Sales, Part 2 of 3
What is your behavioral sweet spot in selling? What are your client’s natural priorities in buying? The first resource in our customer engagement toolkit is a spotlight on the behavioral styles people use in buying and selling.
One of the ways KnowledgeWorkx helps organizations develop sales teams into buying decision-making coaching teams is by utilizing the Everything DiSC® Sales Profile.
Everything DiSC® (E-DiSC) aligns beautifully with the goal of becoming a trusted advisor and a buying decision-making coach by raising your self-awareness, providing pivotal steps in self-management, and expanding your awareness of others.
Self-Awareness is the First Step
E-DiSC starts with you – helping you examine your own selling style in terms of over 150 preference points. Those preferences, seen through the grid of third generation DiSC, help you to determine what is important for you as a person and more specifically as a salesperson.
The DiSC framework is a powerful tool for understanding how you naturally engage customers. For example, if you discover through E-DiSC that you have a "High C" sales profile, you may recognize a high propensity to emphasize details about the product you are pitching. If you find you are a "High S," you may discover a trend of focusing on the efficiencies surrounding the product (and its potential buyer).
Your E-DiSC report might reveal you to be a "High I"— more focused on the relational side, cautious to make decisions, and not wanting to feel pressured. In each case, the report also provides concrete ways to move ahead. For example, your "High I" results might indicate to you and your mentors that you need an occasional nudge to act and follow through.
Different Approaches to Buying
On the opposite side of the coin, the E-DiSC Sales Profile also helps you evaluate "buying styles" by looking at the way people with different DiSC behavioral styles make decisions and decide to commit. The E-DiSC Sales Profile opens your eyes to really see your clients. You can learn to discern with greater accuracy what your clients do and don't prefer to know in making a decision, and what it will take from you to provide that.
The E-DiSC Sales Profile is brilliant in bringing to life the development process you need to become more adaptable as a decision-making coach. By making you examine your natural tendencies to sell in a certain way and helping you understand how buyers receive your words, you have the “big picture” needed to adjust your selling style to come alongside the customer you are with.
The E-DiSC Sales Profile pairs very well with two books: Dirty Little Secrets by Sharon Drew Morgen and The Trusted Advisor from Maister, Green, and Galford. We highly recommend using those resources in parallel.
Bringing the Behavioral Spotlight to Your Organization
Everything DiSC is not only beneficial for title-bearing executives and C-level leaders. Arguably the most powerful impact of this approach comes through focusing on key account managers - "normal" people who are interfacing with their "normal" clients on a day-to-day basis, year after year.
That is especially true for people who are involved in large projects with the potential for up-selling, and who have opportunities for long-term relationship-building.
KnowledgeWorkx offers the E-DiSC Sales Profile on a personal level (one-to-one coaching) and also for groups. Key account managers or a consultative selling team can participate in a 2-day workshop (ideal) or for higher effectiveness a 4-6 month coaching journey.
In the third article of this series we finish with a look at the intercultural spotlight – and particularly the ways the cultural realities of the Three Colors of Worldview© and 12 Dimensions of Culture© influence both miscommunication and effective communication in selling.
Quickly becoming the global preferred choice for Inter-Cultural Intelligence development, KnowledgeWorkx promotes mutual understanding of other cultures and perspectives in the workplace, and helps teams to develop the intercultural capacity necessary to thrive in a globalized world.
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