Personality Types: Adapting Your Communication to Your Audience

If your people aren’t adapting to their clients, they’re missing a significant part of client engagement.

If you walk the floor of an inside sales operation, you’ll notice the buzz and excitement that comes with a great telesales/appointment environment.

In all those ongoing conversations, what are the chances of everyone having the same conversation with 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 psychometrics to help you understand more about yourself. Let’s face it, many of us in sales are not averse to studying ourselves for a bit. However, the available insight is not used often enough in the service of understanding other personalities and how we need to adapt better if we want communicate effectively with our audience, whether that’s a customer or, if you’re a sales leader, someone on your team.

The inspiration behind psychometrics goes back to Darwin’s book The Origin of Species (1859). Darwin talked about individual differences in species, and it was this realisation that prompted the idea to measure those differences in people. The concept’s popularity has resulted in over 100 types of evaluation on the market.

What does this mean for you and, in particular, for your team?

Many psychometrics distinguish between 4 basic personality types, which then break down into 4 areas with 16 basic types. DiSC and MBTI psychometrics, however, claim to cover more than 850 varieties or traits. The moral of this story is that it can get complex.

Here’s your guide to keeping it simple:

Based on an individual’s level of extroversion (can be drawn as a Y-axis) and their assertiveness, focusing on the tasks at hand or the people around them (the X-axis), the result is a 4-box model that illustrates 4 basic personality types, or colours.

In this context, don’t use this illustration just to think about yourself, but to understand the people you’re engaging with. 

1. Driving style (Red) – they prefer quick decisions, direct answers, and thrive in a competitive atmosphere. They value solid results. Trust is given to those who are direct and straightforward.
2. Expressive style (Yellow) – they are energetic and optimistic and like spending time in meetings or socialising. They value effective teamwork and creative approaches to problems. Trust is given to those who are open and expressive like them.
3. Amiable style (Green) – these individuals prefer stability, predictability, and harmony rather than conflict. They value strong teamwork and the impact any tasks have on others. Trust is given to those who are sincere and considerate.
4. Analytical style (Blue) – quality, accuracy, and order are hallmarks of this style. They seek high standards, careful analysis, and perfect results. They are cynical toward new ideas and will want to see the supporting data. Trust usually has to be earned.

Engaging with Another Personality Type

If you identify strongly with one of these types, then you need to be conscious of people in the opposite group: Driver vs. Amiable, Expressive vs. Analytic. When you project a strong personality type to your opposite, they often hear it as white noise and tend to switch off!

Adaptability, on the other hand, is king. We are all capable of it. You talk differently to your children, friends, parents and even grandparents – it’s time you did the same with your prospects, clients and team members.

If you’d like to know more about the power of psychometrics and how it can help you and your team, get in touch by e-mailing info@sbrconsulting.com or call us on +44 (0) 207 653 3740.