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: Pla...

In selling, professionals are told that story telling is one of the keys to making an emotional connection with customers, as it bypasses the logic-center of their brain. But nobody talks about the reason why customers are listening to those boring stories. What is in it for them? When you understand the reason that customers have for listening to stories, you as a salesman can craft better storie...

The term "up-speak" refers to the tendency when talking to end sentences with a rising tone of voice. It is also called "high rising terminal" talking if you happen to google it. This episode is about using this particular behavior as a clue which allows you to instantly type someone as having the preferences of Sensing (S), Feeling (F), and Perceiving (P) in their Myers-Briggs personality nomencl...

In episode 24, we started a discussion about the differences in sales bots and humans. Sales bots, like Amazon are killing it right now. If we want to sell more, it is important to note that the other things that Bots don't do. It just might be that the things that humans do might just be the reason that we find it so difficult to make a sale. Previously, we noted that sales bots don't ask questio...

Online sales increase every year, while offline sales stagnate. Obviously, the A.I. bots are doing something right. Not so obvious is what they don't do that humans are. The question should be: "What are we as humans doing that is screwing up our chances of making the sale?" This is a question that few people are asking. The reason they don't ask, is that if we find out the real answer, and it goe...

What are the reasons that personality marketing tactics have not been successful in the past? What is different about what we're doing here? Does it really work? These are the questions we're going to tackle in this episode. Michael starts off this episode with his journey in his search for the tool that would help him get to know his customers. It is pretty impassioned, and will have you feeling...

I recently read an article by Dario Nardi called "Factoids re MBTI® instrument and 16 Types" and I wanted to discuss a few key points that Dario brings up. He is of the "Strategist" personality temperament, meaning that in his Myers-Briggs type, he has the letters N and T. The "N" is for Intuition, and the "T" is for Thinking.  Not only are we discussing the points of his article -- which I a...

In this episode, Michael Abdo and Tim Van Milligan talk about how artificial intelligence works. But more than that, we'll talk about how it has changed marketing because it allows you to target specific customers that have values that match your own. But the thing about AI, is that right now it is like a child. Without specific training, it it dumb. It needs a lot of data for it to be useful. An...

What is on the horizon for where personality marketing is going? We're going to make predictions on what we think you'll see coming in the world of advertising and marketing. But the pace of change is happening so quickly, that some of our predictions are already here. Did you know there is already an app that will tell you the personality type of that woman you want to connect with on Linkedin. N...

Why is it that people can't seem to dial in on their true personality type? Why is it that they seem to jump from one set of personality traits to another, each time they take a personality assessment? Does personality really change like that? And why is it that people think that being in the middle on a particular trait, like half-way between an introvert and an extrovert is the optimum for a hum...

One of the common complaints about taking personality quizzes is that they don't seem to be consistent. Every time you take one, you might come back with a different set of personality traits. One time you might be an ENFP, and the next time it comes back saying you're a ENFJ. Which is it? Which is more accurate? In this episode of the Customer-Secrets podcast, we'll tackle that question and why w...

Cambridge Analytica used personality data on a massive scale to influence the 2016 Presidential elections. They proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that using psychographic marketing really does work. If you're not using it in your business to attract and to get customers to take action by buying your products, you're ignoring a new scientific tool that has infinite upside potential. What Cambridge...

"The scientific evidence is consistent and clear: one can increase the effectiveness of marketing messages and other types of persuasive communication by tailoring them to people’s psychological profiles” - Harvard Business Review (May 2, 2018). https://hbr.org/2018/05/what-marketers-should-know-about-personality-based-marketing   We're answering the question in this episode about what proof...

Why do people hate dealing with salespeople? The reason is that salespeople are taught to ask questions. Sounds harmless, doesn't it. What is so controversial as a "question?" But there is one negative aspect of asking questions that nobody talks about. That is this: "questions demand engagement." By engagement, I mean that the recipient of the question has to stop what they are doing, and address...

"Personality" is a leading indicator. That means it can show up in a room, even before a person enters the room. It is like the light from the headlights on your automobile. Even before you can see the car on a dark road, you know that a car is approaching you because the light from the headlights is penetrating the darkness. You don't need to meet a person, to get a clue to their personality type...

You may have heard that customers want "value," and therefore you should be building value when presenting your product or service.  I'm a contrarian salesperson, so I don't always agree with the standard wisdom that we've all been taught as gospel.  In this case, I think building value is 80% correct. What's missing is the "values." There is a big difference between building value and w...

In selling, when you ask for the sale, you'll often get the response from the customer that goes: "I want to think about it." Why are you getting that response? And what can you do about it? The most likely reason you're getting the response is because there is a clash in values that is causing the customer to want to get away from you.  Find out more by listening now.

What is the process of typing a person's personality? A listener wants to quickly analyze and profile the people he talks to that come in for a sales presentation. In this episode, I go through my 5-step personality typing process. They are: playing the percentages, the context (likes-attract-likes), seeing a visual image of the person to see what they value, evaluating the words they use (specifi...

“People buy with emotions and justify with logic.” This is a good strategy to use in selling. But what emotions? What are the tactics that you use to implement this strategy? How do you trigger the emotions when you are selling? For that matter, what “emotions” are you supposed to trigger? There is a gap between the strategy and the tactics that left me wanting. I am a logistical person, and I nee...

You can type someone’s personality is seconds if you know what to look and listen for. On this episode of the Customer Secrets podcast, we’re going to look at a very common type of personality temperament that encompasses about 38% of all people in the world.  What is common about this group is that in the Myers-Briggs nomenclature, they have the preferences of Sensing and Perceiving. In other wor...

In previous episodes, I made the claim that a lot of people mistype themselves, and I called "foul" on them. The most common misclassification is the person believing that they have the intuition (N) preference rather than the sensing preference in Myers Briggs. OK. How do I know that? That is a bold claim to make if it isn't true. So what method do I use to type people? The process of typing peop...

According to researcher David Keirsey in his book Please Understand Me, only about 24% of the population has the intuition preference. I tend to agree with that research. So how can it be that 90% of the podcast hosts, who try to describe the Myers Briggs system have the intuition trait? The answer is that they don't have it. They just want to have it. Everyone - and I mean "everyone," wants to ha...

The Keirsey Temperament Sorter is a not stand-alone system, but is linked to the Myers Briggs System. What David Keirsy does with the system he created is to tie the four temperaments to specific personality dimensions from the Myer's Briggs. We like the Myers Briggs for selling because it is about how decisions are made. Most people see personality as "behavior," because it is easy to pick up by...

What makes the DiSC personality system so popular? How is it different than the Myers-Briggs system (and the MBTI)? What makes DiSC useful in business? And why isn't it used much in the selling process? These are the types of questions that I'd like to explore in this episode.

Would you like to know the real difference between the most popular online personality assessment (MBTI) and the one used in universities? In this episode, the Myers-Briggs personality archetype is compared to the Big-5 personality model. How are they similar, and how are they different. We'll also discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of each of them. And at the end, we'll start taking the best...