How To Relate to Any Prospect

Personality Temperaments I once heard Brian Tracy, a well known self-help author, say that “fully 85 per cent of your happiness in life will come from your personal relationships. The other 15 per cent will come from your accomplishments.” The more I think about it, the more I realise this statement is true. Your success is heavily dependent on the quality of the relationships you develop.

Network Marketing, more than any other form of business, is a relationships business. Its entire philosphy is people helping other people to become financially independent. And therefore, understanding people is an essential skill to have.

The more you study people and understand them, the better you can relate. And the better you can relate, the better you’ll be able to help others. The more you help others, more successful you’ll be.

Being able to understand your prospect builds trust between you and him. Unfortunately, this is where many network marketers go wrong. MLM’ers complain that “THEY just don’t understand our business and how wonderful it is”. You have to get this – it’s NOT up to them to understand you, it’s up to YOU to understand THEM. Understanding people builds trust. Trust builds relationships. Relationships build success.

Understanding people first comes from understanding the personality types and how they operate in this world. Learning the personality types is a fun and easy exercise. So let’s do it!

Here’s a quick activity that you can do to really help you understand the personality types. On a blank sheet of paper, draw a horizontal line bisected by a vertical line, so that you have four (4) quadrants.

At the North position write the word “Open”. At the South position, write the word “Self Contained”. At the East position, write “Direct”, and at the West position “Indirect”.

Also at the North postion, write the words “People Focused”, at the South position, write “Task Focused”, at the East position, write “Extroverted” and at the West position, write “Introverted”.

Now, here’s the fun part. In the top left-hand quadrant, write “Relator”. In the top right-hand quadrant, write “Enthusiast”. In the lower right-hand quadrant write “Commander” and in the lower left-hand quadrant, write “Analyst”

You now have the four fundamental personality temperaments (types) – Relator, Enthusiast, Commander and Analyst – and you also have their characteristics.

Each individual in the world is a combination of all of these personalities, but personality stands out above the rest – their primary personality.

To help you better understand the characteristics of each personality type, we can use adjectives, animals, colours and their most likely occupations to describe them.

The Relator

Adjectives: Honest, Dependable, Passive, Considerate, Understanding, Helpful
Animal(s): Koala, Labrador
Colour: Yellow
Occupations: Teacher, Nurse, Counselor
Percentage of the population: 35%

The Enthusiast

Adjectives: Optimistic, Charming, Outgoing, Sociable, Motivating, Exploring
Animal(s): Chimpanzee, Peacock
Colour: Blue
Occupations: Sales, Entertainment, Public Speaker
Percentage of the population: 15%

The Commander

Adjectives: Decisive, Determined, Blunt, Indifferent, Competitive, Strong willed, Quick tempered
Animal(s): Bull, Shark
Colour: Red
Occupation: CEO, Attorney, Politician
Percentage of the population: 15%

The Analyst

Adjectives: Perfect, Logical, Tactful, Reserved, Investigating, Systematic, Careful
Animal(s): Owl
Colour: Green
Occupation: Accountant, Engineer, Research Scientist
Percentage of the population: 35%

So as you can see, each personality behaves differently, has a different set of values and is motivated by different things. Therefore every personality must be treated differently.

In subsequent articles, I will go deeper into how to interact with each of the temperaments.

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To your MLM success,

Wayne Wu
Founder, The Profitable Networker

P.S. I would love your input! If you have an opinion that would contribute to this discussion, please leave me a comment below.

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