Are Comm Styles Critical to Your Sales Calls?

Sometime in your career you’ve probably taken a class in communication styles. Many companies invested in systems like Myers Briggs, Social Styles, or one of at least a dozen others.

Assuming you had a good instructor, these classes were always a lot of fun. You learned about your own preferred style and those of your colleagues, boss included. When the class just included members of the sales team, you often charted out the styles of client or prospective client stakeholders.

The key in all these classes, no matter what system you learned, was to identify the style of the other person you want to communicate with and then adapt to their preferred style. 

So far, so good.

But because we’re all about improving sales effectiveness, my two questions to you are:

(1.) Did you use the system on live sales calls?

(2.) How well did it work for you?

In other words, did trying to identify the style and adapt to it, while on the call, help you or did it possibly hurt you?

Here’s why I ask:

For many folks I’ve worked with, unless you’ve mastered the system, unless you can quickly and accurately identify that person’s style, trying to do so is often more distracting than useful.

You end up spending a lot of brain cycles in the identification phase, looking for and listening for little behavioral clues. We’re so focused on trying to determine what quadrant they fit into, we end up missing key bits of information about their needs, wants, players, culture, and all sorts of other gold nuggets.

Now, perhaps you’re one of the few who have mastered this skill. You can identify with speed and accuracy their style and adapt to it without missing a thing. If so, that’s awesome. Absolutely keep doing what’s working.   

But, if you’re like me, if you understand and believe in the concept, but you find that while trying to use it, you’re probably missing other key pieces of information they’re providing, here’s how I recommend you use it:

Keep it super simple by just focusing on two variables while on the call. Then, after the call, when you’re not on the spot and have time to think, refine your assessment.

The two variables are pace and structure.

Pace refers to how fast they talk and move. On the call, determine if their pace is faster or slower than yours. Then, just try to modify your pace up or down to match theirs as closely as you can.

Structure refers to whether they like things precise, orderly, and logical or whether they prefer to bounce ideas around, talk about people, and how they feel. Are they more or less structured in their communication with you? Again, modify what you say so it more closely matches their preference.

The closer we get to their preferred style, the more comfortable they feel with us. And the more comfortable they feel, the more apt they are to share the good stuff. 

To me, that amount of adapting is enough on a first call. Then, in your call debrief, by reliving the call, their style may become more apparent and you can use it in subsequent calls.

But if you don’t do a good job of questioning and listening in order to sustain the dialogue necessary to create interest, there won’t be a subsequent call.

Have a great week!

Bob

P.S. Do you have one sales question you’d like to ask me? If you do, send it to me and I’ll answer it. Email your specific question about anything sales related - strategy, skills, process - and I’ll do my best to answer it. Send me an email ([email protected]) and I’ll email you back. If I think it’s a good topic for an article, I’ll use it there. But either way, I’ll get back to you. But, please do so by Thursday of this week, 12/14/23. The holidays are here!