Sales is often portrayed as a profession for natural extroverts. While there is some truth to that stereotype, the reality is much more nuanced. Some of the greatest salespeople are not naturally outgoing—they simply learned how to become more socially engaged when it mattered. Fortunately, modern personality psychology shows that personality is more flexible than many people realize.
If you deliberately increase your level of extraversion, you may not only become a more effective salesperson, but you may also improve your earning potential over the course of your career.
Extraversion Is Not Fixed
For decades psychologists believed that personality traits were largely fixed after early adulthood. Today, the evidence paints a very different picture. While personality has a genetic component, long-term intentional behavior, habits, environment, and goals can produce meaningful changes.
Research by personality psychologist Dr. Nathan Hudson and colleagues found that people who deliberately worked on changing their personality were able to make substantial improvements over periods of several months. Other researchers have reached similar conclusions.
One useful way psychologists measure personality change is in standard deviations (SD).
Across modern intervention studies, a motivated person who consistently practices extraverted behaviors can often increase extraversion by approximately 0.3 to 0.5 standard deviations over several months, while larger changes approaching 0.8 SD have been observed in some highly motivated individuals and intensive interventions.
That may not sound impressive until you convert it into percentiles.
| Increase | Approximate Percentile Gain* | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 0.3 SD | About 12 percentile points | Noticeably more outgoing |
| 0.5 SD | About 19 percentile points | Major personality improvement |
| 0.8 SD | About 29 percentile points | Very large personality shift |
*Example: someone moving from the 50th percentile would roughly move to the 62nd, 69th, or 79th percentile respectively.
These are not trivial improvements. In psychology, half a standard deviation is considered a large practical change for many behavioral traits.
Journalist Olga Khazan, a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change, intentionally worked to become more extraverted through activities such as improv, conversation practice, and organized social events. Although she has not publicly reported her personality change in standard deviations or percentile points, she concluded that she genuinely became more extraverted and described herself as feeling like a different person after her year-long experiment
Why Extraversion Helps Sales
Extraversion is associated with:
- Greater social confidence
- Higher energy during conversations
- Comfort approaching strangers
- Positive emotional expression
- Enthusiasm that can be contagious
- Persistence after rejection
- Larger professional networks
Sales is fundamentally about human interaction. Customers tend to respond positively to people who appear energetic, optimistic, and genuinely interested in talking with them.
While product knowledge certainly matters, many purchases are emotional decisions. A salesperson who projects warmth and enthusiasm often makes prospects feel more comfortable.
Best Practices for Increasing Extraversion
1. Practice "Acting Extraverted"
One of the most robust findings in personality research is that repeatedly behaving like the person you want to become gradually shifts your personality.
Instead of waiting to feel outgoing, deliberately:
- Start conversations.
- Smile first.
- Speak with slightly more energy.
- Volunteer to introduce yourself.
- Attend networking events.
- Ask follow-up questions.
Behavior often precedes identity.
2. Set Process Goals
Rather than focusing only on sales numbers, create behavioral goals.
Examples include:
- Talk with ten new people today.
- Smile during every greeting.
- Ask every prospect at least five questions.
- Make five extra prospecting calls.
- Attend one networking event each week.
Personality develops through repeated actions.
3. Increase Your Positive Affect
Extraversion is closely associated with positive emotional expression.
Improve:
- Sleep
- Exercise
- Stress management
- Nutrition
- Recovery time
A salesperson who is physically energized naturally projects more enthusiasm.
4. Build Conversation Skills
Many people believe extroverts simply "know what to say."
In reality, good conversationalists develop skills.
Practice:
- Open-ended questions
- Active listening
- Remembering names
- Finding common interests
- Giving sincere compliments
- Maintaining comfortable eye contact
5. Increase Exposure
Confidence usually follows repeated exposure.
The more customer conversations you have, the less intimidating each one becomes.
Professional athletes improve through repetition. Salespeople do too.
6. Join Groups That Reward Social Behavior
Environment shapes personality.
Consider joining:
- Toastmasters
- Business networking organizations
- Sales associations
- Volunteer organizations
- Professional clubs
Repeated social interaction becomes normal rather than stressful.
7. Expand Your Comfort Zone Gradually
Don't attempt a complete personality transformation overnight.
Instead, gradually stretch your comfort zone.
Today's challenge might be greeting three strangers.
Next week's challenge might be initiating longer conversations.
Small improvements accumulate.
8. Use Identity-Based Habits
Instead of saying:
"I wish I were more outgoing."
Say:
"I am becoming someone who enjoys meeting people."
Repeated identity statements, when backed by consistent behavior, reinforce long-term personality change.
But Be Careful: More Extraversion Is Not Always Better
This point is often overlooked.
Sales success is not determined by extraversion alone.
In fact, research has found that moderately extroverted salespeople sometimes outperform extremely extroverted ones.
Why?
Because sales is not merely talking—it is discovering customer needs.
Excessive extraversion can create problems such as:
- Talking more than listening
- Interrupting prospects
- Coming across as overly aggressive
- Failing to notice buying signals
- Dominating conversations
- Missing important customer objections
The best salespeople often balance enthusiasm with curiosity.
They ask excellent questions.
They listen carefully.
They adapt their presentation based on what the customer actually needs.
Think of Extraversion as a Dial, Not an On-Off Switch
One advantage of personality flexibility is that you do not have to become the life of every party.
You simply need enough social energy for the situation.
A successful salesperson learns to increase extraversion during:
- Prospecting
- Networking
- Cold calling
- Presentations
- Trade shows
- Customer meetings
Then they recover afterward if they are naturally more introverted.
This ability to adjust your behavior to fit the demands of the situation is sometimes referred to as personality flexibility, and it is an increasingly important concept in modern personality psychology.
An Important Caveat: General Population Data vs. Sales-Specific Performance
Before going further, it's worth being precise about what the dollar-value research actually measured. The $314k/$225k/$149k figures cited above come from Christian Jarrett's 2012 Psychology Today piece, "The Dollar Value of Your Personality," which drew on broad population-level research linking personality change to life outcomes—income, relationships, health, and career trajectory in general. It was not a study of sales performance specifically, and it shouldn't be read as one.
That distinction matters, because when researchers have looked specifically at what predicts sales performance, the picture is more nuanced than "extraversion drives sales results."
What the Sales-Specific Research Actually Shows
The most-cited work here comes from Barrick and Mount's meta-analyses of the Big Five and job performance across occupations. Their consistent finding: conscientiousness—not extraversion—is the strongest and most reliable Big Five predictor of job performance across nearly every occupational category, including sales. Extraversion's relationship to sales performance is real but considerably weaker and more situational.
A meta-analysis specifically focused on sales, Vinchur et al. (1998), sharpened this further. It found that:
- Conscientiousness (and closely related traits like dependability and achievement orientation) predicted sales performance consistently.
- Extraversion mattered less for supervisor-rated performance, but a specific facet of extraversion—potency (roughly: assertiveness, energy, and social boldness)—was more predictive than extraversion as a broad trait.
In other words: it's not that extraversion is irrelevant to sales. It's that the specific slice of extraversion that helps—confident, energized initiative—matters more than generic sociability, and conscientiousness still outperforms it as a predictor overall.
Reconciling This With the Ambivert Research
This also lines up with Adam Grant's well-known 2013 study in Psychological Science, which found that ambiverts—salespeople who fall in the middle of the introversion-extraversion spectrum—outsold both strong introverts and strong extraverts in a call-center sample. The highest-performing sellers weren't the most outgoing people in the room; they were the ones who knew when to talk and when to listen.
What This Means for You
The practical takeaway isn't "extraversion doesn't matter for sales." It's that:
- Working on your extraversion can genuinely help, especially for prospecting, cold outreach, and first impressions.
- It should be treated as complementary to conscientiousness, not a substitute for it. Discipline, follow-through, and reliability remain the stronger predictor of long-term sales success.
- The specific behaviors worth targeting are closer to Vinchur's "potency" facet—confidence, initiative, energy—rather than generic chattiness or sociability.
Framed this way, the population-level dollar-value research and the sales-specific performance research aren't in conflict. They're answering different questions: one is about how personality change compounds across a whole life and career, the other is about what specifically drives sales outcomes. Both point toward the same practical conclusion for someone building a bootcamp like this one—work the extraversion dial and keep conscientiousness as the load-bearing trait.
The Bottom Line
Sales is ultimately a people business. Becoming more extraverted can make networking easier, increase customer engagement, improve first impressions, and help you recover more quickly from rejection.
The encouraging news is that personality is not set in stone. Modern research suggests that many people can intentionally increase their extraversion by roughly 0.3 to 0.5 standard deviations, corresponding to approximately 12 to 19 percentile points, with some individuals achieving even larger gains approaching 0.8 SD (about a 29-percentile-point increase).
At the same time, remember that effective selling requires balance. Enthusiasm should be paired with empathy. Confidence should be paired with curiosity. Talking should be paired with listening.
The ideal salesperson is not the loudest person in the room. It is the person who makes customers feel understood, communicates genuine enthusiasm, and builds trust. Developing greater extraversion can help you get there—but only when it is combined with emotional intelligence, active listening, and a sincere desire to solve your customer's problems.
References & Footnotes
- Dr. Nathan Hudson’s research on volitional personality change and standard deviation increases: https://www.headspace.com/articles/stuck-personality
- Olga Khazan’s year-long experiment to become more extraverted: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/03/how-to-change-your-personality-happiness/621306/
- Christian Jarrett’s "The Dollar Value of Your Personality" (Psychology Today): https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/do-something-different/201211/the-dollar-value-your-personality
- Barrick and Mount’s meta-analysis on the Big Five and job performance: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1991-22928-001
- Vinchur et al. meta-analysis on predictors of job performance for salespeople: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1998-10357-007
- Adam Grant’s study on the "Ambivert Advantage" in sales: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797612463706
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