The basics on Myers-Briggs

" Perception involves all the ways of becoming aware of things, people, happenings, or ideas. Judgment involves all the ways of coming to conclusions about what has been perceived. If people differ systematically in what they perceive and in how they reach conclusions, then it is only reasonable for them to differ correspondingly in their interests, reactions, values, motivations, and skills."

In sales, we often find ourselves in a situation in which we have to adapt to our prospect to make him/her feel comfortable digesting a sales-y call and to feel safe to talk business.
Consciously, preferably.

However, this is hard to do without knowing the strengths and weaknesses of our own personality.

Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Meyers aimed to develop a personality test that could explain and predict behavior and make the psychological types as developed by C.G. Jung understandable.

The test therefore, could help us get more insight into our personality, and help being more aware of the perception we create with our 'audience'.

There are 16 psychological types that can be derived from the following 4 characteristics:

Favorite world:
Do you prefer to focus on the outer world or on your own inner world? This is called Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I).

Information:
Do you prefer to focus on the basic information you take in or do you prefer to interpret and add meaning? This is called Sensing (S) or Intuition (N).

Decisions:
When making decisions, do you prefer to first look at logic and consistency or first look at the people and special circumstances? This is called Thinking (T) or Feeling (F).

Structure:
In dealing with the outside world, do you prefer to get things decided or do you prefer to stay open to new information and options? This is called Judging (J) or Perceiving (P).

Each psychological type has an extensive description if you google the outcome of your Myers-Briggs test. I hope it will provide you with valuable insight about your own behavior, and that it prompts you to contemplate how you could be more effective when dealing with people of another type, thus becoming a more effective salesman (or colleague/partner/parent etc.)

Take the test on the following link to find out about your type:

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm