fbpx

How to Increase Sales by Understanding and Relating to Your Customers

Female Entrepreneur Instructor

When it comes to sales, closing is the most important part. Obviously, you can’t close a lead you didn’t prospect. However, no matter how many steps you take to get there, without a close, there is no sale. According to HubSpot, the average close rate across various industries ranges from roughly 15% to 27%. Whether you’re approaching industry standards or far behind that, our goal with this article is to help you increase your sales. Specifically, we want to help you better understand and relate to your customer through their unique personalities.

Increase Your Sales by 300%

Whoa! What?! That can’t be true. Well, that’s what I thought.

In the Summer of 2019, I attended a conference in Nashville, Tennessee, put on by Success Resources America (now or formerly New Peaks) called the National Achievers Congress. At the conference, a speaker by the name of Cheri Tree discussed a revolutionary idea. She claimed that this idea could increase your close rate by 300%! She continued further by explaining why we often hit a ceiling in sales output and it wasn’t what I expected.

Why Can’t I Sell?

According to Cheri, the reason we have this ceiling is due to differences in personalities. Essentially each salesman has their own personality as well as each prospect or lead. When purchasing something, our personality dictates how we respond to a salesman’s pitch. If their pitch matches our personality our likelihood of purchasing is increased.  As for the pitch? Well, that is most often determined by the personality of the salesmen.

What Are the Personalities?

There are many personality tests out there from Myers-Briggs to DiSC that can help better understand yourself and your customers. However, combining several of these Cheri has created an easy-to-remember acronym for recalling the different personality types associated with sales and purchasing.

Take it to the B.A.N.K.

When it comes to defining our personalities, Codebreaker Technologies has narrowed it down to four distinct personality types. They also broke them down into names that spell an easy to remember acronym B.A.N.K.:

  • (B) Blueprint
  • (A) Action
  • (N) Nurturing
  • (K) Knowledge

These personality types can be positioned in priority order with your primary personality being your main driver, your secondary having a heavy influence, the third engaging primarily when under stress, and the fourth showing what values you regard least. So, if you know the personality type of your potential new client, you can cater your pitch, as well as your services, to match their unique needs! So what do the personalities of B.A.N.K. stand for?

Blueprint Personalities

Blueprints are rule followers (hence the name). They have a pre-determined plan of action and if your pitch conflicts with their plan, it’s adios to your sale! They want to see that your product or service has been time-tested and proven and are not trying to be an early adopter. They are very routine in their day, so if you get a meeting with them stick to the schedule and be brief.

Action Personalities

When you think of Action, what comes to mind? Motion… and that is exactly what these personality types are constantly in a state of. Action types trust their gut and move quickly often getting distracted by shiny objects and breaking some rules. So don’t show an Action personality your slide deck. They’re easily bored and will move on to a hungrier salesman.

Nurturing Personalities

Nurturing types want to know that you’re going to walk them through the whole process, hand-holding if necessary. If there’s an issue with your product or service, they want to know they can contact you directly and have this problem resolved. They are very empathetic people and can sense when you’re not being straightforward. So keep it real and authentic.

Knowledge Personalities

Logic and reason are their friends. There’s no smooth-talking or persuasive trick happening with a Knowledge type. They want the facts and figures proving your product or service will solve their problem. Emotions get in the way of good decisions and so you may lose these clients if you’re constantly weighing on emotions. Avoid chit-chat and get to the point.

Logic and reason are their friends. There’s no smooth-talking or persuasive trick happening with a Knowledge type. They want the facts and figures proving your product or service will solve their problem. Emotions get in the way of good decisions and so you may lose these clients if you’re constantly weighing on emotions. Avoid chit-chat and get to the point.

Example

My personality positioning is A.K.N.B. This means I am action-oriented, desire some facts to support my decisions, need nurturing when under stress, and rules are not my thing.

How to Get Your Client’s Personality

So now that you understand the personality types and generally what they’re looking for, how do you learn what type your current prospect is? Well… just ask!

Some people try to overcomplicate selling. According to author Daniel H. Pink, “To Sell Is Human“. So with that in mind, don’t be a robot. Talk with your clients and ask them what is most important to them.

Look for ways to determine their personality, up to—and including—writing them down on index cards, handing them over, and asking them to organize them in priority order.

How to Increase Sales

Now you understand the personality types and you know your potential client’s personality. How can this knowledge increase your sales by over 300%?

Crunch the Numbers

Well, if you remember, the conversion rate averages out to roughly 25%, or 1 out of every four sales pitches ends in a close. Seeing as there are 4 main personality types this makes perfect sense! If you tend to sell to others the way you want to be sold to, you’ll only close one out of every four potential sales.

Now that you know your prospect’s personality type, however, you can step in with a better game plan. Focus on the parts of the problem you’re solving and the solution you’re selling in a way that overlaps the desires of their personality type.

Back to my example

So, if my personality type is A.K.N.B. don’t worry about following the rules. Convince me that you’re product will work quickly, save me time, and then follow up by showing me the numbers. Also, if you know your product or service may lead to me being stressed, be sure to have a 24/7 phone line I can call to complain about it.

Personal Recommendation

Step 0.

If you’re just getting into sales and haven’t even spent the time calculating your close rates, here’s my recommendation. Start by learning more about your personality type. Review some recent purchases you made, especially ones where a salesman was involved. In each case, try to discover what part of the “pitch” converted you. Doing this will help you better understand yourself as well as others of the same personality type.

Step 1.

Next, I would study the personality types in order from strongest to weakest. Meaning, look at your personality type that is in the primary position (for me, Action). Gary Vaynerchuk often emphasizes focusing on your strengths, and I agree. First, reach the industry averages before shooting for the top.

Step 2.

Once you’ve gotten a better grasp on selling to your primary personality, I would move on to your secondary personality type. Get a grasp on what else motivates. This will likely still be easy to understand as it also plays a big role in your decision-making still.

Step 3.

Now that you know how to work with your two primary sales types, it’s time to move to your third personality type. This one is interesting because it’s your fallback personality type when things get stressful. For me, I want great customer service when it comes to stressful things. So what do you look for when stress levels are high?

Step 4.

Finally, you need to look at your last position. This will be your weakest area as it contains the values you regard the least. If you can focus on improving the first 3 positions you will already make impressive headway. But, if you can master this as well? You’ll be a top-tier salesman in your industry!

What’s Next?

Now that you’re on your way to becoming the ultimate sales machine, what else can you work on?

Well, having an online presence to be your digital salesman can really help. Here is a  I’ve been working on to help small business owners and entrepreneurs expand their reach and build brand awareness. 🤩 Click the link to download now and let me know what you think. If this article or the resource helps you or your business, feel free to leave me a review.

Also, if you have any questions about sales or content creation, shoot me an email. I’d love to help! ❤

1 thought on “How to Increase Sales by Understanding and Relating to Your Customers”

  1. Pingback: My Top Marketing Book Recommendations - ArtDevDesign

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *