Customer Secrets

How most people type others is slow and prone to errors. They use only behavior as their tool to decide the Myers-Briggs personality type of other people. Why? Because behavior is what personality is about.

But if you go deeper, and ask what is behavior, you can get to the core of where personality comes from, and that leads to other methods of typing people.

Behavior is demonstrated by consistent actions. If you do the same thing over and over, that is what behavior is all about. But where do "actions" arise from? They come about because of the decisions we make. So in essence personality is linked to our decisions, and if we can understand decisions we can type more easily.

Most people then ask the question, how do people make decisions? The attempt to that question leads to the study of how the brain works - how it's wired. In the personality world, this leads to the topic of "cognitive functions." There are 8 cognitive functions, and the order in which people rely on them to make decisions is called their cognitive stack. But does knowing how people make decisions lead us to any new methods of typing others?

Instead of asking how people make decisions, what if you asked "why did a person make that particular decision?" This question has an answer. It is because they selected the option which had the most value to them. This opens up the door to studying values.

If you study values, and classify them by the personality temperament of the person making the choices, you will find that people with similar personalities have similar values. This opens up a new way of typing others. You can look at their values, and simply look up in a table which personality temperament would most likely have those values.

This presents a quick way of typing people, because values are easy to view.

And once you know their values, you actually have the motivation of people. You have the "why are they buying?"

So instead of looking at behavior, or going down the dead end road of cognitive functions, if you want a fast and accurate way of typing someone, use "values."

You love the subject of personality, and I love it. But most people, particularly business people look down on personality as a tool that could help them explode their sales. They just don't think it will work for them. Why is that? What are they missing? What are the impediments that are clouding their vision?

In this episode, I'll go through the main reason that personality as a tool, hasn't taken off, and why it isn't likely to do so.

The reasons include:

1. Researchers that study human behavior often don't bother to include this component in their research. So they miss the patterns that could actually explain a lot of behavior.

2. Even if they did include it, there is so much "mis-typing" of people, putting them into the wrong category, that would distort the patterns. You wouldn't be able to draw conclusions from the data, if the data was wrong to begin with.

3. Alternate theories of human behavior exist, and these sometimes have some small amount to truth to them that could explain behavior. For example, using demographics like age categories will explain some behavior. But not all... It falls apart quite easily. Other alternate theories of behavior are "birth order" and astrology (zodiac).

4. Even within the type community, many experts will say that behavior can be explained by emotions like shame or levels of self-esteem.

5. The biggest impediment to personality theory as a way of explaining behavior, is the theory that "behavior is learned from parents or environment." This is so engrained into society as gospel truth, that to dislodge it next to impossible.

We go on to explain that behavior comes from our values. These "values" are imprinted in our DNA, and we inherit them. We don't learn them. This is very difficult for people to grasp, because it goes against the theory that we learn everything.

It also doesn't seem fair. As it means that there is a genetic lottery, and we're all losers because we didn't get to pick our values.

But nature has a plan for you. It has given you some tremendous advantages that you have over other people -- if you are willing to accept the limitations you also have been given.

This episode also gives a couple of genetic clues that you can use to type a segment of the population as to their personality temperament.

In the Myers Briggs personality system, the last of the four dichotomies is Judging versus Perceiving. This is designated either by a J or a P in the Myers Briggs code. It is always the last letter in the code. For example, ENFJ or ENFP.

What is the difference between the two destinations? That is the topic of this edition of the Customer Secrets podcast. I think that most of the experts have it wrong, and because of that, they have a hard time distinguishing people. This process of distinguishing people is called "Typing." In other words, it the process of classifying people by their personality type.

In this episode, we'll explain what is the main difference between those people that are perceivers and those that are judgers. And more importantly, since this podcast is about using personality in sales, we'll see how it plays out from that perspective.

Narcissists don't have a badge on their shirt that makes them easy to identify. So how most people identify them is by their behavior. The problem with that, is that by definition, you have to interact with them consistently to learn their behavior. At that point, you've probably been trapped in their web. Now you have the problem of extracting yourself from that spider's web. The best way of dealing with the narcissist is to avoid them in the first place. But that means you need an alternative method of identifying them besides using "behavior."

Thankfully, we have the tools of personality that can help us. From my own observations, narcissists usually come from just two of the 16 Myers Briggs personality types. So you don't have to worry as much about people from the other 14 types. In this episode, I'll explain how we know the narcissist usually comes out from these two types, and the we'll give you two huge clues that you can use to identify them just by sight. So imagine walking through a crowded street, and looking at the faces of the strangers and being able to pick out the potential narcissists. If you can isolate them prior to engaging with them, you'll control the situation, instead of letting them control you and your feelings.

How is A.I. content generation sites, like ChatGPT, going to change internet search? We need visitors to come to our sites, so that they can discover all the products and services we offer. But A.I. based search engines are going to "eat all of the clicks." They are going to give the searcher answers, so that they don't have to visit a number of websites to find the information they seek. It is what google does in the "Answer Box", but it will be 1000X more effective for searchers. They won't be clicking over to our websites because the answers are going to be given to them by the A.I. 

Here is the take-away: "In essence, we're going to be competing for visitors against the A.I." Not only are we competing against other website owners, but not we have to outsmart the bots too. And they are infinitely smarter, as they have to collective wisdom of every website ever created. In the very near future, the term "Ranking," and the whole process of S.E.O. is going to be dead. We won't rank because the answer will be given by the A.I.

I think we're going to lose this battle, unless we can offer something that the A.I. can't. Something that real humans want, but that an A.I. can't offer (yet). In this episode, we're going to talk about how to use A.I. content on our websites, and then use the tool itself to beat the A.I. at getting visitors to our sites.

If you'd like to join in the conversation, please reach out to me. I'd like to hear your thoughts too.

What is the real difference between someone with the Thinking preference versus a person with the Feeling preference? Is it that one person is logical and the other illogical? Or is, as is termed by the BIG-5 system that one person Agreeable, and the other person is not an agreeable person? I'll give you my thoughts, and I welcome your opinions as well. Please leave a comment below.

There are lots of YouTube videos out there about how to deal with difficult people. But this one is different, in that we're going to use Personality. What this gives us is new information about the difficult person. Armed with this new information, we can now come up with a strategy to deal with them, so that we don't face difficult situations in the future. 

In the world of personality, you'll often hear the phrase "Personality Development." But what does that really mean?

If you go to YouTube and search on the phrase, you'll see videos about how to increase your charisma, or how to be liked and not be boring to other people. If you go to videos that are specifically about Myers Briggs, you'll see videos about how to "flex" your cognitive functions so you can be adaptable in a variety of situations. But if you go to psychology websites, you'll find that personality development is very close to "human development," where you start out as a clump of cells and eventually turn into something human. 

With a clear lack of a definition, I'm going to give you my take on this topic, and tell you why that I think they are all wrong.

But... Why is this important? And how does it relate to sales and persuasion? If you'd like to know more, listen in.

The common way of typing a person's personality is to use "behavior." It is either looking at the four dichotomies from Myers Briggs in an individual manner, or by looking at the Cognitive Functions of the person. What is in vogue right now is definitely the cognitive functions method. Unfortunately, it is complex, because there are eight cognitive functions, and the ordering of them (called the stack) is also important. There is so much misinformation, that it is no wonder that people are often mis-typed.

The future of typing has already been in place for about 20 years now. That is to use a person's values as the data set for determining temperament. 

Once you have temperament, you have two of the four letters in their Myers' Briggs code. And they are the two most important, because they determine a person's values.  This episode gives a broad overview of the typing situation, and what you will do next, after typing a person.  

Are you looking to hire an employee and considering giving them a personality assessment? The official guidance from the Myers Briggs organization is an emphatic "NO! Don't do it." However, if you talk to someone that is a proponent of the D.I.S.C. personality assessment, they say "YES! Do it."

So who's advice should you follow? 

In this episode, I'm going to take up this question, and give you a different perspective on using personality in hiring. It will come from a person that has used assessments in the past to try to figure out what makes people tick. The results were basically useless. I'll tell you why, and then two solutions to the problem that you might consider.

I've tried out several copywriting websites that have A.I. create text in an attempt to reuse old articles I've written. I've wanted to take 20-year old content, and update it for a new audience. What did I discover in this process? 

The big take-away was that I figured out the process, or what might be the method that current state-of-the-art A.I. uses to generate new content. 

My question during that exercise was: are we at the point where A.I. is as good as a human copywriter in generating compelling text that could be used to get prospects to open up their wallets? If it is, will I be out of a job in the future? Or if it isn't, what are the flaws in A.I. generated text? That is what I'll talk about in this episode of the Customer Secrets podcast.

In this episode, we're talking to Elzie Flenard, the mayor of the website: Podcast town.

Elzie is an ISFJ personality type in the Myers-Briggs system personality nomenclature. That means he has the following preferences: Introversion, Sensing, Feeling, and Judging. How do we know this? Because we've gone through the process of typing him. We looked for the clues that he gives off as he is talking. Everyone gives off clues to their personality type, and if you are observant, you can pick them up and figure out what type they are. The most important clues are the ones that reveal their "temperament." These are important, because people with a similar temperament have similar values (guiding principles). We can deduce their values if we can figure out what temperament they have. And we want to know their values, because that is what they use to make purchasing decisions. If you know ahead of time what they value, how much easier do you think it will be to sell to them? Right! It is a lot easier. You're already inside their head and you know what will turn them on. 

At the end of the interview, we'll review the clues that Elzie gives off, and how you might use them in persuasion situations that you may be in with other people of the ISFJ personality type.

In this episode, we're talking to Richard Lau, the force behind the website logo.com

In this interview, we have several objectives for you as you learn about the process of typing other peoples personality. Most importantly, listen for their values. What are the "guiding principles" that this person believes will bring them success in life. This will be the big clue as to what personality temperament that are placed into. Once you know this temperament, you can associate it with other things, like; specific words or phrase usage, themes that they talk about, and the style (tone, intonation, jargon) that they say those words.

At the end of the interview, we'll review the clues that Richard gives off, and how you might use them in persuasion situations that you may be in with other people of the INTJ personality type.

In this episode, we're talking to Matt Decoursey. He is a founding partner of the company Full Scale, and also the post of the popular podcast called Startup Hustle. We're going to learn Matt's success secrets for business, which are also the values that are typical of the person with the ISTJ personality temperament. So as you listen to this, pay particular attention to the guiding principles that Matt thinks are important for success. You can use these same principles when you are selling to other people that have the "Logistical" personality temperament.

In this episode, we'll be typing entrepreneurial coach Vanessa Zamy.  What she does is to help people launch a new business while still keeping their day job. 

The reason we type people is that we want to stay consistent with the first step in either sales or marketing. That first step is to understand and know exactly who the customer is. By typing a person's personality, we have a doorway into what that customer values. Once you know what guiding principles they live by, you can develop a plan to sell to that type of person more effectively.

What makes this episode special is that it doesn't go the direction I had planned. The wheels, so to speak, got off the rails, and the interview turned into a small skirmish over which personality type our guest really is. I violated one of the laws of personality, and I hope that you can learn from my mistake so that you don't suffer the same fate -- which is to lose a sale.

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. 

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.

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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.

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.

In this episode, Michael Abdo and Tim Van Milligan talk about how artificial intelligence works. But more than that, we'll talk about how it has changed marketing because it allows you to target specific customers that have values that match your own.

What is on the horizon for where personality marketing is going? We're going to make predictions on what we think you'll see coming in the world of advertising and marketing. But the pace of change is happening so quickly, that some of our predictions are already here. Did you know there is already an app that will tell you the personality type of that woman you want to connect with on Linkedin. Not only that, but the app will give you phrases to use that match her personality, so that she'll be more likely to accept the pitch you're making.

So  what else is coming? 

We also discuss how you can type a person by the clothes that they wear. Find out how by listening now.

Why is it that people can't seem to dial in on their true personality type? Why is it that they seem to jump from one set of personality traits to another, each time they take a personality assessment? Does personality really change like that? And why is it that people think that being in the middle on a particular trait, like half-way between an introvert and an extrovert is the optimum for a human being? These are the types of questions we'll discuss in this episode.

One of the common complaints about taking personality quizzes is that they don't seem to be consistent. Every time you take one, you might come back with a different set of personality traits. One time you might be an ENFP, and the next time it comes back saying you're a ENFJ. Which is it? Which is more accurate?

In this episode of the Customer-Secrets podcast, we'll tackle that question and why written assessments are prone to change every time you take one. And we'll discuss how modern technology has changed the landscape making written questionnaires almost useless. And then we'll predict what the future is in store for personality typing.

Finally, we'll discuss personality theory, and how a "theory" can be tested by making accurate predictions of another person's behavior. We're relying on this theory being accurate, because it is the basis for the methods we use to make selling and persuasion more efficient and easier. Once you have the theory down, your ability to persuade increases to the point of it being totally "unfair." Your competitors don't stand a chance against you. So You may have to make a conscious effort not to use the persuasion methods we talk about here too often, or everyone will think that your success is based on you manipulating other people. In reality, it is based on a deeper understanding of the personality of your customer, and what they value.

Cambridge Analytica used personality data on a massive scale to influence the 2016 Presidential elections. They proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that using psychographic marketing really does work. If you're not using it in your business to attract and to get customers to take action by buying your products, you're ignoring a new scientific tool that has infinite upside potential.

What Cambridge Analytica had was access to Facebook's data on customers, and they were able to exploit this information on a country-wide scale. Because of what they did, Facebook got their hand slapped and they were forced to close off access to customer information. This is also why such regulations like the GDPR rules in Europe are now in effect. 

What can you do to use personality marketing in a climate like this where data is restricted? That is what we're talking about in this episode. What are we doing differently here at Customer Secrets that gives you the benefits of personality marketing without have to have access to someone's personal and private data?