by Buzz Bainbridge,TRACOM's Managing Director of National Accounts

Most sales professionals prefer selling to customers with one particular SOCIAL STYLE.  Years ago I taught a selling course built around SOCIAL STYLE. But before introducing the Model, we showed the class four short video clips with four different people speaking about how they make buying decisions. After hearing the Amiable Style person, some sales people in the class would say that they love selling to this Style because they can “steam-roll” them and easily persuade them. Others would say they would make them their friend and then sell to them. Others would say they don’t like selling to this Style because he/she can never take a risk, are slow in making decisions, and need lots of internal support before they commit.

There were different reactions to the Driving Style. Some of the class would say that this person is too tough and would put you through the “meat grinder” to earn the right to get the business. Some felt he/she would be extremely demanding once you got the business. Many sales pros liked selling to this Style, citing the person’s willingness to make quick decisions based on facts and that you always know where you stand.

The Expressive Style video elicited a whole range of responses. You would get stories about how this person takes you on “wild goose chases” and then ends up going with someone else. Others said that they pick your brain for your best ideas, and then do it in-house. The ones that liked this Style said that he/she is lots of fun to sell to, that you can build a fast relationship with them, and they make quick decisions.

When the Analytical Style came on the video, you would immediately get responses from the most assertive in the class saying that these “engineers” will never make a decision no matter how many facts you present. Those that like this Style of buyer would say that this person just needs an organized presentation of the facts and will make an objective decision.

This exercise told us more about the Styles of the people in the classroom than it did about who they liked as prospects and clients.  It seems that until we learn about SOCIAL STYLE, we prefer to sell to people who are like us; and we tend to try to avoid prospects that are very different from us.

I have been a successful sales person for over 30 years selling from my own Amiable Style. You might think that I prefer to sell to other Amiables. That would have been the case 30 years ago, but now I would take a Driving Style any day. Why? They will tell you what they want and need, what they are willing to pay, how soon they want to make a decision; and quickly let you know if you have a solution that will work for them or not. I am not saying it is easy; but it can be productive and you will not waste your selling time on someone who is never going to buy from you.

I find it the most challenging to sell to Expressive Style people. Even though I find it easy to relate to them, they are fun to be with, and they seem like they would make quick decisions; I find them to be tough to sell. They may overstate their ability to make the purchase, they don’t want to tell you “no” because they like you, or they buy from the last person who becomes their “buddy”.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have very good clients and friends who are in each of the four quadrants, and that’s what makes selling so challenging and fun. Once I learned about SOCIAL STYLE, I found that I was so much more confident going into each new sales call.  

For more, watch our YouTube video on Style and Sales Success.

Recently there has been considerable press coverage from political analysts who criticize President Obama for not showing enough outrage about the BP oil spill, regulation of Wall Street, and other highly contentious matters. Not all of this criticism is directed at his actions or policies, but rather at his lack of emotion when talking about these events. In other words, they say, he is too calm. With the importance that emotional intelligence plays for leaders, it makes me wonder, what is a leader to do in the face of crises like the Gulf Coast disaster? New research might help answer this question.

By appearing calm the president is open to criticism that he is not appropriately angry about the spill. Therefore some people may not trust that he is taking the spill seriously, and is not acting decisively to clean it up. They think that calmness is an indicator of apathy. 

But on the other hand, what if he stood in front of the cameras on an Alabama beach and kicked sand in the air, gnashing his teeth and cursing BP? Would this be more pleasing to the American public? Would people have more confidence in his actions to clean up the mess? Or would some people think he’s a raving lunatic who can’t handle the responsibility of leadership in a rational way? 

It’s not easy to be president. However, recent research sheds some light on why people suppress their emotions, and the impact this can have on others. Leaders of all sorts may find this information helpful when confronting their own challenges. 

An article in the New York Times discusses this research and explores the benefits of expressing emotion. In the article, one of the researchers notes that Mr. Obama remains calm because this strategy has worked so well for him in the past; it has become his preferred behavioral pattern. If he were to suddenly blow up, people would be confused by the disparity between his normal calm demeanor and his sudden anger. Many people would perceive him as insincere, leading to even more criticism from the pundits. 

So again, what is a leader to do? Researchers point out the importance of using different strategies for handling emotions. In particular, they discuss three such strategies: concealing (suppressing emotions), adjusting (for example, quickly calming one’s anger), and tolerating (openly expressing emotion). They state that the most socially skilled individuals can identify the need for different strategies, and then employ those strategies as different situations dictate. These individuals recognize the emotions they want to express, and express them at precisely the right times. It is people who are inflexible in their approach, who rely on a single strategy, who run into the most trouble.

For more detailed information on this research, you can read the New York Times article here.

Over the past couple of years most of us have experienced some anxiety about the economy and our personal finances, to put it mildly. But how have we acted on our new-found awareness of global economics?

Historically, economists assumed that people make financial decisions based on rational thinking. If Macy’s is having a shoe sale and I can save ten dollars, then it makes sense for me to buy shoes there. But what if the nearest Macy’s is 20 miles away and it will cost me more than ten dollars in fuel and time to get there? I should buy the shoes at the store across the street and pay full price, right? Of course I should, but the perception of getting a good deal may be more important to me than the true cost of the purchase. 

People make unwise and irrational financial decisions all the time. Behavioral economists and psychologists have recently documented these types of systematic errors, though advertisers figured them out a long time ago. All of which begs the question, does SOCIAL STYLE affect the way we make financial decisions? According to Hersh Shefrin, a professor of behavioral finance at Santa Clara University, SOCIAL STYLE plays a major role in people's financial decision-making. He worked with J.P. Morgan Chase to develop an online test of “Financial Style” that categorizes individuals into one of three investor styles: Analytical, Big-Picture, or Emotional.

This sounds familiar, though it seems they may have misplaced one of the Styles. I would offer advice for how each Style can improve their financial decision-making, but I’m still reading the research and studying the websites. For more information, check out ChaseFinancialStyle.com 

by Bill Petrarca, Strathman Associates

The economist Adam Smith, in his historic work “The Wealth of Nations” (1776), coined the term “the invisible hand” to describe the self-regulating nature of the marketplace. I can’t think of a better term to describe the role a personal coach can play in the success of an aspiring C-Suite executive.

A recent coaching engagement for a coach at our firm (Strathman Associates, Inc.) involved a client in a large multi-national corporation who was seeking guidance to improve his effectiveness not only in his current position, but to be considered a viable candidate for a corporate C-Suite position. 

Through months of confidential one-on-one coaching, the application of the Social Style Model with Versatility, goal-based development, interactive journaling and “asynchronous” coaching, this client experienced both a personal and professional transformation. Last month, he was offered the C-Suite position.

The coach was indeed “the invisible hand” in this person’s career success, as is often the case. Paraphrasing another of Smith’s works, “the invisible hand” of coaching can be the most effective means for promoting happiness and success.

The coach was able to take advantage of onCoach an internet-based service to reinforce coaching goals established in the one-on-one coaching sessions and to follow-up those sessions with daily journaling capabilities, asynchronous feedback (outside of the corporate email system), online resources and support “wizards.” Adam Smith, were he alive today, might have called it “the mouse for the invisible hand.”

Bill Petrarca is co-founder of Strathman Associates, Inc., a TRACOM Associate. Visit www.strathman.com or email bill@strathman.com for more information about onCoach.

TRACOM offers a whitepaper on the impact of personal coaching.  Download the Coaching Whitepaper now.

Have you ever struggled to give corrective feedback to someone?  Or been surprised when a compliment you gave to a colleague seemed to backfire?  It's likely that the SOCIAL STYLE issues came into play in these and other situations.

In fact, Style preferences affect many common workplace situations such as sending e-mails, holding meetings and working in teams.  And your interactions in these situations can be improved by taking Style into consideration. 

Today, TRACOM is introducing a SOCIAL STYLE Tip of the Day on our website.  It includes short, easy-to-apply advice for working more effectively with others in common workplace situations.  Each Tip discusses a single Style and interaction such as:

• Leaving Voicemail
• Giving Corrective Feedback
• Managing Performance
• Working in a Team
• Sending Email

Put these Style Tips to use and you and your organization will become more productive.  The Tip of Day is posted on our redesigned homepage.

Lately I've been reading about the types of systematic mistakes and errors of judgment that plague human beings, but that we're either unaware of or don't bother to correct. While we can live with ourselves for misplacing the car keys three days a week, there are some mistakes that have much more serious consequences. One particularly grave example comes from the world-renowned Mayo Clinic. Doctors there went back and checked the previous "normal" X-rays of patients who had developed lung cancer. They found that up to 90 percent of the tumors were visible in the old X-rays. 90 percent! They also found that the cancers were visible for months or even years, but that the radiologists had simply missed them.

Next time you get good news from your doctor, you might want to consider a second opinion to your second opinion.

So what does this have to do with Versatility or leadership effectiveness? Plenty. Leaders have serious errors of perception (I'll get to that in a moment). But there are fixes for these errors. Before you run away from your medical professionals, there is some good news. Anesthesiologists decided they had to do something about all the deaths that were occurring in the operating room, so they swallowed their pride and took the very simple step of creating a checklist of tasks to perform during every procedure. Also, they trained the rest of the medical staff, especially nurses, to speak up if they noticed anything amiss. The results have been astounding. Patient deaths due to anesthesia have declined over the past 20 years from one in 5,000 to one every 200,000 to 300,000 cases. 

Like anesthesiologists of yesteryear, managers, it turns out, are self-deluding. It's not their fault; we all think we're better than we really are. In an ongoing article for Harvard Business Review, Robert Sutton has been writing about the things good bosses believe. The first thing he discusses is how bosses' lack of self-awareness contributes to organizational dysfunction. The major remedy, of course, is to get feedback and to consciously monitor our behavior and the impact it has on followers and others. 

A recent study shows that today’s college students have significantly less empathy than their counterparts of decades past. In a review of 72 studies conducted with almost 15,000 college students between 1979 and 2009, researchers at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research found that today’s students scored a whopping 40 percent lower on empathy than previous students. The biggest drop occurred after the year 2000.   The study authors point out several possibilities for their findings, including the influence of violent media, a hyper-competitive outlook on life, and the deadening of real-world interactions that occurs from the overuse of social media. Sadly, what this research shows is that the ability to understand other people’s points of view, and care about them, was simply not emphasized or nurtured among many of today’s younger generation.   While this can be disheartening, it also indicates that empathy is not a trait that is determined entirely by our genes. The ability to empathize with our fellow humans is not set in stone. If it has been inadequately developed in some younger people, then this is also evidence that it can be learned.

The “trainability” of empathy has been researched and put into practice by some leading psychologists and educators. Forefront among those has been the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. This Center has produced educational programs for school children that inform them about the nature of optimism, hope, and the importance of doing something for others. Students learn techniques for assertiveness, negotiation, decision-making, social problem-solving, and relaxation. These skills can be applied to many contexts of life, including personal relationships, academic and occupational achievement.

So although the research on today’s youth might tempt you to feel pessimistic or even self-righteous, if anything it is a call to redouble our efforts to ensure that our future generations learn the lessons that truly matter, and not just how to compete and out-maneuver others. Importantly, this type of learning and development can occur at any point in life.

Read more about the study here

In the case of managers, the video considers responsibilities including coaching others, leading teams and dealing with conflict. 

The videos run five to seven minutes and discuss how Versatility and EQ skills impact the daily work responsibilities of leaders, sales pros and individuals. Watch them now. 

A recent article by Rebecca Schalm, an HR columnist at Troy Media, considers the idea of emphasizing a person’s natural strengths versus building up weaknesses in an effort to become more effective. The article is available here. 

As Schalm points out, this strength-based approach has become a common philosophy in personal and organizational leadership. This is not surprising in an era when people are encouraged to become their own “brand.” And certainly it’s easier to quickly label someone as “a numbers guy”, “a marketing whiz”, or “a turnaround specialist” than to make the effort to fully understand the nuances and intricacies of ourselves and others. 

But emphasizing strengths is almost always going to limit a person’s potential. Particularly because the higher a leader advances, the less time they spend using functional skills (sales, accounting, etc.) and more time on things such as building consensus, motivating others and establishing effective teams. 

Schalm goes on to identify a person’s ability to recognize their shortcomings and develop strategies to address them as a key factor in long-term success. Such self-awareness is a fundamental aspect of Emotional Intelligence (EQ), a frequent topic of this blog. Of course working hard on things we do poorly is not typically as much fun as applying our strengths, but it is necessary for improving our overall capabilities, and even our EQ. 

Another insight Schalm makes is the importance of balancing self-reflection with objective input when identifying strengths and weaknesses. TRACOM’s own research has shown that individuals frequently rate their own behaviors and EQ skills different than the people with whom they work. An over-reliance on self-reflection often leads to significant blindspots. TRACOM offers a whitepaper for those interested in the topic of Self-Perception vs. Third-Person Feedback.

What are your thoughts? What is the right balance of using strengths and developing weaknesses?