Personality Traits

There is no magic way to understand people but there are some tricks that can help you quickly analyze a person's primary personality traits to help you understand the best way to deal with them the way they want to be treated.

In the charts with this article there are two crossing lines. The horizontal line represents decision making. People whose personality is above the line make decisions quickly. Those whose personality falls below are slow decision makers. The vertical line represents the basis on which people make decisions. People to the left of the line make decisions based on fact. Those to the right make decisions based primarily on emotions.

The Pragmatic is a fast decision maker and bases his/her decision on facts. If you are selling to this group you need to present as many facts as you can. The Pragmatic is likely to compare your facts to your competitors and make a quick decision based on the available facts.  A Pragmatic will likely be confident in their decision once it is made and rarely look back to second guess themselves. Many executives fall into this group.

The Social is a fast decision maker but is more likely to base his/her decision on emotions. If you are selling to them they want to be entertained. They will purchase based on looks. In housing these were the most likely to buy the first time they visited the site because they looked how the house looked from the street. They were more concerned with the decorating than the structure of the house. It is also hard to keep their attention. If a social is buying from you it will be easy for a competitor to steel them. Of course, they are just as likely to lose them in turn.

An Analyzer is a slow decision maker that makes decision on facts…. lots of facts.  Many engineers fall into this group. They want to know every possible fact even facts you might consider trivial. We had an Analyzer who was considering buying a house from us. He kept calling and had us chasing facts for him; how many gallons per minutes does the sump pump pump, how wide is a grout joint in the floor tile, where is the lumber harvested, what is the absorption coefficient of engineered lumber and on and on and on. He might still be asking questions if his Social wife had not told him to buy the house or they were going to have to live in their car. If you sell to an Analyzer he will often share the facts he learned with a lot of people.

A Loyal is a slow decision maker who wants to make decisions based on feeling. They will want to get to know you before they buy.  They may say things like "this purchase does not feel right yet."  To sell to someone like this you will need to stress how many happy customers you have and how well your service is after the sales. They may drive you crazy at the initial sale but if you are looking for repeat sales they are extremely loyal to people that they do decide to purchase from.

Pragmatic, Social, Analyzer, Loyal; this is not an exact science and many people will fit in one category but leaning toward another. Try it next time you meet someone. You will be surprised how often it helps you understand the people with whom you are dealing.

Original Content copyright 2010 Thomas Robinson