Recognising challenging personality differences: Part 1

Click on this link to go to the site where the original image was sourced from.

For every individual working in a customer services or sales role, highly developed people skills are the single most important attribute they need to succeed. While most of us are adept at communicating with those who share similar experiences or outlooks as ourselves, the skill of a sales professional is in their ability to communicate effectively with those from diverse backgrounds and with challenging personality traits.

While we use numerous scales and personality groupings internally (StrengthsFinder, Myers Briggs etc.), we find Jay Conrad Levinson’s approach to be the most beneficial in sales situations.

Guerrilla Selling

Jay Conrad Levinson’s approach was first outlined in his 1992 book ‘Guerrilla Selling’, which built upon elements of the work of Piaget (Swiss philosopher), Maslow (American sociologist), Sperry (Nobel laureate), Kohlberg (Harvard Professor) and the esteemed psychologists Schoonmaker, Wolf and Black. The approach Levinson identified was adapted from clinical environments, validated in business situations and is still just as reliable today as it was when ‘Guerrilla Selling’ was first published.

The benefits of Levinson’s approach

Levinson’s approach is particularly effective as it provides individuals working in customer facing roles with the ability to:

  • Move from one phase of the selling process to the next at will
  • Identify where personality conflicts are created
  • Improve the atmosphere that surrounds selling relationships
  • Gain the psychological high ground
  • Exhibit confidence and inspire it in others
  • Create relationships which are based on mutual trust, shared concerns and open communication

Perhaps the biggest boon provided by this approach is the ability to identify and isolate the most challenging personality types within the first minute of a sales interaction.

The three most common personality types

In his book, Levinson identified and outlined the seven personality types sales and customer services professionals will encounter. These include:

  • Amorals
  • Egos
  • Pleasers (Amiables)
  • Authorities (Analytics)
  • Principles
  • Responsibles
  • Universals

Of these, egos, pleasers and authorities are the most common personality types. To learn more, stay tuned to the LiveseySolar blog, where each of our next three posts will identify and outline the traits of one of these three personality types and provide actionable tips to improve your selling techniques. In the second part of our Recognising Challenging Personality Differences series, we will have a closer look at the egos.

Get your Practice Marketing Score

Take our FREE “Practice Marketing” quiz. Get your score and benchmark yourself to practices around the world.

Find articles on:

What our clients say…

“In a matter of weeks, we already saw results with LiveseySolar. Far before we were even finished with our project.”

Erik Chotiner, MD, FACS, Ophthalmologist

“The whole group has been very, very professional. We’re quite early in the stages, but we can see the benefits.”

Dr Nick Mantell , MBChB FRANZCO

“They’re very professional. They know what they’re doing, but they also put us at ease. This helped us to cut through what’s needed to get what we want.”

Mr Praveen Patel, MA (Cantab), MB BChir (Cantab), FRCOphth, MD (Res)

“It’s wonderful to work with an agency that engages on our level and understands our market.”

Dr Anton Van Heerden, MBChB; FRANZCO, Ophthalmologist

Get your Practice Marketing Score

Take our FREE “Practice Marketing” quiz. Get your score and benchmark yourself to practices around the world.

Meet our Founders

We’re passionate about helping leaders of high-quality, growth-minded practice owners double their practice revenue

Rod Solar

Founder & Scalable Business Advisor

Rod co-founded LiveseySolar and acts as a Fractional CMO and Scalable Business Advisor for our customers. He’s on a mission to help transform the lives of 10,000 people with vision correction surgery by 2024. To achieve that, he inspires his customers to make confident decisions that will help 50,000 people take the first step towards vision correction.

Read more

LiveseySolar completely transformed the way we were approaching this… We’ve gone from having just the dream of having a practice to having a practice up and running with people making inquiries and booking for procedures… It’s extremely pleasing. We feel lucky we connected with LiveseySolar.

— Dr Matthew Russell, MBChB, FRANZCO, specialist ophthalmic surgeon and founder of VSON and OKKO

Laura Livesey

Founder & CEO

Laura Livesey is the co-founder & CEO of LiveseySolar. She has developed powerful refractive surgery marketing systems that increase patient volumes and profits for doctors, clinics, and hospitals, since 1997.

Read more

Rod and Laura know as much about marketing surgery to patients as I know about performing it. They are an expert in the field of laser eye surgery marketing. They know this industry inside out. I believe that they could help many companies in a variety of areas including marketing materials, sales training and marketing support for doctors.

— Prof. Dan Reinstein, MD MA FRSC DABO, founder of the London Vision Clinic, UK