Customer Secrets

In this episode, we interview presentation coach Brenden Kumarasamy, and get to know his secrets which he uses when interacting with his own customers. At the same time, we'll go through the clues that he gives off that tell us his Myers-Briggs personality type. 

For more information, check out Brenden's YouTube Channel: MasterTalk

Get Tim's book: Selling by Personality Type on Amazon.  Visit the Customer Secrets website

I this episode, we're going to accomplish two objectives. We're going to go through the process of typing someone else's personality temperament through a simple conversation. The objective is to listen for those guiding principles that the person believes will lead to success. In simple terms, these 'guiding principles' are what we call a person's "values." Each of the four individual personality temperaments has a set of common values that are different from the other three temperaments. When a person talks, those values naturally come out. We just have to tune our brain to listen for them. Once you hear and recognize them, you can type the person simply based on the values. It is like a game of bingo. When you hear the other person express a "value," you can check it off on the bingo card. When you have enough of the values, you can shout out "BINGO" - which means:  "I've typed you!"

Instead of typing someone based on their "behavior," we're going deeper and typing them based on their "values." The advantage is that it is faster and more accurate.

The person we're typing in this episode, who is our guest, is Scott Aaron.  The other objective in this episode is to listen to the secrets that Scott shares on how to be successful when you're reaching out to others on social media. He is a business owner with a 23 year background in health, wellness, personal training and personal coaching. He now does online consulting and coaching for entrepreneurs looking to build their business, brands and impact via the means of LinkedIn.

There is a campaign going on here in the month of July, 2020 called #StopHateForProfit. The purpose of it is to get facebook to change their algorithm that determines what is shown to people in their newsfeeds. Instead of the algorithm feeding people things that they might agree with, they want facebook to insert political correct posts that the readers should be seeing. If facebook capitulates to this demand, they might as well close up shop now. Whatever you might think of facebook, they have a sound business model. It is the platinum rule: "do unto others what they wish to have done to them."

In this episode, I discuss the facebook algorithm, and how it is a sound strategy as it is based on the laws of personality marketing.

Contact Information:

https://customersecrets.com/contact-us/

Selling by Personality Type book.

Earlier this year, before the Corona Virus shutdown happened, the economy in the USA was booming. But behind the walls of Nike Corporation, there is looming panic. Their sales are plummeting. They reported at the end of June 2020 that they lost $790million while their sales dropped like a stone from $10.18Billion to $6.31Billion. How is this happening? What did they do wrong?

What they did wrong was to violate the first law of sales and marketing. That law is: "Who is the customer?" They didn't know who they were selling to. And just as importantly, they didn't know what their customers valued.

Because they didn't know what their customers valued, they unknowingly attacked those values. And when you attack anyone's values, it always triggers the emotion of anger. And the anger was directed at the attacker - Nike Corporation. 

In this episode, we're going to discuss the emotion of "shame" and how it is triggered. If it is wrongly triggered, as what Nike was attempting to do, it leads to anger. That is why I try to stay away from sales techniques that could accidentally trigger shame. I stay away from values solicitation questions, because it is too tempting to throw the values back into the face of the customer, which is what the shame trigger is all about.

If you want to learn more information, see the book: Selling by Personality Type from Amazon. Or come to our website at: CustomerSecrets.com

Here is the thing that bugs me about marketing experts. They tell you that knowing the customers is the first and most important thing you should do. And then immediately in the next sentence, they are giving you tactics on what to do next. If knowing your customer is so critically important, then why do they jump right over that skill?

In this episode, I'll lead off discussing that issue. Then I'll get into the topic that is next in the marketing expert's repertoire. That is: "marketing channels."

Big companies, like Google, Facebook, Amazon, LinkIn all want you to think that you have to go through them and their channels to get to your prospects. This is "channel marketing." The thing that they don't tell you is that they will charge you a toll to use their channel.

When you break out of their channel, your profits go up, because you're not paying them their toll. And another miraculous thing happens - "YOU" become a channel that other merchants would love to use to get to the same customers. When you are the "channel," they will pay you the "toll." So your profits climb even higher!

How do you become a "channel" that other merchants would love to pay you for access to customers? It goes back to that first and most important aspect of the selling process: "knowing the customer."

The person that has the most knowledge of the customer is the channel. That is why Google, Facebook, Amazon, and LinkIn all grew so big. They have inside knowledge of the customer. It is time that you get even deeper knowledge of the customer so you have the edge and break out of their marketing channels.

If you're in a face-to-face sales situation, where you can observe the other person's behavior for long periods of time, how do you type them? The only clues you have to work with are the words that they use when they speak to you, or the written correspondence they may send to you.

In a previous episode, I talked about the 5-step method of typing someone. Just for reference, those steps were:

In the "How they talk" category, we're going to look/listen for four different sets of clues. They are:

In this specific episode, we're going to look at the temperament that I call the "Warriors."  For reference, the definition of this temperament is the person that has the Sensing-Perceiving traits from Myers-Briggs. I also call them the S-P types. 

In selling, professionals are told that story telling is one of the keys to making an emotional connection with customers, as it bypasses the logic-center of their brain. But nobody talks about the reason why customers are listening to those boring stories. What is in it for them?

When you understand the reason that customers have for listening to stories, you as a salesman can craft better stories that will get to the point a lot faster. Here's a hint... You have to know the personality temperament of your prospect so you know which type of story will resonate with them better.

The other question I want to ask it this podcast, because I'm a contrarian (and a poor story teller), is this: "Is there a more effective way to make that emotional connection with customers than telling stories?" The answer, obviously is yes. There is a far more powerful way to get to that point, and much quicker too.

If you'd like more information on using personality in selling, get the book: "Selling by Personality Type" from Amazon. For the price of a trip to Starbucks, you'll be years ahead of your competition.

The term "up-speak" refers to the tendency when talking to end sentences with a rising tone of voice. It is also called "high rising terminal" talking if you happen to google it. This episode is about using this particular behavior as a clue which allows you to instantly type someone as having the preferences of Sensing (S), Feeling (F), and Perceiving (P) in their Myers-Briggs personality nomenclature. 

This little give-away of a person's way of talking means you can type this particular person in just a few seconds of meeting them, or just hearing their voice on a podcast. Once you know a person's personality type, you know their values (guiding principles). That is the real power of personality marketing (and sales): "personality and values" are linked together. If you know one, you really know the other too. Just imagine how much quicker you can make the sale if you already know ahead of time what your prospect values. You can skip all the small talk that you used to have gone through just to discover their values. Now you can slip right into the discussion of why they might prefer the product or service that you're selling, because it aligns with what they already value. You're going to save so much time and make a lot more money selling!

We also discuss, in this episode, about the general process of typing a person. In actuality, we're not really looking for these little short-cuts like upspeak, but rather we're looking for what their guiding principles are. But if you get a little clue that presents itself like "up-speak," you can type them a lot faster.

If you would like to learn more about typing someone else, and more importantly, what to do with the information after you've typed them, get the book "Selling By Personality Type." You can also stay current on the latest developments in typing by subscribing to this podcast and also visiting our website: CustomerSecrets.

In episode 24, we started a discussion about the differences in sales bots and humans. Sales bots, like Amazon are killing it right now. If we want to sell more, it is important to note that the other things that Bots don't do. It just might be that the things that humans do might just be the reason that we find it so difficult to make a sale.

Previously, we noted that sales bots don't ask questions. Another thing that Bots don't do is tell stories. But humans do; particularly the people that have the Warrior personality temperament. They value storytelling. To them, it is a guiding principle that they live their lives by. It brings success. Why is that? What is it about stories that allows the warriors to be successful in life?

What you'll here in this episode are both the positive and the negative aspects about telling stories. And you'll learn how to make a connection and report quickly with a person that has the Warrior personality temperament.

Online sales increase every year, while offline sales stagnate. Obviously, the A.I. bots are doing something right. Not so obvious is what they don't do that humans are. The question should be: "What are we as humans doing that is screwing up our chances of making the sale?"

This is a question that few people are asking. The reason they don't ask, is that if we find out the real answer, and it goes against everything we've been taught, it is going to cause us a lot of embarrassment. 

We're not here to embarrass you. We're here to help you make more sales.  But in order to do that, we need to confront the assumptions we've been making about the sale process, and test them to see if they are really true. Today you'll hear for the first time -- a specific bedrock sales principle that everyone assumes to be true -- put to the test. It is radical and counter-intuitive. And if you say it out loud, other salespeople will think you're absolutely crazy. Fortunately, nobody will know you've listen to this episode, so you'll be able to try the little experiment that we propose to see if it will work for you. 

You may not agreee. That is OK. Today we just want you to challenge a widely-held assumption about sales. Buckle up cowboy. This is a rough ride.