With the sales industry being faster than ever before, if you want to keep up and achieve the best results possible, you’ve got to be able to recognise your strengths and weaknesses. You can learn how to use or adapt your approach to better connect with your prospects and customers by considering your overall sales personality traits. Discover 10 sales personality types below to find what type of salesperson you are! (Alongside some helpful tips for improving your approach and skills)
Also read: 9 Different Types of Prospects and How To Sell to Them
What are Sales Personalities?
Sales personalities refer to the combination of traits, characteristics, and behaviours that are common among successful salespeople.
While not every successful salesperson will possess the same traits equally, by developing these traits and building their skills over time, salespeople can improve their performance and achieve greater career success.
For example, the type of sales personality you could have are the following:
- Order Taker
- Studious
- Script Reader
- Conversationalist
- Opener
- Empath
- Closers
- Chasers
- Networker
- Educator
Why Determine Your Sales Personality Type
As a salesperson, it’s crucial to understand your sales personality.
Knowing your strengths and weaknesses can help you tailor your sales approach to different types of customers and situations.
For example, if you can connect with others, focus on building rapport and establishing a personal connection with potential customers.
Or, if you’re more analytical and detail-oriented, provide data and statistics to support the value of your product or service.
Identifying areas where you need to improve, such as persistence or resilience, can help you become more effective.
By understanding your sales personality, you can improve your performance, build stronger customer relationships, and achieve greater success in your career.
With that said, let’s explore ten sales personality types to help you find yours:
10 Sales Personality Types: What Type of Salesperson Are You?
Discover the type of sales personality you have below!
1. Order Taker
Order takers don’t persuade customers to buy products, upsell or cross-sell; instead, they book customer orders and pass information to the relevant department. These systematic salespeople are accurate and always have up-to-date information about when an order has been booked and when it will be supplied.
While easy to contact, good at answering questions, and readily accessible to help anyone, the laidback order-taker sales personality likes to play the waiting game and is never assertive.
If you’re the order-taker sales rep, you’ll know that reliability is your core strength. Still, you prefer to wait too long for the right customer to come along – usually, someone who knows what they want in the transactional phase. While looking for new business may not be your best quality, you’re a trustworthy fit for familiar customers ready to buy.
2. Studious
If you have a studious sales personality, it makes sense that you’re here. You’re a lifelong learner and believe sales is a science, not just an art and most likely already have a few sales theories waiting to be made into a book. However, studious sales reps still believe they’re a work in progress, which spurs you always to be a better salesperson.
As a result, your product knowledge is immaculate (obviously), and because you’re data-driven- a master of your CRM.
These sales skills and qualities mean that you can answer prospect objections and questions in record time while ensuring they get all the valuable information they need.
3. Script Reader
Script readers rely on using the same sales phone script, sales and elevator pitch for every potential customer.
While this provides customers with a reliable, comfortable and uniform brand experience, it means missing out on prime opportunities to cross or upsell.
Overall, script reader salespeople are strongly suited to businesses where the brand is a large piece of the sale. However, there’s always room to customise actions and words for each interaction to make the most of their time with customers.
4. Conversationalist
The conversationalist salesperson’s strength is creating a welcoming, warm, and relatable first impression.
Conversationalists instantly put prospects at ease by prioritising their needs and want, meaning most of their customers are often repeat or returning purchasers.
The only real downside to this type of sales rep is their inability to close sales, preferring not to be seen as “pushy” or overbearing.
The good news is that these types of salespeople are an excellent match for luxury retail environments where customers mostly pay for the sales experience.
Also read: The Ultimate Guide To Objection Handling
5. Opener
Openers are masters of connecting with prospects, so much so that they have tons of leads ready for the pipeline.
This type of salesperson focuses on reaching out to prospects and is most energetic when making cold calls, sending emails and delivering sales meetings or presentations. The downfall of opener salespeople is that they don’t always remember to follow up with the client more than once and in different ways.
As a result, they often lose the sale because they can’t keep the customer thinking of them after the initial impression.
6. Empath
Empaths are the most insightful type of sales personality. Their main strength is tuning into the lead’s needs and wants quickly by noting subtle social cues while listening to everything they say.
As a result, they’re successful persuaders who seamlessly tap into different buying motivations and make it their mission to connect prospects with products that benefit them greatly.
Overall, empath salespeople don’t just care about making the sale; they want to make customers’ lives easier – and will always give exceptional value to every sale they make.
7. Closers
Closer salespeople have goal-orientated, driven and bold sales personalities and can always ask for the sale without being pushy. They have a magnetic enthusiasm that helps them reach new customers and close deals quickly when they listen intently to their needs, challenges and wants.
The pitfall for closers is their need to consistently make sales, which means they often lose focus on small but trusted sales relationships.
8. Chasers
Chasers are the master of the follow-up sales cadence. This type of salesperson is relentless by nature and will contact prospects until they get the desired result. However, chasers can often overlook the need to listen to customers and often lose out on a sale because they didn’t balance the desire to close the deal with their needs and preferences.
9. Networker
Networkers are the life and soul of the party as they seek out situations to meet new people.
Networking salespeople are at their strongest when making planned or unexpected connections; they welcome every opportunity to meet new clients and start new relationships with others. The only downfall of the networker is when they neglect follow-up messaging to turn connections into sales because they’re too busy nurturing trusted relationships.
10. Educator
The Educator salesperson prioritises the product as the focus of the sales process by guiding conversations with either a skilled hands-on demonstration or a thorough explanation that best suits the need of customers.
These types of salespeople have a fluid ability to condense complex products down for consumers and instil confidence in their purchases. You’ll often find this type of salesperson in tech or SaaS sales because of their ability to explain complex products and core people skills needed to build rapport and trust, a winning combination.
Also read:
- 6 Personality Traits of a Good Salesperson Vs. a Bad Salesperson
- The Ultimate Guide To Different Sales Roles
- 8 Types Of Sales Pitches Every Salesperson Should Know & Use
Final word: What Makes a Great Salesperson?
A great salesperson does more than pitch solutions. They’re enthusiastic, resilient, and deeply empathetic about their prospects’ problems and issues. More so, they have a genuine passion for taking the time to understand, identify and explain customers’ needs alongside boasting expert product knowledge that never fails to satisfy.
Overall great salespeople have mastered how to be intuitive and consistent at the same time. Discover more characteristics that make all great salespeople below:
Tips to Improve Your Sales Personality & Skills
If you’re not quite where you want to be, discover several tips to improve your sales skills, regardless of your sales personality type below:
Believe in What You Sell
More so, know everything you can about the product you sell. When you believe in what you’re selling and genuinely like the product, you’ll always make more compelling sales. That’s because becoming a product expert will simplify and shorten the buying process for your customers.
Read Sales books
Maybe it’s time to mix things up with some good old-fashioned reading to pick up some new skills. Considering Mark Cuban states that he spends three hours reading every day, it can’t hurt to try! Check out our top 10 recommended best sales books on how to sell that will help you fine-tune your sales skills in no time.
Watch Sales Training Videos
The reality is the internet is full of free sales training videos suggesting that they’re the best, but when you’re upskilling, there isn’t any time (or money) to lose on vague and outdated videos. That’s why we’ve put together a selection of expert free online sales training videos we’re sure will help you change the way you sell and ultimately help you sell like a pro. Check it out: Learn To Sell Like A Pro: 19 Best FREE Online Sales Training Videos
Also read: 20 Sales Expert Lessons From 20 Years In Business
Listen to Sales Podcasts
We know you’re always busy, making finding time to explore new sales skills or strategies tricky. The answer to learning quickly on the go is sales podcasts. Don’t waste time scouring the web for hours, though; pick one of the best sales podcasts from this article and get started – it’s that easy!
Listen to the Customer
If you want your potential customer to pay attention to what you say, you have to be willing to listen to them first. That doesn’t mean just giving your prospect time to speak, but actively listening to what they have to say.
By dialling back your presence, you allow the prospect to speak and gain a unique insight into their problem – giving you a better chance at pitching the solution and ultimately making that deal. Not only that, but it helps to build initial rapport and proves to the customer that you value what they have to say.
Be Resilient and Persistent
There is no doubt about it; working in sales is full of rejections. That’s why you need to know how to avoid becoming discouraged when you hear the word “No,” over and over again. Instead, you must be persistent and find other ways to get the desired result.
Fast Track Sales Success with SOCO/ Academy
Sales is a skill that needs to be learnt, practised and mastered. Do that anywhere and anytime with In Certified Sales SOCO Academy courses, where you learn the skills all sales professionals and small business owners need to master to be effective in sales.
Not sure which of the top sales training programs is right for you? Book an appointment with one of our program advisors, who will be happy to build the right training plan for you.
