Have you ever thought about how to prospect for new clients with emotional intelligence? Now, I know a few of you are giggling, because you don't think the words “emotional” and “intelligence” should be used in the same sentence, but it's truly a thing. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize your own emotions and those of others to identify your feelings and how it can affect communications.
This can help you to manage and/or adjust your emotions to adapt to environments and achieve your goals. What does all this mean? Well, the bottom line is that when you understand how you process, and then re-communicate based on input that you're getting, it helps you to better communicate with other people.
The same is true when you're looking at prospects. When you understand how they process what it is that they're seeing and how their perceived emotions can actually cloud the way that things input and export out of their brains, it can help you to better communicate the way they want to be communicated to.
DISC
This is all based on something known as DISC. DISC is a behavior assessment tool which centers around four different personality traits: the D (dominance), the I (influence), the S (steadiness), and the C (conscientiousness).
Now, we'll explore each one of these in a little bit more detail, but I want to tell you that I remember having a DISC analysis done on me years and years ago. It took quite a while to complete, and it took a couple of days to get back.
As most people look at their own DISC profile, they say, “Yeah. That's pretty good. That's pretty close.” Usually, it's things that you don't even perceive that this test will tell you.
There are other ones out there, like Myers Briggs. I'm sure there's a lot of personality tests, but you can currently get one of these tests online for about $50.00/ They can go up into the hundreds, especially if you have somebody facilitate the testing and interpret it for you.
Crystal
But, there's a way to actually get this done instantaneously from a LinkedIn profile. If you haven't yet, go back and listen to episode 423, Better Relationship Emotional Intelligence Using Crystal, with their CEO Drew D'Agostino.
Crystal is a tool that is easy to use and it's almost scary. What you do is you download an extension for Google Chrome, and then you simply go to LinkedIn, select the person's name, hit Check the Profile, and boom. It puts it up in a little toolbar on the right-hand side, and then it also saves it to your Crystal account.
Once you go to that account, you can look at a full overall profile of that person. The first 10 are free. If you want to learn more about this specifically, you can listen to the episode and get the free trial by going to PerfectLinkedinStrategy.com.
That's my website where I outline a whole bunch of tools, but it's on the page called Products. You can go there, download it, listen to the podcast, and start using it to check out how accurate it is.
Now, before I purchased this thing I tried it on myself, and then I used those 10 free trials to get profiles on some people that I knew very well. I did them, I sent them to them, and they said it's about 80% accurate.
When I talked to Drew, he said the actual number is about 83% accurate, which blew me away. How can a tool just go into a LinkedIn profile and determine this? Some people have even said to me, “Hey. I haven't used my LinkedIn in years, how does it know? I'm not writing anything, I'm not doing anything.”
It uses artificial intelligence, and it goes out and actually looks in more places than just LinkedIn. It could actually even work with email or Gmail or something along those lines, but it actually gives you a fairly accurate description of the person you're doing the profile on.
DISC Defined
D – Driver
Let me explain what those four different personality types are. Let's start with the D for dominance. That person is a driver. They're highly dominate individuals and they're independently minded. They're motivated to succeed and generally very effective in getting their own way.
These people can also be very hot-tempered and very aggressive under certain conditions, but they are wanting to be in control of the situation. They always want to run the show and be the boss.
I – Communicator
The next one is the I, or influencer. They're also the communicator. They are socially confident and they want high influence. They tend to be balanced, rather than impulsive and sometimes irrational in their approach to life.
The urge to relate and impress those around them can pretty much lead the way this person acts. Now, their goal is to feel important, like an influencer, and to get successful results.
S – Steadiness
The S, which stands for steadiness. You probably encounter these people less frequently. These type of people tend to be unassuming and very amiable, very personable. But, they're also very cautious. They want very specific steps and they also tend to be less valued by society, because they're not one of those people that sticks out.
But, steadiness is something that really helps balance out something like a dominant person. As a matter of fact, I've worked with a dominant and steady person at the same company, and they do. They definitely balance each other out. They tend to be more of a planner and thrive upon step-by-step results.
C – Compliance
The final one is C, which stands for conscientiousness. They tend to be more compliant. They tend to be somewhat like a dominant person where they really want to control through structure and procedure, but because of their non-assertive style, they try to achieve this through the use of structure and procedure.
They insist on rules and codes of conduct and they tend to be very methodical. In other words, they love spreadsheets, they love data. They're the kind of person that wants to organize and prioritize.
Hybrid Personalities
Each one of these four are not definitive. In other words, you could be a D with a high I, or a D with a high S, or a low S, or whatever.
They tend to be a blend of things, and one of the things that Crystal does and tools like that is it helps you to see kind of the bigger picture of how they like to communicate, and how they like to be communicated to. And so, that you can have a better understanding of what motivates them.
For example, with a high D they want results. You need to show them how you can get them quickly. With a high S, they want to take things very slowly. They're very cautious. If you're working with a D and an S, you need quick results that are step-by-step and very slow.
Final Thoughts
Let me leave you with some final thoughts. First and foremost, emotional intelligence is not perfect, but it's a great guide to understand how to communicate with people.
If you're going use this, take it slow. It's always a good idea to try it out on a few friends first and get some practice in understanding what it means, and how you communicate with them, and how they communicate with you, and how that's interpreted.
And then, finally, realize it's not perfect. It's about 85% accurate, but that's not 100% perfect and will not work in every situation. So, here's the bottom line. Go take it on yourself, take it on your friends, and give it a try.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas or questions about showing the concepts presented. Have you had to overcome any of the presented concepts? What worked and what did not live up to expectations? Do you have any ideas or advice you could share?
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