Sales and Personality Types

I recently read an article on personality types and how to sell to different personality types. Since we’ve learned in this class that sales is about understanding people and their needs, I thought that this would be an interesting take on sales, since it really boils down to understanding the person you are trying to connect with or sell to.

The article lists four primary personality types, within the construct of a sales setting:

1. Assertive: When selling the assertive people, this article emphasizes the importance of professionalism and preparedness. It talks about how these people like to get things done quickly, check items off their list, and not waste time building personal relationships where simply a professional one would suffice. While this article is probably right that it is more important to be professional and prepared with a certain type of prospect, I think these are good characteristics to have in any sales scenario. While being personable is also important to a lot of people, I think there should always be a level of professionalism and preparedness.
2. Amiable: Amiable people value trust and relationships very highly in a sales scenario, and want to establish a relationship before doing business or closing the sale. For these people, it is important to take their time. The article says in order to sell to amiable clients, it is important to paint a picture or cast a vision for them, and take the time to build a relationship with them. I think these are really useful skills to have, especially the ability to cast your vision for someone in such a way that it is interesting and enticing to them.
3. Expressives: this article describes expressives as outgoing, caring, spontaneous, and relying heavily upon their intuition. In order to sell to them, the article emphasizes the importance of building relationships, presenting case studies, telling stories, and not overwhelming the prospects with too many facts and figures. I think these also are important skills to have in any sales situations, since telling success stories is often a good way to sell your product through someone else’s perspective. Rather than the salesperson, you suddenly just become a relayer or someone else’s experience.
4. Analytic: the article describes analytics as people who love data, deadlines, facts and figures. In order to sell to them, it is important to not rush them, and to present them with honest data. This requires a lot of data and research. While it is always important to be prepared with the research and facts about your product or service, it is especially important to some people, who base their decisions on analytics.