The beard seems to be a subtle but constant hint employed in assessing the knowledge and trustworthiness of this sales/service personnel you socialize with. If the salesperson is wearing a beard, you might be more inclined to pull out your wallet. And if you operate in a sales or service role, you might consider the power of donning a beard before no-shave November rolls around.
The next time you’re considering buying a big-ticket item, it might be well worth paying attention to the salesperson’s facial hair.
Sarah Mittal, assistant professor of Marketing at St. Edward’s University and the newspaper’s lead researcher, and David H. Silvera, associate professor of Business at University of Texas in San Antonio, conducted five research to test that the “power of the beard,” predicting that facial hair would be an advantage in sales and service functions. The studies examined the beard’s effect on perception of experience, trustworthiness, likelihood of revenue and support satisfaction. Their findings have been published online in the Journal of Business Research in their article titled, “It Grows on You: Perceptions of sales/service personnel with facial hair.”
In the competitive world of sales and service employees, experience and trustworthiness are critical for relationship building and closing sales. They found that regardless of the sales industry or circumstance (online), or the salesperson’s race or ethnicity, beauty or likability, prospective buyers view bearded sales employees as having greater expertise and trustworthiness than their clean-shaven, stubbled and mustached counterparts.
“Our research suggests that those in a sales or service role, where expertise and trust are crucial to converting sales, would be well-served to grow a beard. Your LinkedIn profile and marketing materials may even benefit from the subtle cue conveyed by donning a beard,” Mittal said.
Of the fives studies, one was a real world study utilizing Facebook Ad Manager. Using the Facebook platform, the researchers deployed bearded and clean-shaven ads to examine the potency for a real-world business. They discovered that the Facebook advertisement with the bearded version of the sales representative was able to yield a higher click-through rate (CTR), which puts prospective customers in the sales pipeline. In fact, the bearded ad’s CTR of 2.66% is considerably above industry averages of approximately 0.71percent (industrial providers) and 1.04percent (technology).
While previous research has focused on the advantage of beards in attracting potential mates (cue bearded Bumble profiles) and at the interview process, the researchers consider these studies would be the initial evaluation of the beard’s effect in sales and service contexts. This result is based in evolutionary psychology, and this is just one of many biologically informed approaches to the analysis of human behavior.
“Beards may go in and out of style in terms of their ability to increase physical attractiveness, but from an evolutionary perspective, they consistently serve as a cue to others about one’s masculinity, maturity, resources, competence, leadership and status,” Mittal said. “In sum, the ability to grow a healthy beard inherently signals ‘immuno-competence,’ and this has downstream effects on the way a bearded individual is evaluated in many facets of life.”
Through their modeling, the investigators could rule out differences in perceived age, beauty and likability as alternative explanations for their results. They also controlled for the study subjects age, sex, income and ethnicity to ensure that consumer demographics did not influence the effects.
“The beard truly seems to send a consistent message about expertise in one’s field — a key driver in sales success. These effects also hold in a service context, where bearded individuals receive higher service satisfaction ratings,” Silvera said.
The researchers believe their studies’ insights could influence not only coverage and perceptions at the business world where the benefits of facial hair are mainly under-appreciated but those working in these areas (with the capability to cultivate a facial hair) can nudge their functionality achievement upwards with this easy change in physical appearance.
“Given these findings, corporate policies that currently ban facial hair may think twice; as other facial hair styles did not have a ‘negative’ effect on trust or expertise, there is only an upside to be gained from allowing individuals to don a well-kept beard,” Mittal added.
Three takeaways from “It Grows on You: Perceptions of sales/service personnel with facial hair”
Facial hair on male sales personnel drives increased perceptions of expertise, which increases trust, purchase Likelihood and gratification.
The beard-effect occurs no matter the salesperson’s race or ethnicity, age, level of perceived beauty and likability.
The beard-effect happens across earnings industries and contexts (in-person and on the internet).
Source: https://www.stedwards.edu/