How to influence different personalities to boost sales

By Chris Helder

One of the challenges for businesses is to adapt to the different types of clients they may have.

If you’re involved in retail or any aspect of sales, don’t fall into a “one size fits all” approach that fails to take the personalities of the decision-maker into consideration. This leads to a lot of lost time and many lost business opportunities.

Instead, you’ll have greater success if you can adapt to different types of personalities. So, consider your clients as we take a look at the four different personality profiles:

Red personality

These people are driven by results and are focused on power and control. They are very “future” driven individuals and want to know if you are “with them” and a part of their “big picture plan”.

The “red” personalities are future-driven because they are about the result moving forward.

They want to get the result quickly so they can be very impulsive in making a decision. They want a one page summary page with bullet points and want the salesperson to be good at what they do. There is no substitute for competence when it comes to “red” personalities. Demonstrate your expertise with certainty and simplicity.

Yellow personality

These people are living for the moment and are the most impulsive people on the planet. They are driven by fun! They want it to be exciting. They want it all to be filled with energy!

They are very visual people so they like to “look” at things before they make a decision. They want to “look” at the picture. And because a picture is worth a thousand words … you are going to get all one thousand of them! The “yellows” love to talk. The “yellows” are the easiest people to to influence. They are affirmation people. They want feedback.

To influence people with a “yellow” personality, make your product fun and easy. Take the difficulty out of it. If you hand these people a 20 page proposal, they won’t read it either. Most of all, don’t bore them. Make your presentations come alive.

Aqua personality

People with “aqua” personalities get along with just about everybody. They tend to be independent, adaptable, non-political and good listeners. They “go with the flow” and tend to have a softer voice and dry humour. They want to be able to get along with all of the other personalities and are most likely to be the chameleon, changing their colours to adapt to the environment around them.

When selling your message to the “aqua”, you have to recognise that they will hold their cards much closer to their chest. These people do not respond to “pressure” and generally will not make a favourable decision to go with your idea unless they feel totally comfortable with what is being presented. Once these people get on board with you, they are extremely loyal. Treat them and they will be clients for life.

Blue personality

People with a “blue” personality are driven by perfection and process. They tend to have a very systematic approach to what they do and succeed in the corporate world because they have high expectations of themselves and of others, as they do not respect mistakes. They want polish and professionalism and tend to be driven to improve themselves.

In sales, your organisation probably has put together proposals and reports to aid in the process of selling. This can be hundreds of pages depending on the organisation. So much work goes into these proposals and reports. The “reds” will never read them – they want a one-pager with bullet points. The “yellows” will never read them – they want pictures and graphs. The “aquas” probably won’t read them, as they determining whether they are comfortable with the process. The “blues” are the only people that are going to read it! At an extreme, these are the people who will also correct it and hand it back to you with the spelling mistakes circled in red ink!

There is a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it.

We can all do a better job adapting to the client that is in front of us. The colours are a fun way to quickly code the customer and adapt to get a better result.

Chris Helder is a speaker on the topics of communication, leadership and influence. He is the author of Useful Belief: Because it’s better than positive thinking and The Ultimate Book of Influence.