Types of

salesperson
 Study conducted…
• University of Houston did a study of salesmen

• They looked at thousands of people who had

been working in sales for 3 years or longer and
they found that these salespeople could be
divided into 3 different psychological profiles.

 
 Types of salesperson
• Engager – A people person whose key value is
to be liked.
• Assurer - expert type whose key value is to be
respected.
• Compeller - hard closer, competitive, key value
is “winning”.
 Engager - Strengths
Strengths:-
• Meets and greets well.

• Seems to have no fear.

• Is great at opening new contacts.

• Good at cold calling.

 Engager - Weaknesses
• Has follow-up reluctance

• Focuses on immediate response.

 Assurer - Strengths
• Great at answering questions.

• Knows all the details.

• Can develop existing client relationships.

 Assurer - Weaknesses
• Can’t take rejection.

• Doesn’t want to cold call.

• Doesn’t like to close.

 Compeller -Strengths
• Gets the money.

• Closes the deal.

Compeller - Weaknesses
• lacks patience.

• Has a tendency to cherry.

• Pick leads and throw the rest away.

 Survey conducted…
• In the University of Houston survey, the split
between the groups was:

Engagers: 20%

 Assurers: 70%

 Compellers: 10%
 Conclusion
• In the real world, many salespeople are a
hybrid of two or three of these profiles, but
the vast majority lean towards one of the
three.
• This means, if you take a sales team, the
majority of the team will be assurers. Or, to
put in another way, the majority of the team
won’t enjoy prospecting or cold calling and
they won’t like to close.
 References:
• www.uh.edu/