If you walk around the floor of an inside sales operation you notice the buzz and excitement that comes with a great telesales / appointment environment. However, what are the chances of everyone having the same conversation to their customers? Do you think the field team are doing the same in face-to-face situations?
It’s important to recognise that all our clients are different and have different business needs. In fact, many organisations are recognising this as the world of sales changes.
There’s plenty of literature on personality types and even more on psychometrics to help you understand more about yourself which, let’s face it, we love that. Where this insight is often not exploited is understanding the impact personality has on others, and how we need to be more adaptive if we are to convey an effective message to our audience.
The inspiration for psychometrics dates to Darwin’s book The Origin of Species (1859). Darwin talked about individual differences in species. It was this realisation that spawned the need to measure those differences in people. Its popularity has spawned over 100 types of evaluations on the market.
But what does this mean for you and, in particular, for your team?
Many psychometrics offer 4 basic personality types (which can then break down into 4 areas offering 16 basic types, but DiSC like MBTI psychometrics claim to have over 850 varieties or traits of people. The moral of this story is that it can get complex. Here’s your guide to keep it simple:
Based on people’s propensity to be more extrovert than others (can be drawn as a Y-axis) and their assertiveness focusing on things at hand or the people around them (the X-axis) – there are 4 basic personality types, or in some cases colours.
Don’t think of this about yourself but instead think of the people you are engaging with.
If you strongly identify with one of these then you need to be conscious of people in your opposite group: Driver Vs Amiable, Expressive Vs Analytic. When you exhibit a strong personality type to your opposite type, they often hear it as white noise and tend to switch off!
So, adaptability is king. We are all capable of it. You talk differently to your children, friends, parents and even grandparents – its time you did the same thing with your prospects / clients.
About this author:
Stuart Lotherington is the joint MD of SBR Consulting. He has studied client interactions for over 30 years, is qualified in DiSC and Insights psychometrics as well as being an NLP Practitioner. He has a degree in Psychology and studies Transactional Analysis.
Other blogs from this author:
Understanding your team to better manage your people
Sales is not just a numbers game, it is a ratio game
5 Stages of Successful Sales Leadership through Effective 1-2-1s
As a sales leader, how can you positively influence culture?
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