Commercial Curiosity: The Most Underrated Sales Capability?

In Article 1, I explored why successful recruitment starts with matching the salesperson to the commercial task. In this second article, I examine a capability that becomes particularly important when customers, markets and buying situations are constantly changing.

Some salespeople enter customer meetings knowing exactly what they want to say. They know the product, have prepared the presentation and can explain every feature and benefit. They leave feeling the meeting went well. The customer was friendly, listened carefully and even asked a few questions.

But nothing happens. The opportunity remains in the pipeline, the follow-up continues and eventually the familiar explanation appears: The customer wasn't ready. Maybe. But did the salesperson ever understand what would make the customer ready?

Knowing your product is not the same as understanding your customer

Product knowledge is important. In technical and complex B2B selling, it is often essential. But commercial understanding requires more. A salesperson needs to understand the customer's business, priorities, constraints, decision-making process and reasons for considering change.

That requires curiosity. Not the superficial kind where someone has memorised a list of discovery questions. I mean a genuine willingness to investigate how a business works, why a problem exists and what the customer is actually trying to achieve.

The distinction matters because customers do not experience their challenges as a collection of product requirements. They experience them as business problems.

The research supports learning and adaptability

Weitz, Sujan and Sujan's research (1986) established an influential framework connecting knowledge, motivation and adaptive selling behaviour. Sujan, Weitz and Kumar (1994) subsequently examined how learning orientation relates to working intelligently and effectively in sales. Franke and Park's 2006 meta-analysis also found a positive relationship between adaptive selling behaviour and sales performance.

These studies do not establish commercial curiosity as a single, scientifically validated trait. They do, however, provide a strong foundation for examining the relationship between learning, understanding customer situations and adapting sales behaviour. For me, that is where commercial curiosity becomes interesting.

Three levels of commercial curiosity

I would look for curiosity at three different levels.

1. Curiosity about the customer's problem

Can the salesperson get beyond the initial request? If a customer asks for additional capacity, a new system or a lower price, can the salesperson understand what sits behind that request? The first description of a problem is not always the complete problem.

2. Curiosity about the customer's business

Does the salesperson understand how the customer makes money, what influences profitability, where the organisation is heading and which priorities compete for management attention? This is where sales conversations can move from presenting solutions to discussing business relevance.

3. Curiosity about their own performance

When an opportunity is lost, does the salesperson simply move on? Or do they investigate what happened? Was the opportunity poorly qualified? Was the timing wrong? Did another stakeholder influence the decision? Did the proposition fail to establish sufficient value?

A salesperson who learns from both successful and unsuccessful opportunities becomes more useful over time.

Curiosity needs commercial direction

There is, however, an important distinction. Asking more questions does not automatically make someone a better salesperson. Curiosity without direction can produce long conversations, extensive discovery and very little commercial progress. The objective is to develop a better understanding that leads to better decisions.

Before presenting a solution, I would expect a salesperson to investigate five things:

• What has changed in the customer's business?
• Why has the problem become relevant now?
• What happens if nothing changes?
• Who is affected by the problem and who influences the decision?
• What would a meaningful business outcome actually look like?

If those questions cannot be answered, I would be cautious about moving directly into a proposal.

The salesperson as a business professional

One implication for sales leadership is that commercial capability development should extend beyond conventional sales training. Salespeople also need industry knowledge, business understanding, technical expertise and opportunities to learn from real customer situations.

This is particularly important in complex B2B environments, where credibility is rarely established through communication skills alone. A salesperson who stops learning eventually starts selling yesterday's answers to tomorrow's problems.

Great salespeople are not necessarily the ones who have all the answers. They are the ones who keep improving the questions.

Continue the series: Curiosity helps us understand the customer. But understanding alone is not enough. Sometimes creating value requires the confidence to question what the customer believes. Next: Article 3 — The Courage to Challenge Without Losing the Customer.