10 Sales Personality Types

 

Why Determine Your Sales Personality Type

As a salesperson, it’s crucial to understand your sales personality.

Knowing your strengths and weaknesses can help you tailor your sales approach to different types of customers and situations.

For example, if you can connect with others, focus on building rapport and establishing a personal connection with potential customers.

Or, if you’re more analytical and detail-oriented, provide data and statistics to support the value of your product or service.

Identifying areas where you need to improve, such as persistence or resilience, can help you become more effective.

By understanding your sales personality, you can improve your performance, build stronger customer relationships, and achieve greater success in your career.

With that said, let’s explore ten sales personality types to help you find yours:

10 Sales Personality Types: What Type of Salesperson Are You?

Discover the type of sales personality you have below!

1. Order Taker

Order takers don’t persuade customers to buy products, upsell or cross-sell; instead, they book customer orders and pass information to the relevant department. These systematic salespeople are accurate and always have up-to-date information about when an order has been booked and when it will be supplied.

While easy to contact, good at answering questions, and readily accessible to help anyone, the laidback order-taker sales personality likes to play the waiting game and is never assertive.

If you’re the order-taker sales rep, you’ll know that reliability is your core strength. Still, you prefer to wait too long for the right customer to come along – usually, someone who knows what they want in the transactional phase. While looking for new business may not be your best quality, you’re a trustworthy fit for familiar customers ready to buy.

2. Studious

If you have a studious sales personality, it makes sense that you’re here. You’re a lifelong learner and believe sales is a science, not just an art and most likely already have a few sales theories waiting to be made into a book. However, studious sales reps still believe they’re a work in progress, which spurs you always to be a better salesperson.

As a result, your product knowledge is immaculate (obviously), and because you’re data-driven- a master of your CRM.

These sales skills and qualities mean that you can answer prospect objections and questions in record time while ensuring they get all the valuable information they need.

3. Script Reader

Script readers rely on using the same sales phone script, sales and elevator pitch for every potential customer.

While this provides customers with a reliable, comfortable and uniform brand experience, it means missing out on prime opportunities to cross or upsell.

Overall, script reader salespeople are strongly suited to businesses where the brand is a large piece of the sale. However, there’s always room to customise actions and words for each interaction to make the most of their time with customers.

4. Conversationalist

The conversationalist salesperson’s strength is creating a welcoming, warm, and relatable first impression.

Conversationalists instantly put prospects at ease by prioritising their needs and want, meaning most of their customers are often repeat or returning purchasers.

The only real downside to this type of sales rep is their inability to close sales, preferring not to be seen as “pushy” or overbearing.

The good news is that these types of salespeople are an excellent match for luxury retail environments where customers mostly pay for the sales experience.

5. Opener

Openers are masters of connecting with prospects, so much so that they have tons of leads ready for the pipeline.

This type of salesperson focuses on reaching out to prospects and is most energetic when making cold calls, sending emails and delivering sales meetings or presentations. The downfall of opener salespeople is that they don’t always remember to follow up with the client more than once and in different ways.

As a result, they often lose the sale because they can’t keep the customer thinking of them after the initial impression.

6. Empath

Empaths are the most insightful type of sales personality. Their main strength is tuning into the lead’s needs and wants quickly by noting subtle social cues while listening to everything they say.

As a result, they’re successful persuaders who seamlessly tap into different buying motivations and make it their mission to connect prospects with products that benefit them greatly.

Overall, empath salespeople don’t just care about making the sale; they want to make customers’ lives easier – and will always give exceptional value to every sale they make.

7. Closers

Closer salespeople have goal-orientated, driven and bold sales personalities and can always ask for the sale without being pushy. They have a magnetic enthusiasm that helps them reach new customers and close deals quickly when they listen intently to their needs, challenges and wants.

The pitfall for closers is their need to consistently make sales, which means they often lose focus on small but trusted sales relationships.

8. Chasers

Chasers are the master of the follow-up sales cadence. This type of salesperson is relentless by nature and will contact prospects until they get the desired result. However, chasers can often overlook the need to listen to customers and often lose out on a sale because they didn’t balance the desire to close the deal with their needs and preferences.

9. Networker

Networkers are the life and soul of the party as they seek out situations to meet new people.

Networking salespeople are at their strongest when making planned or unexpected connections; they welcome every opportunity to meet new clients and start new relationships with others. The only downfall of the networker is when they neglect follow-up messaging to turn connections into sales because they’re too busy nurturing trusted relationships.

10. Educator

The Educator salesperson prioritizes the product as the focus of the sales process by guiding conversations with either a skilled hands-on demonstration or a thorough explanation that best suits the need of customers.

These types of salespeople have a fluid ability to condense complex products down for consumers and instil confidence in their purchases. You’ll often find this type of salesperson in tech or SaaS sales because of their ability to explain complex products and core people skills needed to build rapport and trust, a winning combination.

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The 6 types of Product Managers. Which one do you need?

 

Catherine (Kit) Ulrich

Eskimos have 1,000 words to describe snow. Marketers have well defined adjectives for their field: affiliate, SEO, content, performance, enterprise. Developers describe their functions and their expertise: front end, back end, java, node.js. And then there is Product, which often starts and ends with a single defining word…product.

Background — The rise of Product:

Ten years ago, Product was barely discussed as a function. Roll forward the clock to today, and product managers are some of the most in-demand talent. Just last year, the WSJ published an article stating that the most coveted post-MBA job is a product manager role (a bit frightening, I admit).

So, what is a product manager? There have been a number of articles outlining the skills of product managers: many write about product as a blend of business, ux, and tech, including posts by Marty Cagan, Martin Eriksson, and this gem by Dan Schmidt. And then there is this classic post by Ben Horowitz and David Weiden on Good vs. Bad PMs.

Credit: Martin Eriksson

Overall, as Marty Cagan says in his book Inspired, the job of a product manager is “to discover a product that is valuable, usable and feasible”.

Why this matters:

However, this broad definition is missing a set of adjectives for the role, Product Manager. The lack of a common vernacular creates a shallow definition for the variety of product people out in the world. And, that lack of definition leads to hiring mis-steps and not understanding the superpowers and kryptonite for each type of product person.

At first, you might believe that this is a large company problem because they can hire multiple product managers, each with their own specialties. But this is even more critical for startups where you must make sure your first hires are the right ones.

The 6 main product manager types:

Superpower: Loves the chase of finding conversion and retention improvements. Might have been a marketer in a past life, blending customer psychology with behavior change tactics. Helps consumers find what they are looking for with the optimal amount of work.

• Kryptonite: Risks becoming addicted to the sugar high of boosting $ at the expense of the overall customer experience. For example, turning off an auto-rebill reminder will likely pop your short-term retention, but could negatively impact long-term retention, refunds, and brand loyalty.
• Example job function: Responsible for optimizing conversion flows from marketing landing pages, pricing, and onboarding. Responsible for driving engagement/repeats by revealing new content or products
• Aliases: eCommerce, Marketing, Performance, Conversion

Superpower: A detective at heart, they can study a customer’s workflow/process and find unique opportunities for improving it. They cut out extraneous steps and optimize every interaction.

• Kryptonite: Assuming users will adopt a new behavior/workflow. Old workflows are addictive because they are familiar; there will often be a switching cost for users even if your new tool is better in the long run
• Example job function: Building editing tools, dashboards, tracking tools
• Aliases: SaaS, workflow
• On a related note: There are also Internal Workflow Product Managers. This flavor of Workflow Warrior loves driving improvements for the functions within a business including marketing, customer service, tech and sales (to name only a few).

Superpower: Understands the psychology behind users sharing and connecting with others. Loves testing ways to drive engagement and deepen connections. In a B2B setting, builds collaboration into a workflow.

• Kryptonite: Focuses on building a vibrant community at the expense of financial/business goals.
• Example job function: Responsible for building the contributor side of a marketplace, driving social interactions in a gaming app, or collaboration for enterprise SaaS.
• Aliases: Social, platform

Superpower: Build it and they will come. Amazing at building services that others (internal teams or external developers) want to use. Typically more technical PMs who understand how to build a service/API.

• Kryptonite: Not understanding that you must also market it. Learning scalable ways to address the variety of use cases or customization of your service.
• Example job function: Manages the development of external APIs and the developer platform.
• Aliases: API, ‘technical’

Superpower: Expert translator between user needs and the problems algorithms or AI /ML models can solve. In the past, this role was commonly a ‘Search PM’.

• Kryptonite: Focusing on technically interesting problems that have low business/customer value.
• Example job function: Improving search success rates and time to conversion.
• Aliases: Search, ‘technical’, analytics, AI/ML

Superpower: Expert at unique mobile use cases, mobile ux/design, and app store processes. Ideally, has a personal relationship with the Apple review team!

• Kryptonite: Believing that understanding mobile is enough. Must build capabilities in one of the areas above as well, because understanding the native ecosystem will be a skill that every PM has in the future.
• Example job function: Leads iOS and Android native app teams
• Aliases: Native, Apps

The product profession has grown enormously over the last ten years and deserves to have a set of common adjectives (probably even more than 6). I look forward to the day when all companies and job descriptions use a common set of vernacular to find the right person!

With these product types, you’ll be able to determine exactly what type of PM your company needs, and what questions you’ll need to ask to find them.

https://tinyurl.com/yvjwyxa5

Interview Questions for the 6 Types of Product Managers

Once you know the skills you need in your product manager, the next step is to ensure you hire someone with those skills!

Why this matters:

What is the biggest mistake a company can make? I’ll argue two things: not hiring when you need to and hiring the wrong person.

The most common challenge we hear at FirstMark — from founders of early stage startups and CEOs of Fortune 100 companies alike — is how to hire well. In numbers, the hiring process takes 4–6 months, with an average of 80 hours spent hiring a single individual. If you hire the wrong person, it typically takes 6–9 months before you know the individual is lacking the skills and have conviction to make a change. Which prompts another round of 4–6 months of hiring. Overall, hiring is simply not very ‘agile’. And it’s not just time you’re spending; poor hiring impacts morale and productivity, and can end up costing your company millions.

Hiring right is critical for every role, but it has particular implications for product positions because they impact the efficiency/effectiveness of other functions (e.g., tech, design), are relied upon to meet business goals, and are usually critical for allowing senior roles to scale up. If you are a founder or CEO, this role will allow you to grow or will pull you into the weeds.

To help you hire right, the first time, here are essential interview questions for each type of product manager.

Words for the wise:

• Start with a classic: What product are you most proud of launching? Which did you learn from the most?
• Don’t be shallow. Go Deep. After asking the questions, dig deeply into each topic and answer. Likewise, if you are the candidate, give specifics. It is easy for anyone to give a high-level textbook answer (particularly in the world we live in where you can Google the best answers). It is hard to fake specific examples from your own experience.
• Ask them to do a case study. Set up the case study as a single question that you want them to answer. The more senior the role, the more open-ended it should be.

The 3 best questions for each type of Product Manager:

• What test has surprised you the most? This is a flavor of my go-to question: ‘what product launch did you learn from the most?’. A Growth Hacker answer should show experience and competency in A/B or multivariate testing.
• How did you measure the success of your tests? Do they just talk about cash? How do they take into account refunds, LTV, price discounts etc.?
• If you saw two designs, one beautiful and one that converted well, which one would you pick? A trick question, but their answer will reveal a lot about their thought process. Do they believe they can create beautiful experiences that also convert? Do they think of conversion as getting clicks or as the entire funnel and customer experience?

• How did you roll-out your product/tool? This question is really a two for one, because it should also tell you how they think through personas / customer segments. Do they discuss existing vs. new users? How did they guide users through changes in their workflow? If they built a new product, how did they think though the best on-boarding experience?
• What are the best workflow products you look to for ideas? Do they think about other workflows their customers use and pull from them vs. recreating the wheel? For example, if their users are in PowerPoint often, do they leverage UX patterns already developed from that experience? Great answers will leave you feeling like the PM is always looking at the details behind every experience they encounter (inspiration can come from everywhere)!
• How do you work with UX/Design? I like asking all PMs this question, but have found it’s even more vital for Workflow Warriors. They need to copy and innovate thoughtfully when improving or creating a workflow. Their answer should indicate true partnership.
• Bonus Question: Have you done immersive user research (sitting with a customer in their natural setting)? Give me an example of what you learned. How did you prepare for and debrief after the session?

• What drives human behavior? This is a white space question with a lot of room for different answers. Personally, I love when PMs answer with a framework that is based on their own insights/reading/education. Do they mention core human needs? Do they raise behavior change and behavioral economic frameworks? Do they bring up examples based on what they have tested in the past?
• Tell me how you have built a community. Look for answers that show a variety of techniques (e.g, ask to connect your contacts, seeding content for debate). Great Community Connectors have a knack for getting people to engage; their answer should have concrete examples with impact metrics.
• Over the last 5 years, how have social networks changed how people engage? Always good to probe whether PMs can not only answer questions about the products they have launched, but also how they fit into larger marketplace trends. For example: using @ handles, greater comfort with sharing overall, use of command terms such as / and #.

• How did you drive adoption (of your service or platform)? Good Platform PMs will give several examples about how they marketed their product. They will include details such as clear documentation, marketing materials, support/feedback mechanisms, methods for providing updates, etc.
• How do you prioritize your backlog / feature requests? Applies to any PM, but this role often has multiple end users who often have competing requests. Probe for answers that offer solutions for how to handle competing outcomes/KPIs.
• How do you address customization for multiple end users? Did they consider an inner source model (open source within an organization)? Code reviews? Good candidates will also discuss how they interviewed internal teams, understood, and then prioritized their needs based on business/customer impact.
• Bonus Question: How do you decide when a service should be outsourced or built internally?

• How do you share customer insights with your tech teammates? I am always looking for examples where the PM actively involves his/her developers with customers. Do they sit in on customer interviews and ethnographic sessions? Do they share customer feedback regularly and as part of a continuous process?
• How do you prioritize your backlog? For this role, look for how they consider technical difficulty vs. customer impact.
• How do you know when you are ready to ship/launch your product? Do they discuss a lab environment, A/B testing tools? This is important because some changes are harder to test due to UX designs launching at the same time as major algorithm adjustments.

• How has mobile changed in the last two years? From how users engage, to iOS updates, to insights on the optimal UX — mobile is always adapting. Look for a Product Manager who is constantly learning and intellectually curious about the space.
• How does IAP work, what are the pros and cons to a business? May not be relevant to every business, but a PM focused exclusively on mobile should understand the basics. Extra credit if they can answer how IAP and Apple’s enforcement policies have changed over time. I like questions like this because they also tell you if the person loves their role. Do they breathe and sleep mobile?
• How do you monitor performance and measure success? For years, mobile A/B testing lagged behind web testing, so I am always curious to see how PMs answer this. Have they used a testing service? Are they talking to customers?
• Bonus: Have you been rejected from the app store? This question usually generates some interesting stories…

Now get out there and hire a rockstar product manager for your team!

https://tinyurl.com/2uj3wzbv

10 Toxic Personalities You Will Face

 

The smartest way to beat a toxic personality?
Starve their ego. Don’t react. Don’t explain. Don’t engage.

The more you play, the more power they gain.
But the moment you stop feeding their need for control—you win.

A Harvard Business Review study confirms:
Disengaging from toxic dynamics not only protects your mental health—it dissolves their influence.

Here’s how to outmaneuver 10 toxic personalities without losing your cool:

1/ The Underminer
↳ Backhanded compliments, subtle digs.
Strategy: Stay factual. Let truth expose their games.

2/ The Narcissist
↳ It’s always about them.
Strategy: Stop chasing their approval. Anchor to your values.

3/ The Victim
↳ Drama magnet. Zero ownership.
Strategy: Push toward solutions. Empathize—don’t enable.

4/ The Gossip
↳ Half-truth dealer.
Strategy: Don’t react. Don’t respond. Silence kills momentum.

5/ The Credit Stealer
↳ Vanishes during losses. Shines during your wins.
Strategy: Document everything. Speak up—calmly and publicly.

6/ The Bulldozer
↳ Interrupts, dominates, steamrolls.
Strategy: Set firm boundaries. Reclaim space with clarity.

7/ The Passive-Aggressive
↳ Sarcasm, delay, indirect hits.
Strategy: Bring behavior into light. Ask direct questions.

8/ The Gatekeeper
↳ Hoards info to stay relevant.
Strategy: Build cross-team ties. Never rely on one channel.

9/ The Martyr
↳ Guilt trips masked as hard work.
Strategy: Define roles in writing. Don’t reward the drama.

10/ The Know-It-All
↳ Rejects feedback. Blocks innovation.
Strategy: Ask what they can’t deflect. Let ego do the unraveling.

Which of these personalities have you faced—and how did you outfox them?

https://tinyurl.com/yeypbap8

9 Online Business Personalities

 

You don’t need a new strategy—

You need a style that fits you

Your style isn’t a weakness.

It’s your shortcut:

1️⃣ The Visionary (sees what’s possible)
• Turns ideas into simple steps.
• Try: write one clear line about who you help.

2️⃣ The Connector (loves people)
• Builds trust and opportunities through relationships.
• Try: send 10 helpful DMs today.

3️⃣ The Organizer (needs order)
• Thrives with checklists and structure.
• Try: turn your offer into three steps you always follow.

4️⃣ The Closer (sells without fear)
• Asks confidently and gets paid.
• Try: add a “Buy Now” or “Book Call” button.

5️⃣ The Thinker (goes with data)
• Knows what’s working by watching the numbers.
• Try: track visitors, signups, and sales.

6️⃣ The Teacher (explains clearly)
• Makes complex things easy.
• Try: share one simple “problem → why → fix” post.

7️⃣ The Creator (builds fast)
• Makes quickly without overthinking.
• Try: create one small thing with a 30-minute timer.

8️⃣ The Finisher (gets it done)
• Ships, even when it isn’t perfect.
• Try: post one half-done thing today.

9️⃣ The Doer (acts fast)
• Moves quickly and learns by doing.
• Try: pick one product in creatyl and publish it.

☑️Start with a few simple steps:
• Pick the personality that feels most like you.
• Try the matching “Try this” once today.
• Build your next move around that strength.

Your style is a strength,
not a problem to fix.

Working with it makes everything lighter.

Use it intentionally and the path clears fast.

Credits to Earn With creatyl, make sure to follow!

https://tinyurl.com/y8a6kh8n