How to Read a Customer's Mind

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  1

  IanP2

  06/08/09 | Report as spam

  RE: How to Read a Customer's Mind

  I recently finished an MBA and the one thing I strongly disagreed with the University lecturers on was the use of ?models? to pigeonhole people.
  The University staff seemed to be fixated on the idea that there was a four box model for everything and I came out with my head buzzing full of Life Orientation; Transactional Analysis ; Belbin?s Team Roles and a host of other tools that ?dumb down? our business thinking by codifying and simplifying interpersonal transactions.
  For a while it was quite a game identifying those folk that had MBA?s by spotting how they used ?models? to guide their approach to business.
  The biggest issue I have with personality models such as Willingham?s is that it interposes personality assessments into the buyer/seller relationship, not in a good way but in a simplistic way that fits the subject being analysed into one of the boxes in the model. This really gets in the way of doing business in a professional manner. ?Oh he?s an action man, so let?s cut the crap and push him for a decision? or ?This lady is a ?nurturing parent? so let?s work her into the position where she can reward our efforts?. I see this over and over again.
  I try to teach my buying teams how to avoid being put in these traps and to focus the salesmen they deal with on hard facts such product utility, supplier longevity, quality awareness and the like. I also try to stop them from pigeonholing sellers using similar models. Why? Because not every great salesman works for a great company and not every great product is sold by a great salesman.
  A professional buyer will work with a salesman to see if his both his product range and company fit the customer business, regardless of if the sales team fit some MBA created preconceived notion of appropriate character styles.
  IanP
  PS. Some blogs have a preview and re-edit feature for their comments, please can we have one here?
  

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  jvaneeden@...

  06/09/09 | Report as spam

  RE: How to Read a Customer's Mind

  Three cheers for common sense, IanP2
  
  The incessant categorization of people, whether with Belbin team roles, MBTI, NLP-voodoo bunkum, or the hundreds and hundreds of "instruments" is now getting beyond a joke.
  
  With no scientific credibility and nothing but "gut feeling" to back up these snakeoil theories, they are mental fairy floss for the gullible and easily impressed.
  
  When next someone wants you to determine your "preferred" representational modality or whatever is that month's flavour of the month personality appraisal term, just say no.
  

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  Geoffrey James, Sales Machine

  06/09/09 | Report as spam

  RE: How to Read a Customer's Mind

  Re: Notes 1 and 2:
  There may be something in what you're saying. I think the proof is whether they're useful, since (as you rightly point out) they're observational and experiential, rather than scientific and objective. However, conceptual models that are based upon observed behavior do have the positive effect of replacing conceptual models based upon racial and gender stereotypes.
  
  Furthermore, a conceptual model needn't be 100 percent accurate to be useful. The main point, I think, is to observe, understand and then react appropriately. It's impossible to "understand" without some kind of conceptual model. If you don't have an explicit one, your mind will create an implicit one based upon your experience and (possibly) your unexamined prejudices.

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  4

  michnguy

  06/09/09 | Report as spam

  RE: How to Read a Customer's Mind

  The complex aspect of selling is dealing with people be it 1:1 or 1:n. When we are engaged with many people the complex dimension have grown exponentially. Therefore the only way we can get a handle on the situation is by using some of the tools mentioned in the above article. They are only tools and we need to know and understand their intended design, application and importantly limitations. These tools are not there "to tell" but "to guide" us through the complex puzzle of relationship management. After all if everybody was the same then selling would be very easy. Selling is about having relationships with customers and relationship is complex at the very best of time.

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  jvaneeden@...

  06/09/09 | Report as spam

  RE: How to Read a Customer's Mind

  Regarding note 3, a couple of points:
  
  It is an entirely false dichotomy to suggest an obligatory choice between, on the one hand, any of the plethora of arbitrary, non-scientific, gut-feeling, "experientially-based" categorization models and, on the other, one's own set of "unexamined prejudices".
  
  What you are suggesting is this: It is better to adopt these utterly pseudoscientific classification schemes than to rely on your own built-in cognitive filters, which after all, are biased and prejudiced.
  
  No argument there, but here's a third alternative: How about focusing on the job, and conceptualising that job not as SELLING, but as HELPING THE CUSTOMER TO BUY?
  
  As soon as the salesperson does that, all the above fluff and flim-flamm fall away.
  
  Instead, as salesperson you focus on identifying the customer's needs (irrespective of whether the person is a "CONTROLLER", "DOER", or whatever).
  
  You then focus on the benefits of the product (not the features) that will assist the customer to meet those needs. You dollarize the savings to the customer and employ other techniques that focus solely on addressing the customer's needs, not on amateur psychology or your attempts to flog a product to someone who possibly doesn't even need it.
  
  Agreed, michnguy, selling is dealing with people.
  
  However, I disagree that "tools" relying on amateur psychology will assist anyone in sell anything, unless you're a con man, since all these "tools" are greatly beloved by con men, who swear by their efficacy in assisting them to flog unwanted and downright harmful products and ideas to the ignorant and the helpless.
  
  It's far better, simpler, and more honest to focus on efforts aimed at assisting the customer to buy.
  
  By the way: Have you noticed how many people are in the business of selling these classification systems and their applications, usually in the form of seminars, workshops, and books?
  
  That seems to be the "preferred" preoccupation of a sizeable group of people who hustle these "products" - not a genuine desire to improve the salesperson-customer relationship to mutual benefit.
  
  Forgive my scepticism. I've been around the block a couple of times. I've seen too many of these handy little "classification schemes," which have also infested and infected higher learning (I am a university lecturer, in a business school): from "learning styles" (are you a "visual learner? no, then perhaps a tactile learner ...?), to multiple intelligences (what is your dominant intelligence, I wonder ... ?) to MBTI (another handy four-dichotomy system), to NLP (I'd guess your preferred representational system is olfactory, am I right?) and so on ad nauseam.
  
  Funny thing is, and I don't think I'm alone in this: The moment I sense that someone who is selling something to me is trying to employ any of these "tools", I either play mind games with them for a while until I get bored (it's great fun watching how the deliberately conflicting clues I provide lead them up one false garden path after the other), or I immediately get so intensely angry that I drop them like a hot potato and seek out a salesperson who will simply focus on their job: trying to help me buy the product that best meets my specific needs.
  
  (There's topic for a yet-to-be-written doctoral thesis: "Customer anger and resistance in the face of obvious amateur-psychology manipulation by salespeople - a longitudinal study".)
  
  To aspiring salespeople I always recommend the book, "How to become a Rainmaker: The rules for getting and keeping customers and clients" by Jeffrey Fox.
  
  Talk about simple and to the point; nay, it's downright homely. There's probably not a single polysyllable to be found in it. And no terms such as "primary style of behavior" or "neurolinguistic" or "kinesthetic learner". Just simple, clear, honest advice on how to help the customer buy what they genuinely need, and on making an honest buck in the process.
  
  I'm willing to bet that in the decade to come, people are increasingly going to go back to the basics in selling (and, incidentally, many other areas, too): Identifying and serving customer needs, providing honest and truthful advice (also in investment matters), and building long-term client relationships built on trust, not "tools".
  
  I for one, am tired of flim-flam, and I don't think I'm alone.
  

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  karamos

  06/10/09 | Report as spam

  RE: How to Read a Customer's Mind

  I like that you point out the different styles of people. We need constant reminders of these basic types to help close a deal as there is so much information out there.

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  Geoffrey James, Sales Machine

  06/10/09 | Report as spam

  RE: How to Read a Customer's Mind

  Re: Note 5:
  Let me see if I've got this right.
  
  You believe that conceptual models -- where you adapt your own behavior based upon the observed behavior of the other person -- don't work.
  
  In order to prove this, you categorize sales people based upon their observed behavior, and after you've identified that behavior, you adapt your behavior accordingly.
  
  I'm not entirely certain you've proved your point...

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  jvaneeden@...

  06/10/09 | Report as spam

  RE: How to Read a Customer's Mind

  Hi Geoffrey
  
  When you're trying to buy a car, and you notice that the salesperson is more intent on playing the psychologist than on helping you, wouldn't you be at least slightly peeved?
  
  When you only have 13 weeks in which to teach and learn certain business essentials, and some lecturers spend three of those weeks categorizing learners and trying to convince them that this exercise holds immense learning benefits, don't you begin to smell a rat?
  
  I'm suggesting that the current obsession with classifying and categorizing people seems to be reaching manic proportions and interfering with what we should really be doing -- selling, and learning, as the case may be.
  
  In the situation you refer to, I'm not modifying my behaviour on the basis of a conceptual model that I'm trying to forcibly superimpose on the situation, but on the basis of what I am directly observing and experiencing. Big difference.
  
  As for conceptual models, I'm all for them, as applied to organisations and the business environment. SWOT, PESTEL, Porter's five forces and all the rest provide highly useful conceptual lenses through which to view and analyse businesses and their environment. But when I apply a SWOT analysis to you, or you to me, however interesting the results might be -- is it useful, valid, or even ethical? And can I prove any of my conclusions? And when you change your mind and act differently tomorrow, which is after all what people tend to do, and my analysis of you, using my four "categories" is completely different to my results today - what does that tell me about validity and reliability?
  
  In a nutshell, I'm arguing that we should obsess less about "reading the customer's mind" (or our own, for that matter), and more on simply serving the customer.
  
  Regarding MBTI, you might want to look at:
  http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/HRMWebsite/hrm/articles/develop/mbti.pdf (to mention just one source); most of the points raised in this paper apply to Willingham's approach, which is far less rigorous and widely applied than something like the MBTI (at least, to the extent that we can argue that MBTI is rigorous).
  
  Hey, I get irritated when I think someone is trying to "read my mind" - don't you?
  

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  Geoffrey James, Sales Machine

  06/10/09 | Report as spam

  RE: How to Read a Customer's Mind

  Re: Note 8:
  I get irritated when I think someone is trying to "read my mind" - don't you?
  No.

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  clarkm

  06/10/09 | Report as spam

  RE: How to Read a Customer's Mind

  I agree with IanP to some extent in that I don't like to categorize people any more than to have them categorize me. But I did have a training class early in my sale career where the assessment of "social styles" seemed to make sense and I've carried this training with me ever since. We used Wilson Learning and the four social styles; Driver, Expressive, Analytical and Amiable. There was a primary style and a secondary style as with Willinghams assessment. People will often mask their primary style (that's the secondary style). Their "back-up" mode is a key to identifying their primary style, but something we work to avoid.
  
  As with many sales tools their value is dependent on how you use them. In our training it was never the intent to use this particular assessment in or as a sales strategy. The purpose was simply to help you to better communicate with the customer. Often times our own styles can conflict with the customer and the lesson is in being able to recognize these conflicts and adjust your style accordingly, to be flexible.
  
  As salespeople our primary objective is to get to the decision maker, regardless of their social style. Sometimes that requires us to adjust our styles accordingly. I think these tools can have some value in that process. Individually we have to find what works best for us.

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  11

  mmello

  06/10/09 | Report as spam

  Outside looking in

  I get irritated when I think someone is trying to "read my mind" - don't you?
  Oh boy! How I wish people tried to read MY mind once in a while, just for a change!
  
  I guess only people in academia (at least the non-Engineering ones) are impervious to arguments of utility value. I have been salvaging partners, executives, family and client relationships, in large corporations, for the last ten years, thanks to using and, sometimes, explaining how to use the MBTI.
  
  I've seen VPs, doomed to self (and corporate) destruction, learn to work together and even becoming long term friends, thanks to a little "personality type literacy".
  
  Could it have been done without recourse to a personality profiling model?
  
  Of course it could!
  
  But this is the tool I feel comfortable using, and it works fine, thank you.
  
  Same thing with sales models. They're not tools for manipulating OTHERS; they're tools for improving OUR perception, processing, decision-making and communicating abilities.

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  jvaneeden@...

  06/11/09 | Report as spam

  RE: How to Read a Customer's Mind

  Hi mmello
  
  Introspection, self-analysis, and improving our knowledge and understanding of ourselves are extremely important activities. No argument there. I'm just resisting the dozens and dozens of simplistic models being trotted out to help us pack ourselves and others into neat little boxes or categories.
  
  I find the jargon quite grating: primary and secondary styles, and the need to "adjust your style" and so on.
  
  Isn't it simpler and more honest to acknowledge that when, for example, you encounter a customer who appears "highly logical and analytical" they are more likely to listen to facts and figures? Whereas if the person appears to be interested more in the appearance of, say, a car, information about colours and other customisation options would surely be more appreciated than data about the torque and engine capacity, not so?
  
  Do I really need to put these customers into "categories" and "adjust my style"? Won't common sense suffice?
  
  Why can't we simply say: Respond to the client's needs? These are not hidden. They are not only apparent to those who have studied the dozens of tools? Just ask the client, and listen, really listen -- to what is said and not said.
  
  Same with the self-destructive VPs you refer to -- and I've encountered the type, too -- making them aware of the need for "emotional literacy" is essentially making them aware of the need to take the needs and feelings of others into account.
  
  To establish an ethos of honest and ethical management, I'd rather focus on this simple truth, than trotting out any one among the jargon-laden arsenal of "tools".