The effort was begun last year, before the China accounting blowups, but even then, "we thought there would be greater risk in certain environments, and it turns out we were right," Mr. Baumann said. "If you're in an environment where you can't rely as much on an individual's honesty, the auditor has to assess the risk of that."
Even apart from the PCAOB's efforts, some auditing firms say auditors need to toughen their procedures. McGladrey & Pullen LLP, of Bloomington, Minn., which audits one Chinese firm and has other clients with Chinese subsidiaries, said in a newsletter this month that auditors may need to hand-deliver a confirmation request to the bank themselves and wait there while the bank officer completes it. Mr. Qin said MaloneBailey is handling confirmations similarly.
McGladrey also called for "extra diligence" in auditing accounts receivable, because fraud often shows up there first, before it is hidden in exaggerated cash balances.
Robert Dohrer, McGladrey's national director of assurance services, said in an e-mail interview that the alert was intended to remind its people that the auditor "really needs to think through the credibility of audit evidence obtained."
—Dinny McMahon
http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303627104576413842132347276.html
Monday, June 27, 2011
Seven Personality Traits of Top Salespeople
If you ask an extremely successful salesperson, "What makes you different from the average sales rep?" you will most likely get a less-than-accurate answer, if any answer at all. Frankly, the person may not even know the real answer because most successful salespeople are simply doing what comes naturally.
Over the past decade, I have had the privilege of interviewing thousands of top business-to-business salespeople who sell for some of the world's leading companies. I've also administered personality tests to 1,000 of them. My goal was to measure their five main personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and negative emotionality) to better understand the characteristics that separate them their peers.
The personality tests were given to high technology and business services salespeople as part of sales strategy workshops I was conducting. In addition, tests were administered at Presidents Club meetings (the incentive trip that top salespeople are awarded by their company for their outstanding performance). The responses were then categorized by percentage of annual quota attainment and classified into top performers, average performers, and below average performers categories.
The test results from top performers were then compared against average and below average performers. The findings indicate that key personality traits directly influence top performers' selling style and ultimately their success. Below, you will find the main key personality attributes of top salespeople and the impact of the trait on their selling style.
1. Modesty. Contrary to conventional stereotypes that successful salespeople are pushy and egotistical, 91 percent of top salespeople had medium to high scores of modesty and humility. Furthermore, the results suggest that ostentatious salespeople who are full of bravado alienate far more customers than they win over.
Selling Style Impact: Team Orientation. As opposed to establishing themselves as the focal point of the purchase decision, top salespeople position the team (presales technical engineers, consulting, and management) that will help them win the account as the centerpiece.
2. Conscientiousness. Eighty-five percent of top salespeople had high levels of conscientiousness, whereby they could be described as having a strong sense of duty and being responsible and reliable. These salespeople take their jobs very seriously and feel deeply responsible for the results.
Selling Style Impact: Account Control. The worst position for salespeople to be in is to have relinquished account control and to be operating at the direction of the customer, or worse yet, a competitor. Conversely, top salespeople take command of the sales cycle process in order to control their own destiny.
3. Achievement Orientation. Eighty-four percent of the top performers tested scored very high in achievement orientation. They are fixated on achieving goals and continuously measure their performance in comparison to their goals.
Selling Style Impact: Political Orientation. During sales cycles, top sales, performers seek to understand the politics of customer decision-making. Their goal orientation instinctively drives them to meet with key decision-makers. Therefore, they strategize about the people they are selling to and how the products they're selling fit into the organization instead of focusing on the functionality of the products themselves.
4. Curiosity. Curiosity can be described as a person's hunger for knowledge and information. Eighty-two percent of top salespeople scored extremely high curiosity levels. Top salespeople are naturally more curious than their lesser performing counterparts.
Selling Style Impact: Inquisitiveness. A high level of inquisitiveness correlates to an active presence during sales calls. An active presence drives the salesperson to ask customers difficult and uncomfortable questions in order to close gaps in information. Top salespeople want to know if they can win the business, and they want to know the truth as soon as possible.
5. Lack of Gregariousness. One of the most surprising differences between top salespeople and those ranking in the bottom one-third of performance is their level of gregariousness (preference for being with people and friendliness). Overall, top performers averaged 30 percent lower gregariousness than below average performers.
Selling Style Impact: Dominance. Dominance is the ability to gain the willing obedience of customers such that the salesperson's recommendations and advice are followed. The results indicate that overly friendly salespeople are too close to their customers and have difficulty establishing dominance.
6. Lack of Discouragement. Less than 10 percent of top salespeople were classified as having high levels of discouragement and being frequently overwhelmed with sadness. Conversely, 90 percent were categorized as experiencing infrequent or only occasional sadness.
Selling Style Impact: Competitiveness. In casual surveys I have conducted throughout the years, I have found that a very high percentage of top performers played organized sports in high school. There seems to be a correlation between sports and sales success as top performers are able to handle emotional disappointments, bounce back from losses, and mentally prepare themselves for the next opportunity to compete.
7. Lack of Self-Consciousness. Self-consciousness is the measurement of how easily someone is embarrassed. The byproduct of a high level of self-consciousness is bashfulness and inhibition. Less than five percent of top performers had high levels of self-consciousness.
Selling Style Impact: Aggressiveness. Top salespeople are comfortable fighting for their cause and are not afraid of rankling customers in the process. They are action-oriented and unafraid to call high in their accounts or courageously cold call new prospects.
Not all salespeople are successful. Given the same sales tools, level of education, and propensity to work, why do some salespeople succeed where others fail? Is one better suited to sell the product because of his or her background? Is one more charming or just luckier? The evidence suggests that the personalities of these truly great salespeople play a critical role in determining their success.
Over the past decade, I have had the privilege of interviewing thousands of top business-to-business salespeople who sell for some of the world's leading companies. I've also administered personality tests to 1,000 of them. My goal was to measure their five main personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and negative emotionality) to better understand the characteristics that separate them their peers.
The personality tests were given to high technology and business services salespeople as part of sales strategy workshops I was conducting. In addition, tests were administered at Presidents Club meetings (the incentive trip that top salespeople are awarded by their company for their outstanding performance). The responses were then categorized by percentage of annual quota attainment and classified into top performers, average performers, and below average performers categories.
The test results from top performers were then compared against average and below average performers. The findings indicate that key personality traits directly influence top performers' selling style and ultimately their success. Below, you will find the main key personality attributes of top salespeople and the impact of the trait on their selling style.
1. Modesty. Contrary to conventional stereotypes that successful salespeople are pushy and egotistical, 91 percent of top salespeople had medium to high scores of modesty and humility. Furthermore, the results suggest that ostentatious salespeople who are full of bravado alienate far more customers than they win over.
Selling Style Impact: Team Orientation. As opposed to establishing themselves as the focal point of the purchase decision, top salespeople position the team (presales technical engineers, consulting, and management) that will help them win the account as the centerpiece.
2. Conscientiousness. Eighty-five percent of top salespeople had high levels of conscientiousness, whereby they could be described as having a strong sense of duty and being responsible and reliable. These salespeople take their jobs very seriously and feel deeply responsible for the results.
Selling Style Impact: Account Control. The worst position for salespeople to be in is to have relinquished account control and to be operating at the direction of the customer, or worse yet, a competitor. Conversely, top salespeople take command of the sales cycle process in order to control their own destiny.
3. Achievement Orientation. Eighty-four percent of the top performers tested scored very high in achievement orientation. They are fixated on achieving goals and continuously measure their performance in comparison to their goals.
Selling Style Impact: Political Orientation. During sales cycles, top sales, performers seek to understand the politics of customer decision-making. Their goal orientation instinctively drives them to meet with key decision-makers. Therefore, they strategize about the people they are selling to and how the products they're selling fit into the organization instead of focusing on the functionality of the products themselves.
4. Curiosity. Curiosity can be described as a person's hunger for knowledge and information. Eighty-two percent of top salespeople scored extremely high curiosity levels. Top salespeople are naturally more curious than their lesser performing counterparts.
Selling Style Impact: Inquisitiveness. A high level of inquisitiveness correlates to an active presence during sales calls. An active presence drives the salesperson to ask customers difficult and uncomfortable questions in order to close gaps in information. Top salespeople want to know if they can win the business, and they want to know the truth as soon as possible.
5. Lack of Gregariousness. One of the most surprising differences between top salespeople and those ranking in the bottom one-third of performance is their level of gregariousness (preference for being with people and friendliness). Overall, top performers averaged 30 percent lower gregariousness than below average performers.
Selling Style Impact: Dominance. Dominance is the ability to gain the willing obedience of customers such that the salesperson's recommendations and advice are followed. The results indicate that overly friendly salespeople are too close to their customers and have difficulty establishing dominance.
6. Lack of Discouragement. Less than 10 percent of top salespeople were classified as having high levels of discouragement and being frequently overwhelmed with sadness. Conversely, 90 percent were categorized as experiencing infrequent or only occasional sadness.
Selling Style Impact: Competitiveness. In casual surveys I have conducted throughout the years, I have found that a very high percentage of top performers played organized sports in high school. There seems to be a correlation between sports and sales success as top performers are able to handle emotional disappointments, bounce back from losses, and mentally prepare themselves for the next opportunity to compete.
7. Lack of Self-Consciousness. Self-consciousness is the measurement of how easily someone is embarrassed. The byproduct of a high level of self-consciousness is bashfulness and inhibition. Less than five percent of top performers had high levels of self-consciousness.
Selling Style Impact: Aggressiveness. Top salespeople are comfortable fighting for their cause and are not afraid of rankling customers in the process. They are action-oriented and unafraid to call high in their accounts or courageously cold call new prospects.
Not all salespeople are successful. Given the same sales tools, level of education, and propensity to work, why do some salespeople succeed where others fail? Is one better suited to sell the product because of his or her background? Is one more charming or just luckier? The evidence suggests that the personalities of these truly great salespeople play a critical role in determining their success.
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