The first step in providing authentic value to your customers is identifying what they value most. The relationship between understanding your customer or prospect and successfully engaging them is common knowledge in the sales profession. What many sales professionals lack is an effective method for ascertaining how to best engage each individual customer.

One of the many useful sales tools found in Carew International’s Dimensions of Professional Selling (DPS) sales training is a model for determining “customer types”. This designation provides insight into how each individual customer wants to be approached in a business relationship, and is especially helpful as a guideline in flexing your selling style for maximum impact.

To appreciate the power of understanding your customer’s “type” you need only consider those occasions when you as the customer have knowingly paid more for something you know you could have gotten cheaper elsewhere. At the root of that decision is our appreciation or need for a certain level of service in that specific purchase situation. Companies such as Nordstrom have become famous for their accomplishment in “owning” this customer market segment. To the extent we can tap into that dynamic with our customers, we can also become more differentiated at providing them an outstanding customer experience.

Of course, as consumers, none of us like the idea of being lumped into general descriptive categories. Every person is unique and deserves to be treated that way. Utilizing these four customer types is simply one of many selling tools that allows us to be more efficient in identifying key motivators in customers, to provide the individualized solutions they really want.T

o learn more about how to incorporate these “customer types” into a holistic, customer focused selling process, check out the upcoming open enrollment session of Dimensions of Professional Selling (DPS) sales training.