Sales Training: How to Recognize and Handle Different Personality Types

If you are a small business owner or manager, chances are you play the role of salesman quite often. The better you are at sales, the more successful your business will be.

If you're taking a "one size fits all" approach when you deal with prospects, chances are you're limiting your sales potential. You need to recognize different personality types and modify your presentation accordingly.

I divide prospects into 4 personality types and to make it easy to remember, I use animals and their behavior to help remember them.

The animals are: Owl, Love Bird, Cow and Rhino

Owls are Wise. They get that way by asking questions. They want to know all of the details.

So, if you are dealing with an Owl, you better know your product. The good thing is, if you answer all their questions, they are usually ready to buy.

Many salemen get along great with their customers. They talk sports, remember the names of their kids and treat them to lunch whenever they can. These clients are Love Birds. It's called relationship selling and it works. As you discover common interests with your prospect you make a connection. When two people find out they have things in common they tend to trust one another and we all know that trust is a very important factor in closing a sale.

The Cow personality type is a bit tricky to deal with. Cows have a herd mentality. They take their direction from what others around them do. They like recommendations and are probably the easiest to sell. But there's a problem with cows. After a sale, if they talk to friends or even your competition, they may have 2nd thoughts - you know, buyer's remorse, and want to cancel or modify their order. So you better make sure they understand features, terms and conditions.

The Rhino is our fourth personality type and can be the most difficult to handle. He's usually busy and wants to get to the "bottom line" or price asap. He doesn't have patience to listen to your sales presentation and will want to take control of the conversation. So how do you handle a Rhino? By being a Rhino. Show him that your time is valuable too. Get to the point quickly and convince him that the benefits of your product or service are worth taking the time to review.

To be successful in sales, you have to be able to recognize and handle all 4 personality types. Ask yourself this question. What personality type am I? Chances are most of your customers will be a lot like you. To be a top sales person, you need to be able to sell all types of prospects. To do that, you need to recognize and adapt to all four personality types.

Once you master this concept you will be on your way to becoming a top producer.

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A Pollster Called Today - I Gave Them a Song, But No Dance

Do you ever get tired of telemarketers? I know I do. What bugs me the most is that many telemarketing companies actually are exempted? Did you know that all political campaigns are exempted from telemarketing rules? That shouldn't surprise you because, well, it's the politicians that make all the rules. When I am called by a political campaign, especially one that I don't want to talk to, or is perhaps on the other side of the issues then I usually give them a hard time, play around with them, or give them false and misleading information.

You might say this is unethical, or that I lack character but I totally disagree. You see these people are calling me unannounced, and they're wasting my time, so it is they who are unethical, not I. You see my point yet? Some people say that you should be respectful of all people, but when it comes to telemarketers I wholeheartedly disagree. They aren't my friends, and I don't even believe that I should tolerate them because they are being disrespectful to me, simply by the fact that they are wasting my time.

The other day, it was right before the November 2012 presidential elections. A pollster called me, and wanted to know who I was can vote for, for president. You see, I had half a notion to tell them that; "it's none of your damn business," but because I've been barraged by these political calls all week, I chose a new tactic, I decided that I needed to find a way to get them to take me off their list. So here's what I came up with.

I told them I couldn't vote because I was convicted of attempted murder and that was a felony. The pollster at first didn't believe me because, well, I started laughing. So, he played along with me and said; "no really who do you plan on voting for?"

I told him; "seriously, I can't vote because I tracked down a telemarketer bothering me on the phone, but I wasn't trying to take-out the person, just knock some sense into them, so I was wrongly convicted, as I wasn't trying to murder anyone - by the way, where are you calling from, can you give me an exact location, maybe an address too?"

Then all of a sudden the line went dead, which makes me think that maybe some of these telemarketing pollsters don't exactly have the right statistics after all? Yes, doesn't make you think that perhaps all these polling numbers we are reading in the newspapers and watching on cable TV are bogus? Because real people don't want to be harassed, and at some point they simply hang up, or give the pollster telemarketing company a song and a dance.

Needless to say, the pollster wasn't about to give me their address, and they came in under caller ID blocked. They have all the information about me, but I have none about them, and they are asking personal political questions which quite frankly are none of their business. The only reason they want this information is to sell me their candidate, or put the information I give them in the newspaper or on the TV for their own political advantage. Quite frankly they can go to an underground place with extremely high ambient temperatures if you get my drift.

It seems unfortunate that these politicians know no bounds, and their campaigns think that they are above the law, that they can call up and harass Americans to know end. Personally, if these politicians would do their job, and do it right, they could get reelected without all this extra nonsense, but they don't do they? Are any of them any good? No, the answer to that question isn't pretty. Please consider all this and think on it.