Canada’s startup ecosystem is plagued by “early exits,” arguably due to the lack of sales talent required to get their products mass adoption. Why is Canada’s tech scene missing this key ingredient?

I recently wrote that Canada is a great place to start a company, largely due to the excellent technical talent in this country. It’s interesting to note that most of the people behind Canada’s hottest technology companies are product and technology leaders, not Marc Benioff-type sales leaders. Tech-focused founders often find it difficult to build a great sales culture, whether it’s because sales priorities take a back-seat to product development, or technical founders just have a disdain for sales and marketing-types.

Beyond a bias towards product-focused founders (which isn’t unique to Canadian startups), I‘ve been trying to understand why there aren’t more great examples of Canadian startup sales cultures like Salesforce.com or Groupon. Here are a few thoughts:

We’re too damn nice.
For your average Canadian, “pushing for the close” is just plain rude (and frankly, makes one sound like an American). If a customer doesn’t want something, that’s fine, we’ll check back later and move on to the next customer. There’s no need to fight objections too hard right now. We’re sure they’ll come around.

We’re humble.
We don’t like to exaggerate or embellish the products we’re selling. We don’t feel comfortable overstating statistics. We blush when people tell us how great our products are.

We’re conservative.
When a customer has a requirement, we pad an estimate to ensure we don’t let them down. Generally under-promising and over-delivering is great for customer retention, but you need to win the business before you can retain the client.

We’re not too competitive
One of the key characteristics of great salespeople is the desire to win. To be the best. Outside of the Canada vs. US hockey game, most Canadians are pretty content with the “everybody wins” culture they live in. There’s no motivation to scratch and claw your way to the top, when things are going pretty well right now.

We like money, but not too much
Similar to competitiveness, many of the best salespeople are really just greedy. They want to maximize their earnings and they’ll do whatever it takes. Canadians give 40%+ of their earnings to the government, so the incremental benefit of pushing yourself to earn more above a threshold is diminished. It’s like having a reverse-accelerated commission structure. On the flip side, the downside of not making enough doesn’t mean that your kids get a terrible education or your health has to suffer.

So, in short, Canadians aren’t great salespeople because Canada is pretty awesome. Salespeople thrive selling solutions to problems, and we simply don’t have as many problems as other places. Some of the best American salespeople have grown up in adversity, and if you ever visit India, you’ll meet some of the most tenacious salespeople in the world, because it is their livelihood… sell or starve. I can’t imagine you have that same kind of desperation in Sweden or Norway, where things are also pretty good. Same with Canada.

I believe this is why so many Canadian startups set up international sales offices and often don’t have sales run out of Canada (we’ve got offices in San Francisco and Chicago for marketing and sales, respectively). If you’re a Canadian salesperson and want to prove me wrong, please get in touch!

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Andrew D’Souza is the Chief Operating Officer of Toronto-based Education Startup Top Hat Monocle. Follow him on Twitter at @andrewdsouza.

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