By John Barrows | June 27, 2026 | 4 min read
Curiosity in sales is one of the most underrated skills a rep can have. But most reps try to manufacture it from thin air and wonder why it doesn’t stick. The science says it doesn’t work that way. Curiosity follows interest. And interest can be built.
There’s a scene in Ted Lasso where Ted gets challenged to a game of darts by Rupert, who’s arrogant and assumes Ted doesn’t know what he’s doing. As Ted lines up his final throw, he says something about how people have underestimated him his entire life. He references Walt Whitman about being curious, not judgmental. Then he says if Rupert had been curious enough to ask whether Ted played darts, he would have told him he played every weekend with his dad growing up. Then he throws a bullseye.
Rupert lost because he assumed instead of asked. He judged instead of getting curious.
I see this in sales constantly. Reps walk into meetings with assumptions about the prospect, the company, what they need. They pitch before they understand. They answer questions nobody asked. They are not curious.
Curiosity has always been one of my superpowers. And I believe now, with AI, curiosity is the superpower.
Can you teach curiosity in sales?
I ask this on my podcast almost every week. Is genuine curiosity something you’re born with, or can it be learned?
Here’s where I’ve landed.
Genuine, across-the-board curiosity is something you’re born with. But I do believe you can teach people to be curious about specific things. And the key is interest.
If you can get someone interested in something, curiosity follows. Interest is the on-ramp. Nobody has to force you to research a company you actually find fascinating. Nobody has to remind you to prep for a meeting with a prospect whose product you genuinely want to understand. The curiosity shows up on its own when the interest is real.
The science behind curiosity in sales
I got curious about this and used AI to dig into the research. Here’s what I found.
George Loewenstein, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, developed something called the information gap theory back in 1994. His research showed that curiosity gets triggered when we recognize a gap between what we know and what we want to know. That gap creates a psychological itch. The bigger the gap, the more motivated you become to go scratch it.
This is why interest matters so much. When you have zero interest in a prospect, you do zero research. There’s no gap because you don’t know what you don’t know, so nothing bothers you and you tend to walk in and wing it.
But when you find something that interests you about the account, you start digging. And the more you dig, the more gaps you find. Those gaps become questions. And those questions are what make you sound like someone worth talking to instead of another rep running a script.
The science gets even more specific. Researchers at UC Davis (Gruber, Gelman, and Ranganath) published a study in the journal Neuron showing that when people are in a state of curiosity, their hippocampus activates more aggressively. That’s the part of the brain responsible for memory. When you are genuinely curious, you retain more of what you hear. Not only about the thing you’re curious about, but about everything happening around it. They called it a “vortex effect.”
In sales, a curious rep catches the throwaway comment about a leadership change or notices the slight hesitation when the prospect mentions their current vendor. They pick up on the offhand remark about a stalled initiative from last quarter. A disinterested rep misses all of it. Those details are where deals live.
How to build curiosity in sales: the Top 25 exercise
So if curiosity starts with interest, how do you build interest when you’re staring at a list of 200 accounts you’ve never heard of?
Here’s what I do and teach.
Take your ICP and pick your top 25 Tier 1 accounts. If your ICP needs a reset first, I covered how to rebuild it using AI in this post. Then do something most reps skip entirely: try to find a personal connection to each one.
Maybe you use their product. Maybe you know someone who works there. Maybe you read their CEO’s last earnings call and a specific line stuck with you. Maybe their mission or values connect to something you actually care about.
When you create that personal connection, the interest shows up. And when the interest shows up, Loewenstein’s gap kicks in. You start wanting to know more. The research stops feeling like homework and starts feeling like pulling on a thread. Your outreach gets specific because your curiosity is specific.
How AI accelerates curiosity in sales
AI accelerates every step of this. I used Claude to research the science of curiosity for this newsletter. One question led to Loewenstein’s theory, the UC Davis study, and a half dozen data points I never would have found on my own in the same amount of time.
That’s the pattern. Get curious. Use AI to go deeper. Show up with better questions, not better scripts.
Curiosity might be something you’re born with. But interest can be built. And in a world where AI is replacing everyone who phones it in, building interest in your accounts is not optional anymore. It’s the thing that keeps you in the game.
Rupert assumed. Ted asked.
Get curious.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can curiosity in sales be learned or is it natural?
Pure, across-the-board curiosity is largely innate. But you can absolutely develop curiosity toward specific accounts, industries, or problems if you build genuine interest first. Interest is the trigger. When you find a real connection to an account, the curiosity follows on its own without effort.
What is the information gap theory and how does it apply to sales?
George Loewenstein’s information gap theory, developed at Carnegie Mellon in 1994, says curiosity activates when we recognize a gap between what we know and what we want to know. In sales, this means the more you know about an account, the more gaps you find, and the more naturally curious you become. Reps who do no research feel no gap and walk in unprepared. Reps who dig a little end up digging a lot.
What is the Top 25 account exercise?
The Top 25 exercise is a prospecting method where you take your top Tier 1 accounts and find one personal connection to each, whether that’s using their product, knowing someone at the company, or finding something in their mission or values that resonates with you. That personal connection generates real interest, which triggers genuine curiosity, which produces outreach that stands out because it is specific rather than templated.
How does AI help with curiosity in sales?
AI accelerates the curiosity loop. You start with a question, use a tool like Claude to research it, and that research surfaces new gaps and new questions you would not have thought to ask on your own. A rep who uses AI to go deeper on an account before reaching out shows up with better questions and a more specific point of view, which is increasingly what separates reps who get meetings from those who get ignored.
Why do curious sales reps perform better?
Research from UC Davis showed that when people are in a curious state, their hippocampus activates more strongly, improving memory not just for the thing they’re curious about but for everything around it. In a sales meeting, this means a curious rep catches the offhand remark about a stalled initiative or notices the hesitation when a prospect mentions their current vendor. Those details are where deals live. A disengaged rep misses them entirely.
John Barrows helps sales leaders decide whether to replace or rebuild their teams for the AI era. For 25+ years he has worked with the world’s most demanding sales organizations, including Salesforce, LinkedIn, Google, Amazon, and Okta, building the frameworks that became Filling the Funnel and Driving to Close. Today he advises CROs and VPs of Sales on AI readiness, team restructuring, and go-to-market strategy, drawing on exposure to every type of B2B sales organization over that span. John believes sales is a science, not a personality contest. His training focuses on the fundamentals that hold up regardless of what the market or the technology does next. He is the host of Make It Happen Mondays, author of I Want to Be in Sales When I Grow Up, and an LP at GTMfund.
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