Nothing worse could happen to one than to be completely understood.
—Carl Gustav Jung

Another powerful force that influences the behaviors of people and organizations is their behavioral tendencies. These behaviors are innate in the individual or the organization. In individuals, behavioral tendencies often are referred to as personality traits or temperament. In organizations, behavioral tendencies often are referred to as organizational culture.

In Forceful Selling, I defined a model called the Six Change Types, which coincidentally uses six factors, listed below, to assess people’s ability and willingness to change, that is, their “change temperament.” We’ll discuss each of the change types (the animal metaphors depicted in the illustration on the opposite page) in more detail in Section 4, Change Response Analysis.

Anxiety. What kind of emotional “baggage” “hangs up” this person from adapting and changing effectively?

Stability. To what degree is the person prone to swings of emotion and neurotic behavior?

Action. Does the person have a high energy level and inclination for moving forward and solving problems?

Confidence. Is the person willing to venture into the unknown?

Openness. To what degree is the person receptive to new ideas and aware of multiple perspectives?

Risk tolerance. How much risk is the person willing to accept?

Every person is different and every person’s unique personality traits will form a unique set of forces that drive her behavior and how she changes. Assess each of your customers with the six factors to understand how their personalities influence their buying behaviors.

You likely already have an intuitive feel for your customers’ personalities and their abilities to change. Use the six factors and the Six Change Types model to communicate clearly among your sales team the customer’s characteristics in concrete terms.
Read Please Understand Me II, by David Keirsey for a thorough description of the sixteen personality types in his temperament model. Determine which temperament most closely matches your customer; then interact with the customer in the way most valued by that temperament.

Assess customers using the six factors (Six Change Types model). Determine customers’ temperaments (Keirsey Temperament Sorter). Use these two models to predict customer behavior and desired changes.