Different Personality Styles with Bob Kreisberg

[00:00:00] Lou, we don’t need to all hire mini mes. In fact, we strengthen an organization by having all different personality styles, but you need to know what that style is if you’re gonna be able to work effectively. Welcome to Decision Point, a podcast about overcoming adversity and sales in the growth that we experience in the process.
I’m. Good.
All right. Well, we’re here. I’m excited. I can hear you. I’m always excited to have you on and to talk to you. So, um, let’s, you know, you and I were kind of talking last week and you had some ideas about some stuff that you wanted discuss about hiring in the, um, in the sales cycle. And so I’ll sort of leave the floor open to you.
Um, let’s you take it. Yeah, I, you know, what I wanted to talk about was the, um, was the importance of the, of the onboarding process. Um, really irrespective of the position, you know, [00:01:00] whether you’re hiring a, whether you’re hiring a salesperson or an accounts payable clerk, you know, whether you’re hiring a position, you know, that you would think is highly personality related or, um, you think about it and.
It’s not personality related at all. Who I, who cares about the personality of an AP clerk? Well, irrespective of the position when you are bringing somebody on board into your organization. Um, You need to know who that person is because you need to know what their strengths are, where their challenges are, uh, what motivates them.
Um, what do you need to do as a leader to provide leadership and guidance to, to them. And so, You know, it’s, it’s interesting because in, in different job markets, you know, people say, oh, this is such a, this is such a hard job market to, to hire good people. If, if I find somebody and I, and I really like ’em, you know, I’m full [00:02:00] speed ahead.
I, I want to get an offer in their hands. I don’t want anything to get in the way. And, and, and I can get that perspective, but that doesn’t mean by any stretch of the imagination that you don’t have a vested interest in making sure that things work out. So there’s a difference between saying, I’ve gotta move fast when I try to.
You know, trying to get somebody that I think is a real hot commodity to being able to say, what is it that I need to do to help this person be successful in my organization? Because, Bringing people on board is not, is not where you make the money. You make money when you have people that are on board that are productive and stay with you and are successful and you can build on that and, and that has to do not only with making quote unquote a good hiring decision, but [00:03:00] really doing what you need to do once you have that person on board.
So, so I, you know, that that’s, you know, that really is a key thing and I think, um, certainly people in the recruiting world and per people in the talent acquisition world, um, you know, they think they’ve gotten to the finish line when an offer is signed. . Um, and there’s an element of that that, that, you know, that that’s a finish line.
But for the, uh, for the owners of the business and the people where the money is coming out of the, the pocketbook, that’s the starting line. That’s not the finish line. Now you’re starting to write checks. You want to be sure that you’re getting a return on that investment that you’re making. So let’s talk about the best practices.
So you hire somebody. and, and now what? So they’re on, how do we onboard, how do we use, um, the profiling to help us navigate, kind of talk us through that. [00:04:00] So there’s no question that best practices mean, you know, the personality of that person before you generate an offer letter. Whether or not you’d say, well, there is, there’s not gonna be anything in here that would dissuade.
From hiring, uh, I, I would suggest to you there’s a one in a thousand chance that there might be something in there that could dissuade you. Numbers might be a lot higher than that, but it’s never gonna be, never. So best practices are you get the data that you need. Prior to making that hiring decision.
But if that is not a possibility, or if an organization is saying, well, you know, I, I wanna make the investment with people that I’m hiring, not just people I’m considering, uh, I could take issue with that as a position, but it’s irrefutable that if you’re gonna [00:05:00] start writing a paycheck to somebody, you know, on Monday, You wanna know who that person is.
And so, um, as a, as a leader of an organization, there are just critical things you wanna know about that individual. Um, and, and that. Information is available. It’s not like that information isn’t available. You wanna understand their strengths, you wanna understand their weaknesses. You wanna understand what motivates them.
You wanna understand how similar or different they are to other people you have on your team because you already have learned how to work with those people effectively. If they, uh, in many, many ways mirror the be. Of other people you have, you can quickly take advantage of that. And you wanna know how they align with you.
Uh, because the, the, the, the more you can understand how they [00:06:00] align with you or they don’t align with you, you can take advantage of that information. Either way, Lou, we don’t need to all hire mini mes. In fact, we strengthen an organization by having all different personality styles. You need to know what that style is, if you’re gonna be able to work effectively and, and bright, I’ll give you an exam.
Uh, a simple example, we talk about this in the world of understanding personality styles, and, and that is the, uh, the classic example of four people that walk up to an elevator. Each one has a different personality style. Um, the elevator doors open and the elevator is quote unquote full, right? What’s each different personality style going to do?
Well, the the first thing you know is they’re gonna do something different. They’re not, they’re not all gonna do the same thing, so the high dominance person, they’re gonna kind. Forced their way onto the [00:07:00] elevator with the idea, ah, come on. There’s always room for one more person. I mean, you know, really?
Come on. That’s funny. Cause that’s what I was thinking, the, the high extrovert. Well, this is an opportunity to connect with people. Just like if they stepped out and it was raining out or, you know, or if it was warm or whatever. High extroverts use life’s circumstances to connect with humanity and so that, that’s what they.
The high patience person. Well, I mean, that one’s the easiest one. Every, whenever I do this for a, a Cal State Fullerton, uh, class of entrepreneurship, and we go through this and I always go, okay, so what does the high patients person do? And, and somebody yells out they’re gonna wait for the next elevator.
Well, that’s true. That’s what the high patients person’s gonna do. And the one nobody ever figures out. But I got to see it because it was my son. What does the high conformity person do? What, you know, there’s that sign on the elevator that. How many [00:08:00] people are legally allowed on the elevator? ? Well, that sign was put there for the high conformity person, because that’s what they wanna know.
But, but here’s a critical thing when you think about it from a, a business standpoint. You’ve got a, you’ve got a leader. That has one of those four personalities. I don’t care which one it is. They just hired somebody and they’re watching this person go through something. Now, it’s not the elevator, but it’s a work type experience, but make believe it’s the elevator.
They watch that person do that and they go. Oh, why aren’t they going on the, why aren’t they getting on the elevator? I mean, you know, come on. Right Thing to do is get on the elevator. Well, what the, what the hell do they do with counting people? I don’t understand. What do they do with counting people?
Well, first of all, you’ve only got a one in four chance that they’re gonna do exactly what you do. , and maybe the odds are even worse than that because we know, you know, like dominance only represent 18% of the population, whereas [00:09:00] patients represents 33%, but we’re cutting hairs really. So most people, most people have is that the highest rate is the PA high patients.
Extra extraversion in patients are both around 33%. Dominance and conformity are both around 18%. And the really bad news. The dominance and conformity are your task traits and extroversion and patience are your people traits. So you’re twice as likely to have a touchy-feely nice person versus somebody that you know, really focuses on getting things on, doing a task and making things happen.
So, so my point is that, . If the manager in a simplistic example, doesn’t know the person that they’ve hired, then three outta four chances, they’re gonna be thinking, why did the person do that? You know, like that was dumb. Because the other thing that we [00:10:00] know is that we associate smart and dumb with behavior that aligns with.
So, so if they do what we would do, well, our person’s a smart person, and if they do opposite of what we do, well then they’re an idiot. Right. That’s the truth. Well, no, that’s not the case. They just have a different, they just have a different personality. Well, it’s, it’s a truth that that’s what you do. Not that, that’s not that, that is true.
It’s the, that is what we do. That is true. It is it, it is unfortunately true. And so the point is that if you know that in advance and somebody then approaches a task and they’re being more careful or they’re being more detailed and more process oriented, your your thought process isn’t what’s wrong with them.
You go. It’s more aha, I could have predicted that because based on understanding their personality, that’s exactly what I would’ve predicted [00:11:00] them to do. And so, and so what, what, you know, why not? Why not know that if you can, if, if you could know that. Um, and, you know, as, as a follow on to that, Brad, I think, you know, I I, I do some mentoring at the middle school level, and I was with a, a middle school class last week and I was giving them, you know, my, you know, my story, the program’s called What Grownups Do for Work, and I was giving them my story and I talked about how I got involved in sales and that when I was young, I used to be young.
Um, I thought like, It was a bad thing. I mean, sales people were manipulative and they were aggressive and they lied. You know, I, you know, all of these things. And then of course when I entered the world of professional sales and I was selling, you know, turnkey software systems to automate businesses, you know, then I realized that there, that there was a [00:12:00] different side o of it in terms of.
Being helpful and genuinely helping people’s lives be better. And the example that I used to for the kids, I said, you know, up until 1850 there was no such thing as an anes, as anesthesia. You know, ether didn’t exist prior to 1950 to 1850. I said, now let’s say you’re working for an organization and they’re selling ether and you are calling on surgeons.
Uh, are you not helping? I mean, like up until the day that you got there, they were cutting off people’s legs, you know, while the person was sticking some whiskey was awake. Hell with a shot of whiskey on a and a bullet between their teeth. Um, they bought on a bullet. I mean, I always see they, you know, they stick something in there.
I’ve never seen anybody stick a bullet. They stick a bullet, well, a red, you know, a rag soaked in, and whiskey seems like you snap a tooth on a bullet. So, so the, the point is, If [00:13:00] you, you know, if you genuinely have that, that passion for what you’re selling, then it’s a different world because here you are, you are helping people accomplish what they want to accomplish.
You’re helping make things, you know, make things work much more effectively. And so understanding where that person is coming from, you know, there, there are definitely salespeople. No question. They can sell ice to the Eskimos. Whether or not the Eskimos need the ice, they just can, but they’re few and far between and very difficult to build an entire organization around.
It’s a much healthier place for a business to be to recognize. In general, their sales organization needs to genuinely believe in what they sell and then harness that, but then understand [00:14:00] within that belief, where’s the person gonna go with it? You know, are they gonna be. You know, um, you know, enthusiastic and persuasive.
Are they gonna become a better problem solver? You know, if you’re the high dominant salesperson selling ether to the surgeon, you’re gonna take a different approach than you are if you’re, you know, if you’re the high extrover, oh, I gotta tell you about this great thing, great thing. No, if you’re the high dominance person, you’re gonna say, um, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve got a big problem and I want to help you solve it.
Right? And so understanding the nature of that person, you can then help them bridge that gap between, I really believe in what I’m selling and you are gonna buy it from me. And so, uh, and so that’s why it’s so critically important that you know where that person’s coming. Now what’s the, so let’s talk about the, so you presented an elevator problem.
Let’s present a [00:15:00] sales problem. Sure. So we go through, let’s talk about a, uh, let’s talk about a, a sale. And then can you talk about, um, well, I guess, let me ask a question first. Can you have a successful salesperson that has key traits? Who, who is led by each one of those four traits? So, can you have a salesperson that’s high dominance, high extroversion, high patients high?
Uh, conformity. , uh, you can, um, but, but there are definitely critical elements that, that need to be able to exist for that person with that type of personality, uh, you know, to be able to be successful. And, and, you know, the Reader’s Digest version of that. And we can talk specifically about a sales example and how different personalities and let, and let’s, let’s do, go ahead and then let’s do that cuz I, I would like to hear that.
I think that would be, Yeah. So, um, so if, and, and if you’ve got, uh, a high dominant sales [00:16:00] personality, what they need is they, they need some freedom and flexibility to feel that they can do things their way. To get things done. They, they, they understand that there are, that there are rules, there are barriers, there are walls.
But if they’re operating inside their own sandbox, they feel they have the ability to build their own castle. And, um, and, and having that sense of empowerment and, and I’ll tell you. That I had, that when I broke into sales, I had my two zip codes in Manhattan and I felt like that was my sandbox and I was able to build my, I was able to build my castle.
Um, If, if a high dominant person does not feel that, if they feel all kinds of restrictions, especially artificial restrictions, um, they, they, they will not, you know, they, they will not be able to, uh, to, to operate effectively. Sir, do you see sales teams higher on the high dominant salesperson and, [00:17:00] and then, and then basically like smother ’em out?
Um, depends on the nature of the organization, but absolutely. As you know, if you have an organization that’s really being run, you know, by a finance person, which is not terribly uncommon, um, you know, the, there, there is the sense that, that the salespeople need to be controlled. You know, they’re, they’re running too wild and then the methodology that gets that’s get put, put in place is exactly.
opposite what the high dominance person needs in, in order to be successful. Um, and they, they end up chasing those people out of the company. And, and I’ve seen that in, in technology. Companies, um, frequently, you know, when you’ve got either, um, you know, an engineer that may be, you know, has moved up the ranks and now is running the shop or somebody coming out of finances, you know, has moved up the ranks and is running the shop less so when it’s a, when it’s a [00:18:00] ceo that’s came out of the sales organization and to an extent to, to the marketing organization.
But, uh, and, and that’s cause of the control mechanisms. Uh, or, or get, get tight on the, on the D, on the high D personality. Right. Ex. Exactly. And then they don’t wanna operate. They don’t wanna operate cause they don’t feel like they have control. Well, but they, they, they need to know where their authority is.
Yes. And, um, and if they have that authority that, that, that authority needs to be, you know, that authority needs to be honored. Um, and, um, and, and that creates the environment for them to be in. Um, you know, the, the, the, the high extrovert needs a different world, the high extrover. Um, a absolutely needs to believe in what they’re selling because they feel that, um, whatever they sell is gonna be a reflection on them.
Um, they, they need to feel like the client is going to like them after they buy from them. And that can sometimes be a problem. , [00:19:00] but, um, but, but, but, but that sense of, uh, you know, that, that sense that I’m gonna be a hero. in the eyes of my customer, you know that that surgeon’s gonna be coming. Oh, Bob, you know, thank you so much for this great product that I now have.
You know, uh, my clients love me and I’ve never made more money in my life. I mean, , you know, that that’s what the high extrovert, you know, li lives and breeds. And then of course, internally, the, they live and breathe for the, you know, for the outer boy or ater girl. . You know, if you, if you ever go buy a sales bullpen and you see a, you know, in cubicles, you know, they’ve got a, you know, a, you know, I was salesman of the month in March of 1978.
Right. Well, those things never get taken down. , you know, they’re there for as long as the person is in the cubicle, so, so, yeah, the high extroverts have different needs. High patients, people have very different [00:20:00] needs. High patients, people have a harder time. This is why we talk about, you know, are certain profiles easier or better in a sales organization?
I know that there are high patient salespeople that can be very successful and very effective, but normally, and. Organization’s goals are opposite the nature of that high patients person, cuz that high patients person, you know, is, is, is got this attitude of like, you know, sooner or later you’re gonna buy from me.
I know it, you know. So, you know, sooner or later I’m gonna hang in there with you. And I understand you don’t have everything you need. I understand. You need to get more pe I I. No, no, I get it. I’m, I am a very understanding person, so I understand and when it happens, it’s gonna happen. And and, and you’re going, uh, that seems like death.
Well, in certain organizations it can work and uh, [00:21:00] we, we, we started working for a client, uh, outta Salt Lake and they had salespeople that didn’t have quotas. doesn’t have quotas. And um, whenever you sold it, you sold it. Now, of course, they also have terrible plans. , but, uh, but you know, so they had a bunch of salespeople that, that felt that pressure.
Like, what do you mean? Am I gonna close it this month? I don’t know. I’m gonna close it when they’re ready to buy. No, no, no, no, no. What is it that we can do to make it happen by January 31st? Yeah, yeah. Answer Tuesday. When are we, you know, what could we do? What could we do? What could we do? And they really have a hard time in that type of a pressure environment.
I mean, what would a high patient, salesperson fit? Like what kind of sales cycle does that person fit into government? So, Um, or very large corporations. We, we did work with, with an organization who [00:22:00] sold to up and down the street businesses and they had a major account sales team and the major account sales team had had accounts like UnitedHealthcare, general Motors.
international Harvester, um, those types of companies, non-financial institutions, cuz even the big financial institutions, there’s an aggressive nature to a Goldman Sachs or, you know, the, those organizations are different, but we’re talking about Heartland type of organizations. And this was their account manager.
This was the person who was gonna take care of them. You know, that was a, that was a perfect fit. And when we profiled their top performers, That that’s what we saw. Now, same thing. We did work for a company that was selling medical devices and they sold to, uh, to doctor’s offices, OBGYNs and cardiologists and different doctor’s offices, and they had a hospital sales team, the doctor’s office team.
more [00:23:00] aggressive, more extroverted, less patient. The hospital team, you know, they’ve been calling on that same purchasing agent at the, you know, United Methodist Hospital for 12 years and they went to the kids’ birthday and yeah, you know, they’re very peaceful type of people and they’re very successful in that.
Interesting. Then what about conform? What about a conformist? So the conformist needs needs a consistency more than anything else. So they need to know that the, um, that how do you sell nothing in sales is consistent. , nothing is consistent. It’s as, it’s as consistent as a chess game. I mean, what three moves into a chess game?
You have like, 3 billion options. It’s the same thing if you, if you try to do a, a tree diagram of a sales process, you know, you’re three moves into the tree and you got a million places to go. [00:24:00] So that definitely creates challenges for the high conformity profile that they do best in, uh, an engineer to engineer type of a.
So, um, a client that was selling, um, you know, relational database, uh, software into database administrators, and it, and it literally was in the budget of the D B A to decide which tool they were gonna buy. Yeah, there were, you know, there were a lot of high conformity people that operated, you know, very comfortably with that.
Um, so, so I mean, that’s an example that way. But I think, uh, maybe even a more relevant example is thinking, think about a business circumstance, um, that you may have and, and how you can help each of those, you know, each of those people deal with it. And, you know, let’s take an example that if you’ve been in sales for more than.
Two and a half weeks, somebody’s probably said no to you. You [00:25:00] know, and, and, and it could be, you know, in, in the middle of the sales process where things seem to have been going fine. And then all of a sudden somebody new was involved in the, in the transaction and they’re saying, no, I don’t think this is, uh, I don’t think this is what we need.
I don’t think this is the the direction we’re gonna go. And you have that. Oh, crap. Now you know, I thought I had this deal wrapped up. Now, now where am I gonna go? And you, and you are trying to manage the salesperson that’s, you know, that’s trying to deal with that. Well, what’s the high dominance person thinking?
The high dominance person is thinking? This person’s an idiot. I mean, , if they don’t see things my way, then you know, then, then, then they’re stupid and they may have a tendency to be critical of them and look down on them. Um, and, and, you know, May initially try to get the person to change their mind quickly, but if that doesn’t happen, they get frustrated [00:26:00] because they feel that this person has taken control away from them.
In the sales process, that anger needs to be controlled because that anger ain’t gonna get you to the promised land. You need to be able to figure out how you’re gonna be able to deal with. To be able to, the traditional things that we need to do as we need to be able to go. Yeah. I could understand based on what, you know, the information that’s been presented to you, how you could feel that way.
You know, I, I, I think I have some things that you’re probably not aware of. Give me an opportunity to, to share that with you, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and get them not to change their mind. Because they’re not gonna change their mind, but get ’em to make a new decision based on new information.
So you are helping. The point is you’re helping that high dominance person deal with that reaction that they would have [00:27:00] the high extrovert. When somebody says no to them, what’s the first thing they think? They think, this person doesn’t like me, . And they, and they get into the, oh, what’s the matter with me?
Why don’t they like me? And it’s like, eh, Bob, it’s not you buddy. It’s not, you know, they probably like you. Fine. You know, we know this. Most people like you, you’re a likable guy. I mean, that’s your personality. But, but let’s not deal with that cuz that’s not the problem. The problem is, That we’re missing a piece here.
Let’s see if we can figure out what the piece is. You know, , as an old sales manager, said to me, he said, there’s only two reasons why people aren’t buying you medicine. Number one, they don’t think they’re sick. And number two is they don’t think you’re a doctor, so, so which is it? , and what do we need to do to figure out how we need to be able to get that?
[00:28:00] And the same thing that, you know, they may be looking at something and the product, it may have a genuine deficiency, you know, like maybe you are missing attire. You know, so maybe there’s something that’s genuinely wrong or maybe they don’t have the right data, you know, which is it? If it’s a deficiency.
Is that deficiency really that critical to the decision? Uh, or has it just become, you know, has it just become, you know, a red spot on the nose that they’re focused on? Um, or is it not a deficiency? So get away from they like me, they don’t like me. You know, that’s got nothing to do with it. So you deal with that person differently.
Um, the, the high patience person, um, because they are more harmonious. by nature that there’s a tendency that they will go along with what other people say. You know, I don’t think this is right because of that. Oh yeah, I [00:29:00] get what you mean. I, yeah, no, I I can see that you, you, you know that for them to get around that.
They will need to put themselves in a confrontational situation. And people that are hiring patients, and especially if it comes with lower dominance, they hate confrontation. So the idea of saying to a prospect, especially if like this is one level above what they’ve been working with, you know, and say, with all due respect, Mr.
Big, you are wrong. Oh my God, I need for a high patience person to be able to get there, um, is really a challenge. So, oh, as a manager, what do you do to help that person recognize it doesn’t need to be confrontation through your ability to educate. Through your ability to help, you can help this person see things that they don’t see.
You know, again, whether it’s a, it’s a mistake on whether they [00:30:00] think that you have something or not. Oh, yeah. Let me show you, Mr. Prospect, we really do have four tires. Yep. You see, I know that one was blocked by the sun, but now can you see we really do have four fires Or you know, let me share with you why having three tires is really not such a, such a big problem, whatev, whatever the case may be.
So the point is, That if you’re gonna be an effective sales leader, you need to know where your people are coming from and how to and how to get them there. And by the way, just to complete the quadrant, the high conformity person will have a challenge with that situation because in their head, they had a roadmap.
And now that roadmap is being upset. So they were like, okay, I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna do that. I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna do that. And in the software business, we used to t salespeople like that, where you are in the middle of the demo and the prospect [00:31:00] says to you, this is great. I wanna buy it
And the high conformity salesperson says, wait, Mr. Prospect, I haven’t shown you the account’s payable application yet. , it’s like, You gotta know when it’s time to sell. So the point is that as a sales leader, you need to be able to apply the right medicine to what your salesperson needs to help them. Be successful because if you are not helping your salespeople be successful, then you are not earning your keep.
The only reason that you are getting paid to be a sales leader is to drive more sales. If you’re not gonna do that, we don’t. You don’t need to spend the money. So the question that sales leader has to ask themselves, what is it that I am doing that helps my salespeople generate more revenue for this?
All right. Well, this was super, Bob. [00:32:00] This was super insightful. I always love, I always love talking to you. Um, I think it was so good to kind of cover the, the different personalities to understand, you know, what motivates people. I, I also think that, you know, I’m, you’ve heard me say this before, I’m shocked at the number of leaders that don’t understand what makes their team tick.
Right. Um, and, um, so I appreciate you coming on. I appreciate you sharing. Um, how can people find you if they wanna, if they wanna talk to you about, uh, assessments or profiles? Um, absolutely. You can find me on LinkedIn. Send me a message through LinkedIn. It’s fine. You can go to the opus website, opus productivity.com.
Um, we’ve got a whole bunch of videos there that talk about different addicts of sales and sales management and leadership. And um, you know, we’re delighted to talk with you and brainstorm about what your challenges are. We’re happy to. Share the profile information with you, uh, seeing is believing. So I encourage you to [00:33:00] go through the exercise yourself and we’re happy to make that investment on you to help you better understand what it is that you can do with the information.
And then Shane, let’s plug on my end. So I got connected to Bob about, I don’t know, five years ago through a. Used Bob’s in mul Bob in multiple hires. Um, I had one hire specifically that I think he probably saved my, maybe saved the company on, uh, a strategic hire. We were gonna make, we absolutely best interview we’ve ever had.
Um, we go through the profile process. Bob. Bob says, Hey, there’s a couple things that, uh, concern me about this profile with this role. , um, do you know anybody that this particular person worked for? Um, I said I did, um, gave me some language to call this former employer, which I did. Uh, uh, VP of sales that I knew, and I asked him and he, um, gave me, um, feedback that was in line with what Bob [00:34:00] said around, uh, some concerns about how the person might perform in the role that we’d laid out.
So I feel like it really was pivotal, particularly where we were at. Um, it was high, it was high profile position, high pay, um, super critical. And, um, I, you know, I, I look at that as kind of, I can put a, I can get a e pin. I can get a pin out and I can be like, Hey, we made a really good decision to, um, to make sure that we have this person profiled in the process.
And I feel like we really, um, we do, we dodged a bullet. So I cannot talk enough about Bob, uh, about the stuff that he does, about the importance of, uh, profiles, um, particularly how they fit in with an organization and how you get along with people. And, um, you know, we’ve loved all the work that Opus has done and that Bob and his team have done.
And so I cannot, cannot, cannot, cannot, um, set up good stuff about, uh, Bob and his team. So Bob, thank it was awesome. Thanks.[00:35:00]