Most of us have heard the expression "salespeople are born, not made". This saying fits with our experience in measuring temperament/behavior patterns. Since our temperament is established fairly early on in our life, we would expect that our selling orientation would also be established, if not at birth, then shortly thereafter.

The McQuaig System identifies eight behavioral characteristics:

• Dominance/Acceptance
• Sociability/Analytical Thinking
• Relaxation/Drive
• Compliance/Independence

While we all have all eight of these characteristics in us, some of us have much more of some than we do of others. And it is the predominance of certain characteristics in us which predicts how we behave on the job.

The research that we have done with people in competitive sales roles over the past three decades has confirmed that there is a solid correlation between sales success and strong Dominance, Drive and Independence.

But for those of you with a background in sales, you know that, as the marketplace changes, customers buy differently, which in turn is reflected in the way we sell. A client of ours, a Sales Vice President, recently stated that the aggressive, hard-nosed tactics he had used when cutting his teeth in sales twenty years ago just wouldn’t work in today’s sophisticated selling environment. There has been plenty written in the past decade about "Consultative Selling", "Relationship Selling", "Conceptual Selling" and so on. These books and articles focus on the salesperson’s ability to understand their customers’ businesses and position their product as one that improves the customers’ bottom line.

So how might the profiles of salespeople of the present differ from those of the more traditional salesperson – the one who knocks on a lot of doors and knows that it takes one hundred "no’s" to get one "yes".

Let’s take a look at some typical sales profiles we see in the marketplace and discuss how they do things differently. In the next few pages we answer the questions:

What turns them on about selling? What are they like when they are at their best and at their worst? What are they like around the office? What advice can we offer to help them be more effective?

• Generalists
• Enthusiasts
• Pioneers
• Cooperators
• Administrators
• Specialists

If you’d like more information about our McQuaig System, just fill in the More Information form.