What's your sales personality?
Everyone sells. Some do it better as themselves than as 'a salesperson'.
Start the quiz →What this quiz explores
Most people who say they can't sell mean they can't do the version they've seen on television. There are at least four ways to move someone from interested to committed, and they work through different mechanisms. This quiz places people along how you build trust and how much pressure you can apply without becoming someone else.
How it works
The quiz has 3 possible results. Each answer option was written to lean toward one of them.
Your result is the one your answers pointed to most often. Skipped questions, and the occasional answer that does not lean toward any result, are not counted.
Alongside the result you see your answer profile: the share of your answers that pointed to each result. Close percentages mean you sit between two results, which is common.
The three ways people sell
The Explainer
You sell by making someone understand, which builds unusually solid customers and takes longer than it needs to.
Your credibility comes from knowing more than the buyer expected you to know. You prepare, you handle the technical question honestly, and you'd rather send a real answer that afternoon than bluff in the room. Customers who buy from you tend to stay, because they bought with a clear picture of what they were getting, and they rarely churn from disappointed expectations. The trap is that understanding is not the same as deciding. You can teach someone thoroughly and watch them do nothing for eight months, because nobody ever asked them to commit, and your instinct when a deal stalls is to explain more. Depth becomes a place to hide from the uncomfortable sentence. Add one move to what you already do well. At the end of the explanation, ask a direct question: what would need to be true for you to move forward, and by when. That single sentence converts a seminar into a sale and costs you nothing in credibility. Then cut your follow-up material in half, since the long document is usually for your comfort rather than theirs.
Connector
People buy from you because they trust you, and the same instinct that builds the trust makes you soft on the ask.
Your pipeline is a network. You get introduced, you ask about someone before you talk about the product, and half your deals close because a person who liked you vouched for you elsewhere. This is the most durable form of distribution there is, and it compounds: every good relationship generates more of them, for years, without any spend attached. The trap is the boundary between friendship and commerce. You concede on price to people you like, you avoid the moment where you name a number, and you'll nurture a relationship indefinitely rather than find out it isn't going anywhere. Deals in your pipeline don't die, they just never resolve, and a pipeline full of warm nothing is hard to notice. Separate the two conversations rather than blending them. Have the relationship, then say plainly that you'd like to talk about whether this is a fit, and treat that as a distinct meeting with a decision at the end. Most people find the friendship survives it comfortably. Then set a rule: any deal open more than ninety days gets a direct question about whether it's real.
Closer
You ask, which sounds simple and is the thing most founders never do.
You're comfortable with the part everyone else finds excruciating. You'll name a price, sit in a silence, ask what's really blocking the decision, and take a no without it ruining your week. Your cycles are short because you don't leave things open, and you'll have more conversations in a month than the other three types have in a quarter.
What this quiz can’t tell you
- It does not know your income, debts, taxes, dependents or goals, and any real decision turns on those.
- It sorts you by how you answered a set of general questions. It is not a financial plan and it is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything.
- Markets and personal circumstances change. A result that fits today may not fit next year.
Read more about how our quizzes are created, including how scoring works and what we do and do not claim.