Sales Scripts that Sell, Second Edition

Stereotypes and Sales

The United States is the most demographically diverse country in the world. Approximately 32 million people (or about 12 percent) of the total U.S. population were born in another country. Because of our tendency to handle unfamiliarity and uncertainty by placing individuals we don’t know well into distinct groups or categories, the stereotypes we hold may sabotage sales calls.

Stereotypes are the mental images or pictures we carry around in our heads; they function as positive or negative shortcuts to perception and guide our reactions to others. For example, racial profiling, a generalization applied to all members of a group regardless of individual differences, is just one way that stereotyping can adversely affect ...