Episode 28 - Typing Someone Based On the Words They Use

Customer Secrets

If you're in a face-to-face sales situation, where you can observe the other person's behavior for long periods of time, how do you type them? The only clues you have to work with are the words that they use when they speak to you, or the written correspondence they may send to you.

In a previous episode, I talked about the 5-step method of typing someone. Just for reference, those steps were:

• Playing the percentages - The population isn't evenly split up between the four different personality temperaments. Two temperaments make up about 76% of the population. So that is where you should "guess" first.
• Context - Why context as a clue? Because people are magnetically drawn to some situations, and repulsed by others. This can give you a clue to their personality type.
• Eliminate Obvious Mis-matches - There is almost only one personality temperament group that you can eliminate quickly because there are no clues to support them being in that temperament. By eliminating one or two temperament types, you've increased the odds of nailing their personality temperament immensely.
• "The Look." - Personality temperament is genetic. It leaves physical clues on people. By reading those clues, you can use to narrow down their personality type by simply looking at them in a photograph.
• How they Talk - This is what we're talking about in this episode. We're going deep here...

In the "How they talk" category, we're going to look/listen for four different sets of clues. They are:

1. The Theme - the general type of things that they talk about.
2. The Style - How they express the theme.
3. Specific phrases or words that they are use that are associated with a specific temperament
4. The values that they hold up to be success principles. - This is the final arbitrator that we'll use to specifically type them. So if there is any ambiguity when typing them, this is the category that will put the final nail in the coffin - so to speak. Personality temperament and "values" are just different sides of the same coin. By knowing either, you can deduce the other.

In this specific episode, we're going to look at the temperament that I call the "Warriors." For reference, the definition of this temperament is the person that has the Sensing-Perceiving traits from Myers-Briggs. I also call them the S-P types.