Last week, I introduced you to the animal factor… personalities for success.

And the first personality temperament we met was the lion… the A-Type personality. They are the leaders of society and have a take-charge attitude.

This week, I am swinging in another direction with the next personality type. Let’s head deeper into the jungle and meet the monkey!

Remember, when you understand who you are connecting with, you’ll be better at marketing, selling, closing and creating relationships. I’m going to show you how to close a socializer prospect.

I’m not going to monkey around so let’s dive in!

The Monkey

Let’s get to know the monkey… the life of the party.

The socializer.

The person who can swing from tree to tree creating fun wherever they go. This is the type of person who has a tremendous amount of energy. One of their hot buttons is fun. This is the type of person that you will see in the corner with a lampshade on their head. One of their keys is going to be their ego.

Their motto is: Let’s have fun. Let’s do it.

Their likes are applause for greatness, and their time frame is usually not going to be on your time frame. However, this is the type of person that if they feel good, they’ll make an emotional decision.  BUT… their time frame is usually next week or later.

Now… let’s cover some of their traits.

Monkey Personality Traits

How will you know when you’ve met a monkey? Pay attention to these traits….

Monkeys are dreamers, often with very unrealistic goals.

They have strong desires for approval or compliments. They love an audience and a group. They’re extremely creative and dreams come easily for the swinging monkey. They are extremely outgoing, persuasive, friendly, enthusiastic and spontaneous.

They generate and project a tremendous amount of confidence. Often times, this is the temperament that produces professional athletes, actors, entertainers, actresses and they also have an image of… “YES, I’m a natural born salesperson. I can sell ice to an eskimo.”

As you can see, this is the type of personality that brings a lot of energy to the table.

They are poised and they meet people easily. However, they can be flighty and move from one project to another. They think quickly and they can make decisions quickly sometimes.

What you want to watch for when you are conversing with them… do they have a pattern of jumping from job to job or business to business?

They will act on opinions, hunches and they are very good at tuning in to their intuition. They also misjudge people because of trust and often make wrong decisions based on their emotions.

When it comes to the monkey, you will find they often generalize, exaggerate and just plain disregard facts.

Now, they love to join groups for prestige. They love to be on stage which is one of their hot buttons. Also, personal recognition is what motivates them. Their ego is one of their biggest hot buttons… And how you feed it is going to really affect how they make decisions.

How Do You Know You’re Talking to a Monkey?

Let’s talk a little about how you know when you are conversing with a monkey. This is the type of person that tends to wear very interesting clothing. Often, their clothing won’t match or has a flare for the dramatic. And if you ever see a monkey’s apartment, house or residence… you will see they are all over the map.

However, understand this…

This is the type of temperament that you will definitely want in your business, your enterprise or as a friend because they are great promoters and socializers.

And as I said… a NATURAL BORN salesperson.

When you are conversing with this type of personality, it is typically easy to bring this person into your circle of influence or into any business endeavor…. Especially if they see an opportunity to have fun or promote themselves. 

This the type of personality is typically the greatest connector of all the personality types. They usually have a large circle of influence because people enjoy being around their energy. They usually make emotional decisions based on how they feel.  They are not the thinkers of society… they are the feelers. They typically operate on intuition and a gut feeling. One of the areas that you want to concentrate on is to get them talking about themselves and their goals. Be sure to get right into the big picture with this person.

Oh… And they enjoy talking, talking, talking…

…mostly about themselves.

If they ever do ask you a question, turn it right back around and ask them a question. Because they love to talk about themselves!

You can use the word WHY and they’ll continue to talk…

Why is that?

Why do you feel that way?

Why do you see that situation?

So listen carefully and probe deeper. It’s easy to do with this personality.

Now, let’s move into how to market to the monkey.

Marketing to the Monkey

When prospecting a monkey, make mental notes and focus on how to make their dreams come true. Simply jump right into their dreams with them and ride that pink cloud all the way where you get to the point where they say,

“Gee, this sounds fun!”

Your natural statement would be…

“When do you want to get started making money? When do you want to get started promoting yourself? When do you want to be a part of our organization?

This type of personality doesn’t have a high regard for money but has a very good means of how to find it. This person isn’t typically consumed with money but is good at attracting it.

Understand the monkey is the socializer and people are attracted to the monkey’s energy. They’re fun to talk to.

However… I want to caution you.

Don’t get into long debates with the monkey and don’t get into the nuts, bolts, and details because this type of information bogs them down very quickly. Stick to discussing their opinions, ideas and dreams.

Definitely… do not give them facts.

When communicating with this personality, it’s important that you bring some of your energy to the table… because this kind of person loves to connect. But if you are connecting from very low energy, then I highly suggest you pick up your step and match energy for energy. The monkey has no patience for boring people.

And they will want special attention from you. Anything new, different and novel excites this type of person.

Work to develop new ideas with this person. Explore alternative situations together. For instance, let’s say the monkey says…

“Gosh, I want to do this, but I don’t have the time, the finances, or whatever…”

Suggest creative solutions. Involve other happy monkey stories when you are communicating because they will buy quickly even without a formal proposal. Don’t get into the details of life. Take them right into the front aspects of what’s in it for them. Get them to the initial agreement now because this is the easiest personality to market to.

The monkey swings from tree to tree and if you don’t get them involved they may swing into another business or another endeavor immediately.

Through the monkey, you can find tremendous people, if you can keep them on track. They may not be a superstar, but typically… they know several. They can become top producers over the long haul, but I must caution you…

…Watch the monkey, because if the wind is blowing, they may swing a different direction.

(Did you miss last week’s blog post about the lion? Don’t worry… his roar is worse than his bite. Click Here to read it now.)