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Our ability to connect with prospects comes down to understanding what we’re all made of. It comes down to three components. Our personality style, IQ and EQ.
You meet a prospect for the first time, and open the call by asking, “Did you have a nice weekend?”
Their response? “What’s the purpose for this meeting?”
So much for the small talk.
What goes through your mind? Maybe, I’d like to get out of this appointment as soon as I can. And how do you guess the prospect is feeling?
Your body language is unfiltered. It will indicate whether you’re interested in having a fruitful discussion with the prospect or just going through the motions. And the prospect will know exactly how you feel based on your body language!
Our ability to connect with prospects comes down to understanding what we’re all made of. It comes down to three components. Our personality style, IQ and EQ. IQ is our intelligence quotient and EQ is our emotional quotient. The question is, what’s most important in connecting with someone we don’t know? How can you improve when meeting someone for the first time?
Our IQ is set by age 15. People typically don’t connect at the IQ level unless you’re a brain surgeon or scientist and sharing important data and statistics. According to Dr. Michael Cox who was with the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank back in 2006, people skills are the number one business skill needed today.
That being true, then how do we improve our emotional quotient or intelligence? I believe the answer lies in understanding someone’s personality style. By understanding personality styles, we can become more adaptable to different styles.
Personality is your wiring. It’s your default system for how you see life. Personality includes how we make decisions, what motivates us, what we value, our way of communicating and most of all how we connect with others.
Many of the personality models talk about having four distinct styles, mine included. My model is color-coded to make it easier to use and understand.
Blues are relationship people.
They value trust and honesty, collaboration, peace and harmony and care greatly about serving others. They are “get along” people.
Golds are structured people.
They are well organized, disciplined, planners and believe in follow through and meeting commitments. They are “get it done” people.
Greens are analytical people.
They want information, details, data and are logical. By nature, they are inquisitive, love to learn and can be skeptical. They are “get it right” people.
Oranges are outgoing and expressive folks.
They like to be the center of attention, energetic, move fast and competitive by nature. They are “get it going” people.
Four very distinct personality styles that have distinct needs when it comes to connecting.
The prospect in my first example most likely is a Gold. Skip the small talk and get right to your agenda. And yes, Golds like an agenda. If you’re an Orange or Blue, the best way to connect is with small talk.
With Blues, talk about family or friends since they are the relationship people. With an Orange, it can be about what was exciting about their weekend, possibly about sports or a party or an interesting event. Your Green personality might connect on an important statistic or announcement in their industry about data or technology that would be of interest to them.
To improve your emotional intelligence, you need to ask yourself the question, “Who am I with?”
That will take the emphasis off you and onto the prospect and their point of view. What matters to them is the only priority where you should focus, and that focus will help you connect from their perspective. Emotional intelligence can dramatically improve when we understand our prospect’s personality.