How To Sell To Different People With Different Social Styles

The video below is a great introduction on how to sell to people with different social styles. Something I think that we could all be looking to improve on to take our businesses to the next level!

— Video Transcript —

Have you ever wondered why you can make a presentation or have a conversation with one prospect and get a really positive response, and yet you try the same approach, same words with a different prospect and get a totally negative response?

Why is that do you think? The answer lies in understanding that you have to sell different people differently.

Some years ago, a psychologist by the name of Dr David Merrill investigated this situation and came to the conclusion that we have to identify the prospect’s Social Style and then adapt our style in order to get on their wave-length, so to speak.

Over the years I’ve worked on this theory and clearly there are dimensions of behaviour you can observe that will help you identify your prospects’ Social Style.

The first dimension I call the ‘Power line’. At one end you have High Power- the strong Tell-orientated power person, who challenges any confrontation, is fast paced and fairly quick decision-maker, and someone who often will take risks to achieve their goals.

On the other end of the line are Low Power – the Ask-orientated person, who is a little less of a confronting style and a little more risk adverse, who wants to take their time making a decision.

There is about a 80/20 split, 80% of people fall into the Ask-orientated style.

A second dimension of behaviour that is observable is what I term Emotive line. Like the Power line, there is both high and low emotiveness. Some people are highly emotive and show their feelings and emotions very readily, and you notice that they speak with their voice and body language – lots of nods, frowns, smiles etc. They enjoy small talk and are very open discussing emotional issues.

On the other hand are people who are often hard to read, and they often have a poker face and give very little away, both verbally and visually.

If you place these two lines as I’ve done here, you will see we form four very different Social Styles. We call this the 4 Primary Styles. The Hi Power/Low Emotive is the ‘Controller’, the Hi Power/Hi Emotive is the ‘Charmer’, the Low Power/Low Emotive is the ‘Checker’ and the Low Power/Hi Emotive is the ‘Carer’.

Now you will, we are all a little of each of these at different times and you’d be right. But there is one where we are most of the time, and this is why we call it the Primary Style.

None of these styles are better or worse than any other – just different. And so the key is firstly being able to recognise the differences and adapt accordingly.

So I’ll just look at one style today, the ‘Carer’ because some 70-80% of the population fit into this box. The ‘Carer’ is the people person, who hates pressure and is not too keen on change, preferring the status quo. A colour to describe them would be Blue – true blue, blue collar in a lot of cases. A person who hates confrontation and prefers co-operation. Their decision making is often based on getting other people’s input – family, friends and colleagues.

Their appearance is often casual, preferring pastel shades to bright/over the top colour clothing, even their cars are often pale colours – they just don’t want to attract too much attention. They hate change for change sake, preferring the tried and tested. Messrs, Volkswagon and Toyota love them.

As a customer, they sometimes say yes under pressure, but then cancel over the phone later.

OK, thats a little view into Social Styles. To find out your style, go to http:/smart-train.co.nz and then click through to look closely at the other three styles.