PERSONALITY TYPES
In Professional Selling it is critical for you to know that
you have a personality style and that the people you meet with also have a
personality style. Sometimes, if the two don't match, rapport becomes more
difficult to establish and maintain. The
understanding of these personality styles will not only allow you to adjust
your sales approach with these clients but it
will also enhance your interpersonal skills with all people that you communicate with, including those people within
your own company.
Before we can begin to analyse the personality styles of our
clients we must feel comfortable in the understanding of these styles. There are four basic styles:
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| The Essentra grads teamwith Lion Mascot P1 "Drivers" with an obliging Hamburg Port Policeman for their Hamburgolpoly Treasure Hunt Selfie |
These people will want to know what you have to offer in the
shortest possible time. They are a bottom
line type of person and they will not evaluate your offer based on whether
they like you or not or whether they enjoyed your presentation or not. They will evaluate your offer strictly based
on what useful information they get from it in a very business-like fashion.
They would tend to be the individual who would say
"Yes, there is some use in that offer, but did that presentation really
need to take two hours and include a half day factory visit. We could have read your proposal in far less
time". These are very time
management conscious people who often need just a few key benefits to fully
understand your offer. Their pet hate is
the wasting of time and often they are surrounded by time saving devices such
as a desk computer, smart phone, a Blackberry, Filofax etc.
THE YIELDING
SOCIABLE (AMIABLE) P2
This person will tend to enjoy the company of others who
have similar interests. They will tend to go with the majority as being part of
the group is important to them. They will not care too much for the high
powered presentation which might expose them as an individual.
They would rather like to have the opportunity to come up to
you and discuss certain subjects after the presentation in a warm and friendly
conversation. They are fairly emotional
people who like to take things a little slower and typically they will set up
barriers because they do not like high pressure.
THE DOMINATING
SOCIABLE (EXPRESSIVE) P3
The Dominating Sociable wants to get involved in your
presentation, to be recognised and generally feel good about what you have to
offer. They like professionalism in the
presentation yet at the same time will get bored if there is too much detail,
like lots of graphs and charts. The
Dominating Sociable tends to have a degree of emotion in what they say and do
and they also tend to be fairly fast decision makers. They enjoy doing
"fun things" and get things done immediately. They don't need much time to think things
through and if they decide in your favour they want it yesterday.
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| Essentra Grads Team Elephant P4 |
This person, unlike the Dominating Reserved, who will get
bored in a two hour presentation, can sit through a three or more hour sales
presentation and still only feel that you have only just scraped the surface of
the subject. These people love the
detail and will sit there and soak up all the graphs and bar charts that you have
to offer them and will still want more.
Typically they are difficult to get a decision from because they never
get enough information to base their decision on.
2)
EVALUATING
PERSONALITIES
In this grid the vertical line is the sociability level , low at the top ,high at the bottom. This means that the Yielding Sociable and the
Yielding Reserved are less controlling than the Dominating Reserved and the
Dominating Sociable.
Dominating people are
kind of "take charge" people who would look at a situation and wonder
how they would do it differently if they were in charge of it. They tend to have a willingness to assert
their ideas and philosophies to other people in a meeting. An assertive person is typically a persuader.
These two styles tend to have short attention spans and this
is why they will get bored in a two hour presentation, as their minds are often
flooding from one thing to another; they will not be thinking about the same
thing fifteen minutes later. Because of
these short attention spans, Dominating Reserved and Dominating Sociable get
into the habit of making decisions quickly.
They will look at an idea and decide yes or no fairly fast. The people on the top of the chart, the
Yielding Sociable and the Yielding Reserved, are less assertive and do not have
that driving desire to be in charge or control.
They would tend to want to be part of the group rather than lead it and
tend not to have such a strong desire to express their ideas and philosophies.
The Yielding Reserved and Yielding Sociable have longer
concentration spans and can quite easily sit through a three hour
presentation. Because of their longer
attention spans they get into the habit of making decisions slowly. They genuinely need time to think things
over.
It is important to recognise that, if you are a relatively
fast decision maker, (Dominating Reserved or Dominating Sociable), a slow decision
maker (Yielding Amiable or Yielding Reserved) can frustrate you. If you are a Dominating Reserved or a
Dominating Sociable, a proposal which
was submitted four days ago should now render a response. On the other hand, if you are naturally a
slower decision maker, i.e.: a Yielding Sociable or a Yielding Reserved, you
become very suspicious of fast decision makers and might well feel that they
could not make a solid decision in four days - it is just not natural.
On the grid, the vertical line is emotional level - low at the top, high on the bottom. Yielding Reserved and Dominating Reserved
people tend to make decisions based on facts whereas Dominating Sociables and
Yielding Sociables make decisions based on emotions. Another way to look at this line is that
Yielding Reserved and Dominating Reserved people are generally tidy, organised,
time management conscious people. Whereas
the Yielding Sociable and the Dominating Sociable in the bottom two quadrants tend to be a little more sloppy and relaxed in
the way they do things, often leaving a trail of unfinished detail behind them.
3) WORKING WITH
DIFFERENT PERSONALITIES
Let’s look closer on how these four different personality
styles inter-relate and on how we can best handle them with versatility. Usually you will have the most tension with
the personality which is the direct opposite to you on the grid. If, for example, you are a Dominating
Reserved, then you will enjoy the company of other Dominating Reserved. They are down to earth no nonsense people;
when you ask them a question you will get an answer; when you ask for a
decision you will get a decision and they tend to stick with it.
It is when you have to deal with the opposite style that you
run into difficulty - the Yielding Sociable.
This is because you are thinking quickly and unemotionally and they are
thinking slowly and emotionally. You can
make a superior proposal to a Yielding Sociable, far better than any
competitors, and they still hold back simply because they do not feel
comfortable with you yet. They want to
do business with people with whom they feel comfortable.
Conversely, if you are a Yielding Sociable, you will have
the most difficulty with Dominating Reserved.
They appear to be hard headed people who have no feeling and you do not
feel comfortable doing business with them.
They come across too cold.
If you are a Dominating Sociable you like other Dominating
Sociables. It is when you are up against
the Yielding Reserved is where the difficulties begin. Yielding Reserved always appear to need too
much information, too much detail work, they are far too cautious in the way
they do things. Recognise that accuracy is a key factor when dealing with a
Yielding Reserved. Cost factors
concerning your proposal should be given to the last penny.
Conversely, if you are a Yielding Reserved, it would appear
to you that Dominating Sociables are too flippant, too easy going. They tend to go off at different tangents
without knowing all the real information that they ought to know about the
situation.
It is now evident that when you are selling into an account,
no matter what stage you may be at, you always will have to deal with these
different personality styles.
Understanding your own personality style and understanding how you are
relating to the other person will be very critical in building relations in the
account.
After a little practise you will be able to plot the people
you meet on the grid, probably in the first two to three minutes in meeting
them. Here are some helpful hints in
identifying them using the grid:
First of all you will go from top to bottom; is this an
assertive person which means that they are either Dominating Reserved or
Dominating Sociable ?
You would tell this by the firmness of the handshake, the
kind of response they give you, the fact that they volunteer their name very
easily when you meet, etc. Or are they
the less assertive person on the right of the grid.
Having established this try and judge the way they say
things and the warmth with which they respond to people to judge whether they
are unemotional (top of the grid) meaning that they Yielding Reserved or Dominating Reserveds or whether
they are the emotional type of person (bottom of the grid), the Yielding
Sociable or Dominating Sociable.
4) SUMMARY OF THE
FOUR STYLES
DOMINATING RESERVEDS
(DRIVERS) P1
- Tend to
be very time management conscious
- Do not
waste time with a lot of small talk
- Tend to
get irritated by non business chat
- Will use
time-saving gadgets
- Will
tend to have their telephone calls screened by their secretaries
- Their
business environment is often formal
- Their
secretaries make their calls/looks after their diary/usher you in and out of
their office rather than them coming to greet you
- Socially,
Dominant Introverts like participation sports with a high level of activity;
like skiing, flying, scuba diving etc.
They may like golf but dislike the time it takes to do it
- They are
tidy, have an organised desk and always dress reasonably formally.
YIELDING
SOCIABLES ( AMIABLES) P2
- Tend to
set up barriers
- Tend to
stay in one position for a long period of time as they tend to develop relationships
with things as well as people
- Do not
like high pressure and tend to avoid it where possible
- There
are, in general terms, Yielding Sociables in the top layers of management
unless the culture of the organisation protects them from having to make
assertive decisions
- Very
little sense of time management
- Tend to
be disorganised as they find it difficult to say no to people therefore they
often have more work on than they can handle
- Their
environment is warm and comfortable
- They are
reluctant to change the things they have around them
DOMINATING SOCIABLES (EXPRESSIVES)
P3
- Tend to
be friendly and open
- Usually
make their own telephone calls and do not necessarily screen incoming ones
- Will
tend to greet you in reception/outer office
- May give
you a tour of the company, greeting everyone warmly as they walk around the
place
- Tend to
like excitement and spectator sports, e.g. football, cricket etc.
- May
possibly have pictures of their family in the office (Dominant Introverts would
feel this was too informal)
- Likely
to spend time talking about their recent holiday or cricket match
- They are
warm and friendly and not afraid to say no to you
- They are
personable and at the same time assertive
- Not
particularly organised; tends to have a cluttered desk
- Their
follow up is questionable as they tend not to be well organised
YIELDING RESERVEDS (ANALYTICS)
P4
- They are
probably the easiest to identify by the type of job that they do, e.g. an
accountant or an engineer.
- Often
surrounded by gadgets like computers, calculators, etc.
- Tend to
be inquisitive people
- They
tend to soak up information
- They
have a fascination for analysis; will tend to have charts and graphs around
them
- Very
precise about punctuality and figures
- Whereas
the Dominating Sociables will feel management is all about inter-relating with
people, Yielding Reserveds feel that management can be accomplished simply by
generating information (i.e. as long as people know what they have to be
doing).
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