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Dear Quota Team, 
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I’m fairly new to B2B sales, but I have worked in retail basically since high school, so sales itself isn’t new for me. The job I started a few months ago is a huge step up for me income-wise, though. I finally feel like I’m working an “adult” job, with the pay to match.
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I don’t have any big complaints about my employer – we have the usual b.s. but overall, I really don’t have anything to complain about. The only problem (if you can call it that) is my coworkers. I feel like I’m way different than they are in basically every way except for the fact that we all work in sales together. 
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They are all into sports, and are mostly the archetypical “sales guy” types, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I’m more introverted, and the kinds of things I’m into are the kinds of things they’d probably make fun of if I shared them: puzzle and strategy games, fantasy, sci-fi, etc. 
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Long story short, I don’t think I fit in with the rest of my sales team at all. It doesn’t really bother me much but I want to be successful in my career and I wonder if being an outsider is going to hurt me in the future. Any thoughts or suggestions?  
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Different in the Northeast  
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Dear Different, 
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Congratulations and welcome to the wonderful world of B2B sales. It sounds like you’re excited for the opportunity, which is a good thing and will help you weather the ups and downs that inevitably accompany any sales role.
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Your question is an interesting one, but you seem to be making a lot of assumptions about your coworkers and about what you assume they’ll assume about you. In our experience, people in “adult” roles behave professionally toward each other, whether they have overlapping personal interests or not. It’s doubtful that your coworkers will care much about your interests as long as you’re friendly, professional, and polite – all skills you probably have given the fact that you work (and have worked) in sales. 
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As far as it helping or hurting your career, here’s the beauty of sales: the numbers don’t lie. In fact, if you really don’t fit in with your coworkers, it seems like there’s a very obvious upside for you: you can focus on selling without being distracted by the endless conversations among coworkers that derail most people’s productivity. 
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But if it helps ease your mind, you should know that personal interests rarely hold salespeople back, whether in an individual producer role, or in sales management. There are plenty of people with varied interests and different types of personalities who rise through the ranks. What really matters is how many deals you close, how seriously you take your responsibilities, and how much value you can add to your organization. To put it another way, you have nothing to worry about, except doing your job to the best of your ability.