Your greatest sales strength may also be costing you

Jody,

Your Natural Strengths and Challenges in Selling

Could the quality that makes you especially effective with one customer be the same quality creating difficulty with another?

A salesperson’s confidence can feel like pressure. Enthusiasm can look like a lack of preparation. Patience can delay a decision. Product knowledge can become far more information than the customer needs.

DISC is a behavioral assessment that identifies four primary Styles—Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance—and I use it to help salespeople and managers recognize the natural strengths and challenges affecting their performance.

Every DISC Style has advantages and disadvantages built into its wiring.

As you evaluate your effectiveness, notice which qualities are second nature for you and which ones you have acquired over time.

For salespeople:
Notice which of these qualities you possess. Notice where they have helped you and where they may be affecting your performance, engagement, and results.

Do not use DISC to excuse behavior.

“I am a High I, so I am simply not organized,” is not a strategy.

“I am a High S, so I do not like to ask for the sale,” does not help the customer make a decision.

Your Style explains what may come naturally to you. It does not remove your responsibility to develop the skills the job requires.

For sales managers:
Notice how your own qualities affect your coaching meetings, your organization and preparation, and what you reward or encourage in others.

Managers often reward employees who behave the way they do.

A Dominance manager may reward speed and results but overlook the value of patience and connection. A Compliance manager may reward accuracy while becoming frustrated with someone who thinks aloud or works more spontaneously.

Notice your flexibility with sales associates who are different from you.

This also matters when you are hiring.

The candidate you connect with most easily may simply communicate like you. That does not automatically make them the best person for the position.

DISC can help you look beyond whether you “liked” the candidate and consider how they may approach customers, structure their work, respond to pressure, follow a process, and function within the existing team.

Understanding People Is Only the Beginning

Knowing someone’s DISC Style is useful.

Knowing how to train, coach, direct, and hold that person accountable is management.

The next Sales Management Training cohort begins in October. In the program, we move beyond identifying behavior and focus on the actions managers must take to improve individual performance and produce measurable sales results.

In the meantime, join me for this month’s free Sales Skills session on understanding your own DISC Style:

Free Skills Sessions

Now, go and just notice yourself!