Page 196 - Company Excellence

Part III: Chapter 7 ‐ What customers really like

You need to master the matching approach "off the cuff", especially
when talking to prospects or new customers whom you do not know
at all or hardly at all. I want to draw your attention to some special
customer and sales situations in which your salespeople can
profitably use the matching approach.

Learning to assess customer types better and better
But how does a salesperson succeed in assigning a customer -
largely unknown to him - to a personality type in everyday work
practice? After all, he can hardly make him take an INSIGHTS-MDI®
test. This is where the salesperson's knowledge of human nature
comes into play. When he analyzes a customer and assigns him to a
type, he should:

• watch closely and do not be too quick to decide which type
he is dealing with. Because most likely, the customer has
two, if not three color shares.
• expect that the customer's behavior could also change in an
unexpected direction.

My recommendation is that a salesperson practices recognizing the
type of customer. For this purpose, the last customer conversations
should be recapitulated and analyzed with regard to the following
questions:

1. How was the customer's handshake?
2. What did I notice on his desk?
3. Who started the conversation?
4. What was the tone of voice of the customer?
5. In what situations did his voice change?
6. What was his posture like during my presentation?
7. Did he get distracted occasionally? By what?
8. Did he ask a lot of questions? Were they questions that
factually moved the conversation forward?
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