One of the most powerful tools you can use in sales, or in any form of communications for that matter, is to understand yours and other personality types. You have a unique personality and it can be classified as "how" you do things, your observable behaviour or temperament.
It is little to do with "why" you do things/your motivators nor has it anything to do with "what" you do in terms of skills, knowledge and competencies. Personality theory today is largely based on Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung and his lifetimes research and publications in this area. I have had the great privilege of being able to study and qualify in one of the world's foremost systems called Insights Discovery that is based on his work.
I can state without contradiction that of all the skills that I have developed over the years, psychometric profiling, as it is known, is probably the most effective tool to have in one's armoury.
Why is this? Research confirms that having an in-depth understanding of yourself, your strengths, weaknesses, blind spots, style preferences, how you like to learn, communicate, manage and so on, gives you control.
That of which you are aware, gives you control. That of which you are not aware, controls you. So, awareness is the key and psychometric profiling tools, like insights discovery, gives you that control.
In its simplest format, insights discovery is generated from several hundred thousand permutations of statements and positions you on a wheel in one of 72 different locations. People are either introverted or extroverted in their behaviour. People are also either thinking types (head) or feeling types (heart). This X and Y axis approach creates four highly different styles to which we attribute four colours.
Think of the four colours in the article heading above. Fiery red and sunshine yellow are extrovert colours, while earth green and cool blue are introvert. Fiery red and cool blue are what we consider as thinking or "head" energies while earth green and sunshine yellow are more warm, friendly and emotional, in other words, feeling/heart. This is illustrated in the following slide.
For more information on this, I am attaching a fact sheet, you can find it below. In summary, by dividing this four coloured "pizza" into eight unique slices, we can add concentric circles, and create 72 different positions on the wheel as illustrated below:
Millions of people across the globe, at this point, have partaken in insights discovery and their profiles produced. As an organisation, Insights has developed a deep understanding, powerful statistics and data from this output to support our contentions on the way people behave.
It is important to understand that no one position is the best. All have their gifts, and all have their challenges. The wonderful thing about having your own psychometric profile at your disposal, is that you know what energy you lead with, what energy comes second, third and fourth (being your least preference).
Let me give you an example using my own profile. Being positioned in location 27 in right in the middle of the sunshine yellow territory, I lead with yellow, followed by green, then red and finally blue. In other words, what I am saying to people with my style is:
1. Sunshine yellow... Say something uplifting and involve me!
2. Earth green... Be empathetic, show you care about me!
3. Fiery red... Please do things quickly, be brief, be bright, be gone!
4. Cool blue... Okay, if you must give me the fine detail, do so!
Now that I'm aware of this and have a 40-page profile that goes into extreme detail about my behaviours across a wide range of activities, I am armed with information that puts me in control.
What it also does, is make me aware of other styles, observable behaviours and temperaments, so that I can adapt my style to communicate with and manage others. This gives me additional control and I will describe, next week, how powerful this is when in selling and business development mode.
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