Types of Customers and How to Help Them

types of customers

Understanding the customer types is one of the survival skills needed to succeed in the sales industry. The art of selling in the B2B industry is completely different from that of B2C. Selling requires more of an optimistic point of view as the person would be handling sales rejections on a daily basis. B2B involves selling services or components to professional buyers trained by their parent company to get the best possible deals!

Earning a hefty sales commission is not an easy task. As a general rule, the more expensive the product, the longer is its sales cycle. Understanding customer types can without a doubt give you an edge over the regular crowd.

1. Introducing Brandon – The Feeler!!!

Brandon is a department head who is in charge of procuring new software components. He is in a sales meeting with Keith, the senior sales executive. Keith unfortunately, wasn’t coached on any inter-personal sales communication during his corporate training days, nor did he bother to brush up his knowledge by reading self-help books.

All Keith cares about is closing the deal to achieve his daily sales target in order to earn a hefty commission. But, Brandon is a humanist and values relationships more than one-time sales closures. He expects genuineness and sincerity in business relationships. Keith does a miserable job of connecting with Brandon. Keith with his restless body posture and slurry speech failed to close the deal.

What do you think happened here? Why did the business deal go haywire???

It was a lack of understanding of customer’s personality that blew up the deal. Brandon is a feeler type. Feelers care more about emotions and can identify subtle changes in emotions. For feelers, their personal happiness is more important than professional success.

How could have Keith converted the situation into a better one?

Keith should have delivered his presentation in an informal and slow manner. He should have discussed personal opinions and feelings to display a sense of sincerity. The feeler doesn’t like insecurity; he prefers guarantees on new products and doesn’t like taking risks.

With CRM software, Keith’s manager could have easily checked all the past interactions along with previous sales tickets of Brandon. He could have easily analyzed the tone of voice from the email trails and could have coached Keith on effective sales communication.

Keith’s organization could have easily landed a deal. Kapture’s sale CRM has a user-friendly email dashboard where Keith’s manager could have viewed past email trails and helped Brandon.

Keith didn’t realize that effective communication is 93% nonverbal and only 7% verbal.

2. Enter Jason – A Thinker and an Occasional Dreamer

Alike many thinkers, Jason too is a thinker and an occasional dreamer. Thinkers like well-structured and organized processes. They are also the type that expects excellent customer service and follow-ups. Thinkers are also aloof, picky and critical.

Let’s take a common day-to-day sales situation. There was a service outage in a call center that Jason had called. The call got escalated to Bob, the call center manager. A heated argument erupted between Jason and Bob because of a delay in updates to the service agents.

Bob’s establishment just had to implement a CRM software. Kapture’s sales CRM can be easily configured based on the workflow.  A warning ticker alerting service outage could have easily been sent to all the service agents. Flash news could have been easily broadcaster to all agents.

Bob could have effectively handled the situation and also could have upsold products. Good revenue could have been generated just by using Kapture’s sales CRM. This would have been an opportunity for making Jason happy by providing him a discount.

A survey conducted by the White House Office of Consumer Affairs show that a dissatisfied customer will tell between 9-15 people about their experience. Around 13% of dissatisfied customers tell more than 20 people.

3. Welcome Melissa – The Social Critter

Melissa is a socializer. The socializer manages information directly and also shows an open behavior.

The socializer also likes to interact with multiple people. Melissa, who is ecstatic with the service provided by the restaurant, refers her friend to the same restaurant after a social gathering. John is a newly appointed restaurant manager who prefers to operate businesses without any software.

What he is unaware of that 84% of consumers trust the recommendations of others over other forms of marketing. John should have requested his higher authority to buy an effective CRM software to handle customer data. With Kapture CRM, John could easily track the referral source of leads. He could have also analyzed and tracked where his customers are coming from.

Kapture’s sales CRM can also be configured to collect data related to consumer tastes and preferences and also to upload them on the excel sheets for future analysis. So, the next time Melissa visits the restaurant, she would be treated as a privileged customer and all her favorite dishes could be arranged for with specialized discounts. This would drastically improve the restaurant’s sales and would have given the restaurant another happy customer.

4. Enter Julian – The Chieftain

Statistics show that companies lose approximately $31 billion a year by failing to disseminate knowledge and around 75% of organizations reckon that effective knowledge management systems increase company work rate by 10%-40%.

Chieftains like to make their own decision and have their own way of life. They are always organized and well-prepared to handle any situation. Chieftains propose solutions with clearly defined consequences and rewards in mind. Chieftains like to have things backed up by facts and with solid tangible proofs.

They also prefer to have multiple options to choose from. Peter is a manager at a major property development firm. Julian the Chieftain, a potential buyer had an altercation with Peter regarding a failed purchase and sale agreement.

Purchasing a home is a very stressful and complex process as it involves a lot of paperwork, acknowledgments and sales agreements. The failed purchase and sales agreement could’ve been easily avoided by having an effective CRM software.

Kapture CRM’s proficient Knowledge Management System has the capability to store sales practices, details of clients and other contracts and agreements on a cloud database. Kapture CRM would have been the best software for real estate industries as Peter could have effectively helped the Chieftain purchase a home without any hassle.

Encountering hard-to-deal-with customers is part of life and this is why you need to deliver awesome customer service not to deal with your consumers but to help them. Showing a little empathy when your customers are having a bad day can turn the tables. This not only gives you happy customers but loyal ones too. A win-win for all.

But how to deliver awesome customer service? Get started with our 30-days free trial and see for yourself.

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