Sales Archetypes: Do You Know Your Type?
A simple three-step exercise to level up your support of your team for greater success.
Everyone is different, salespeople included. And as sales leaders, it’s our job to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each of our reps and help them leverage their personal strengths to be more successful.
Understanding sales archetypes and how my reps fit into different archetypes had a big impact on how I was able to support them in meaningful ways. There are lots of articles on universal sales archetypes; I like this one on LinkedIn by Georgina Spentzou.
The catch is that each sales team is different, and your sales process is unique. Because of that, your team might be built around one or two archetypes that are more conducive to being successful for your product or service.
Here’s a simple 3-step process for using sales archetypes to set your team up for success.
1. Create a List of Archetypes for Your Sale Team
I recommend taking an hour to read through what people have identified as some of the universal sales archetypes (Georgina’s article is a great place to start), create a list of archetypes for your team, and bullet out the qualities or behaviors you observe for each.
Here are the different archetypes for my sales team:
The Networker
Event-driven — happy hours, golf events
Relationship builder
Thrives in social settings
Covers the whole room at an event
The Promoter
Pitches, presentations — great in front of a crowd
Thrives face-to-face
Host open houses and talks about the company’s services
Focuses on promotion of the company services
Very active on social media
The Hustler
In early, out late
Thrives face-to-face, but also one-on-one
Routine-oriented — maps their routes and call times
The Problem Solver
Works by appointment
Loves to solve customer business problems
Information junky
Really great at asking questions (curious)
The Desk Jockey
Phone-focused - great at building relationships via phone, text, and/or email
Activity-based and task-oriented
Transactional
2. Align Your Reps with Archetypes
The next step is to understand where each of your reps aligns with each archetype.
SUPER IMPORTANT: Remember that archetypes are generalizations and not all reps fit neatly into a box, especially one you created. A rep might have a primary and secondary archetype, or an equal blend of two.
3. Share Your Archetypes with Your Sales Team
Finally, customize your support of your reps based on what they need.
A great exercise to help do this is to share your archetype list with your team in a sales meeting, discuss which ones they feel like they connect with, and then ask what the best ways are to support them based on their archetypes. Feel free to have one-on-one meetings with individual salespeople as needed to discuss archetypes in more detail.
Understanding what types of salespeople you have and how they view themselves gives you the ability to create a deeper form of support for your team.