Understanding Your Sales Personality with Ryan Schreiber and Ann Holm
Joe Lynch is joined by Ann Holm and Ryan Schreiber to discuss sales personality type. When you understand your sales personality type it enables you to play to your strengths and account for your blind spots. Knowing your individual sales personality type leads to greater self-awareness, a starting point for self-improvement activities, and better sales results.
About Ryan Schreiber
Ryan is the Director of Engagement at CarrierDirect in Chicago. Ryan was born and raised in Tampa Florida. Ryan earned a degree in History from the University of South Florida and then a Law degree from Michigan State University. Prior to joining CarrierDirect, Ryan worked at a variety of logistics companies and even started and exited a few tech-enabled freight brokerage start-ups. Ryan is a skilled technologist and strategist who has helped transform many leading transportation and logistics companies. In Ryan’s experience great technology is important but finding and keeping the right people is the key to success in the 3PL business.
About Carrier Direct
Since 2011 carriers, 3PLs, shippers, and logistics technology vendors have looked to CarrierDirect to deliver the efficiency, strategy, go-to-market plans, and technology that will elevate their business above their competition. CarrierDirect builds organizations and relationships, providing strategy and technology designed to maximize efficiency, reduce cost, and make your business stand out. CarrierDirect advises clients on the elements of their business most vital to success: strategy, organizational structure, compensation, technology, training, recruiting, workflows, processes, and more. CarrierDirect clients include Werner, J.B. Hunt, Covenant, CRST, and FedEx.
Finding Your Sales Personality
- The process to discover your personality type is a simple one. Ann provides a link to an online assessment. The assessment is easy and fun and takes about 20 minutes to complete.
- After you receive your customized report, you schedule time with your coach (Ann). In your coaching session, you review and discuss your sales personality type report with Ann. Ann explains the nuances of the report. Utilizing this approach helps salespeople identify strengths and blind spots, which leads to greater self-awareness, improved capability and ultimately more sales. points.
- Finding your personality type can help you to apply what you learn to your role at work and what aspects you can leverage for the best results.
Ryan’s Impression of the Process
- It has a two-fold value: 1) Taking the assessment allowed him to highlight aspects of his personality he was not aware of previously and 2) Having a professional come in and add depth to the things that originally didn’t mesh with him.
- Initially, Ryan found the assessment to be about 80% true and about 20% not quite accurate. During his consultation with Ann, Ryan was able to help clarify these traits and allowed Ryan to crystallize the interpretation in his own mind.
Ryan’s Sales Personality
- Ryan was assessed as an ENFP. The results are evaluated by which way you learn more, rather than a binary result. No one is purely one thing; we are all comprised of different personality traits and combinations. The definition is split into 4 different groups: Extroversion vs. Introversion, Sensing vs. Intuition, Values vs, Logic, and Routine vs. Spontaneity.
- Ryan tells us how this fits with him in various different ways, such as how he remembers things related to concepts rather than details. He also has always seen himself as more of an introvert but after consulting with Ann realized that he does form relationships easily and has a natural ability to connect with people.
Contextualizing Personality with Sales
- Ryan and Ann discuss how he is an ‘ideas generator’, a typical aspect of ENFP personalities and how the assessment revealed his problems with handing off ideas.
- This identifies areas of strength and areas to be improved for Ryan in regard to teamwork. He is able to generate excitement within his team very easily but has issues finding that balance of sharing with his team.
- It is typically a trait of Ryan’s to have unrealistic expectations about what is possible. He has found he struggles with realistic timelines and needs to open up to others definition of realistic.
- The benefits of finding out your personality type is the ability to work on becoming a more well-rounded individual.
- Organization is a typical stumbling block for ENFP’s like Ryan. Ryan feels like he is organized, but his approach is different than most people.
- When it comes to opening and closing sales, ENFPs are natural openers and Ryan agrees. He has much more trouble in closing sales as he gets bogged down in details. Ann recommended that Ryan partner with someone who is very good with details to enable Ryan to close more deals. Becoming aware of his blind spots will also enable Ryan to be more aware when he is dealing with a difficult area.
Noteworthy Questions
- [3:56] Ryan, what are some of your impressions on going through the process of finding your sales personality?
- [17:12] What does the collaborative environment look like in your work?
- [23:44] Let’s talk about opening versus closing in the sales process.
Key Takeaways
- Knowing your personality type allows you to set goals within a situational framework to improve your performance at work.
- It allows for the ability to open up with your team regarding strengths and weaknesses allowing for better cooperation.
- It provides the ability to see things from different perspectives, and why other people think differently will allow for more cohesive teams.
Learn More
Ryan Schreiber LinkedIn profile