Versatility
While having a sales force that can deliver your company’s message to the marketplace is critical to effective performance, the true key to success is having a sales force that can adapt that message to the needs and preferences of the customer. Our research shows that versatile salespeople can be over 50% more successful than their less adaptable counterparts.
Versatility: The Key to Sales Performance
This was effectively demonstrated in a study done in the highly competitive pharmaceutical industry. Development of sales versatility skills had a significant impact on a key strategic driver—product market share. When compared to salespeople who did not receive versatility skills training, the versatile salespeople’s market share was significantly higher, and continued to improve every month of the yearlong study.
Helping salespeople learn how to recognise their customers’ preferences and styles, and to adapt their sales strategy to more directly meet those preferences, has proven to be the key to sales performance.
What is Sales Versatility?
There are two things almost all salespeople know:
- All things being equal, we really only “connect” with about 25% of our customers.
- It is easier to sell to those customers with whom we “connect.”
When people say they “connect” with someone, they are referring to the similarity of their communication preferences and styles. We feel more comfortable with people who like to talk at the same pace we do; who are not too pushy, or too pliable; who want to get to know about us at about the same time we are ready to share that kind of information.
Decades of research indicate that people are divided equally across four primary communication styles. We call these the four Social Styles: Driver, Expressive, Amiable, and Analytical. When a customer is easy to work with, it is often because you and the customer have the same Social Style. When a customer seems difficult to work with, it is because your styles are different.
Because each style represents about 25% of all customers, most salespeople only share Social Styles with one out of every four customers, and a majority of their sales will tend to come from those customers. But what if salespeople could learn to “connect” with the other 75% of their customers? Would they be able to sell more effectively to those customers as well?
These were the key questions asked by Wilson Learning and a large U.S.-based pharmaceutical company. This study shows that by teaching salespeople their preferred style of communicating, how to recognise the styles of their customers, and, most importantly, how to adapt their style, salespeople connect with a broader base of customers and their performance goes up.
Contact Us
Please call us! Our team would be delighted to help you with your enquiry:
+61 2 9232 4124
For questions or comments you would like to direct to us through email:
Email us - clientservices@wilsonlearning.com.au
