Page 70 - Lighting Magazine September 2018

on the mark
Mark Okun is Business Contributor to enLIGHTenment Magazine and President of Mark Okun Consulting & Performance Group. He has more than 30 years of hands- on retail experience training and coaching sales associates in the lighting and furniture industries. Mark@bravo businessmedia.com
adaPTive selling
Albert Einstein said, “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” For today’s sales climate, I am altering his famous quote to, “The measure of sales success is the ability to adapt to your client.”
This statement applies well when thinking about the four social styles of clients. Each determines the style in which clients will communicate, the method that they use to process the information they have been given, and the order of impor- tance that the information must be presented to them in order for them to make a buying decision.
While the names associated with the various social styles can change, the style itself does not. They are commonly known as: Analytical, Driver, Amiable, and Expressive. By discovering clients’ social styles, you will be able to communicate in the way they prefer.
The rst step is to understand your own social style. Once you know which group you fall into, you can learn to modify your behavior and pre- sentation to a client’s style based on similarities and di erences.
Social styles can be broken down into a blend of two dimensions; assertiveness (dominance) and responsiveness (sociability). Assertiveness is when the client strongly expresses their opin- ion and takes control of the situation and others around them. Communication is fast-paced and they make statements of fact. Responsiveness involves emotional words and expressions; the cli- ent outwardly expresses happiness and is slow to make decisions.
The purpose of understanding and communi- cating to each social style is to build trust. Trust is both an emotional and logical action and the most
“People may hear your words, but they feel your a itude.”
—John C. Maxwell, author and speaker on leadership
important a ribute a salesperson can foster in a customer.
When building trust at the start of a sales con- versation with one of these social styles, following some guidelines will give you a rm foundation. At the beginning, do not talk too fast or too much — and don’t sound robotic. Determine the pace and cadence of the client; listen intently and stay away from salesy questions. Maintain good eye contact and don’t avert your gaze when the client looks at or speaks to you. By the same token, do not bore holes into the client with an unbreaking stare. As the conversation continues, the client will provide you with all you need to learn about their social style; modify your actions to best present to them.
Another key point: Not every social style works well with another without conscious e ort and the desire to do so. For example, the Analytical per- sona has style con icts with the Expressive, and the Driver has con icts with the Amiable. In short, the fast-paced communication style of the Driver is frustrated by the slow-paced style of the Amiable. It doesn’t ma er which style belongs to the salesperson or the client, it takes a rm resolve and responsive versatility to work with an opposing social style.
We have only scratched the surface in de ning the reasons “why” a client buys from you. The full list is extensive and requires a commitment to the personal development that it will take to be successful. Winning over clients is a 360-degree experience provided by the showroom, from pre- awareness marketing to post-sale follow up. Each step must be choreographed in a way that always presents the answer to the question, “Why buy from me?”
As always, happy selling!
68 enLIGHTenment Magazine | SepteMber 2018
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