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We are joined today by our guest co-host Todd Ervin. Todd lives in Wilmington, Ohio (just north of Cincinnati) with his wife and 2 sons.  He works as a Regional Sales Manager for Crouzet Motors, a French electro-mechanical company, covering the eastern half of North America.  He enjoys waterskiing, boating, softball and anything else outdoors. (See image to the left)

Today’s special guest is Jim Jacobus, who is a very knowledgeable when it comes to DISC profiling, our main topic for today’s show, as well as its importance in the realm of selling.

Jim has 17 years of experience as a major account rep. In the last 22 years, he has been a consultant, speaker, and trainer in a broad variety of fields, primarily in the sales field, designing large-scale sales training programs for clients like Halliburton, Price Waterhouse Coopers, ExxonMobil , Mercedez-Benz, and Cadillac to name a few. When properly done, Jim believes that sales is the most honorable profession on the planet.

Jim also manages a website called The Sales Gladiators, a content marketing site that provides an armory of resources which salespeople need so they become better equipped in the sales arena.

Here are the highlights of our conversation with Jim:

The Sales Gladiator’s four primary buckets:

• Sales process
• Value-based selling
• Partner-Adviser Relationships
• A-Players Only Core Skill

DISC Profiling:

• Measuring personality/behavior styles
• A great tool for understanding communication style, how people go about doing things and manage them, and how to motivate people
• DISC does not, can not, have not, will not ever predict PERFORMANCE. It does have awesome applications when it comes to becoming more effective in selling.

What DISC stands for: 

• D – Dominance
• I – Influence
• S – Steadiness
• C – Compliance

How to take advantage of the knowledge of the personality styles:

1. Understand your own style.

D above the midpoint: Handles problems head on; my way or the highway; risk-taker

D below the midpoint: More cautious and reserved; let problems work their way out; consensus type of person

I above the midpoint: More outgoing personality to influence people

I below the midpoint: Influence people; backs figures, data, logic

S above the midpoint: More cautious, slower to do things

S below the midpoint: C’mon, c’mon, c’mon! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!

C above the midpoint: High attention to detail; high compliance with rules

C below the midpoint: Less attention to detail

2. What are the strengths that come with that? What are the challenges that come with that?
3. Understand the style of your client.

This is important for you to learn how to deliver the things about your product or service they’re most interested in.

DISC profiling as manipulative:

• It all comes down to your motives and why you’re learning this stuff.
• Caring about your customers more than you care about your back-pocket.

Personalities having harder or easier time in the sales world:

• Highly technical personality styles tend to be lower relationship skills: Low I’s, high C’s
• Low I’s, high C’s tend to struggle more with connecting to people than High I’s or Low C’s
• High S’s are more laid back and make better connections
• High I’s tend to not be great listeners

How understanding DISC profile can help you make more money as an entrepreneur/seller:

On a management standpoint: Your job is to sell your employees on doing what’s in their best interest first. What’s in the company’s best interest comes second.

Take whatever your finite territory is and create a multiplier of four when it comes to your ability to effectively connect with and sell to that client.

Learn to speak these four different languages (meaning, understanding these four primary categories) primarily because you care about the client and you want to serve them as effectively as possible.

How a manager can use DISC in hiring:

Behaviors do not predict performance.

Current projects Jim is working on:

Marriage retreat and upcoming podcast

The Sales Gladiators – monthly sales training and webinars, coaching call, podcast, blogs, etc.

Jim’s Major Takeaway:

Accept people how they are created. We are all created phenomenally, to do phenomenal things, not the same things, not the same way. Embrace how you are created and start to figure out how to get the most out of that. Embrace who you are created to be.

Episode Resources:

The Sales Gladiators

Jim’s podcast: In The Sales Arena

To inquire more about DISC and get a hand of these resources, send Jim an email at jim@thesalesgladiators.com

Best way to stay in touch with Todd:

Email him at todmon26@cinci.rr.com

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