Critical thinkers/cautious

These consumers enjoy obtaining technical information and making an informed analysis of situations.

Critical thinkers are very similar to security-minded clients, says Thomas Phillips, president of Sales University Inc. in Round Hill, Va., except that they take more enjoyment from technical information and analyzing the situation before making a purchase.

These clients will often work with numbers and technology — engineers, computer specialists, chief financial officers, purchasing managers, code writers, quality control inspectors and accountants.

“You can identify them because they’re asking questions about everything,” Phillips says. These clients will do a complete risk assessment, he says.

This behavior is motivated by the C’s greatest fear of making a mistake — any kind of mistake. “They attach what they do to their self-esteem, especially in their job,” says Ray Leone, president of Leone Resource Group in Charleston, S.C. “They think, ‘If I make a mistake, then I’m stupid.’ So everything they do is to avoid making a mistake.

“They figure the more time they take to analyze, the less chance they have of being wrong. That’s why you’ll never get a C to buy unless they believe that to delay itself is a mistake.” So like S’s, these clients require more time to make decisions. “You may need to show him the information, let him dwell on it a week and follow up with him a couple times and show him products in the field,” says Steve Ast, vice president of sales and marketing for Phoenix-based Shasta Industries.

Like S’s, these clients aren’t crazy about risk. So the most cutting-edge products don’t usually appeal to them. “To the high-I, innovation means new and first and that’s what they want,” Leone says. “To a high-C, new means untested.”

In addition, they are quite reserved and private, so questions should be restricted to only those that are necessary, Ast says. “You don’t want to ask a lot of personal questions, but you don’t want to have a lot of incomplete data,” he says. “You may be able to talk about visual aspects of the pool, but not others,” he says. “They may find it a little uncomfortable [if you ask], ‘How do you think you and your wife are going to use your pool during the summer months with the neighbors?’”

Leone says this category can be the most difficult to salespeople because they take so long to make decisions. “So you have the impatient salespeople with the super-patient, slow high-C. The salesperson wants to sell right away, but the high-C doesn’t want to buy for a month.

“The high-C’s are going to talk to 45 companies. They’re going to have a matrix with all their companies down one side and how many horsepower pumps, how many blowers and jets each builder’s got.”

Critical thinkers can also prove perplexing because they don’t appreciate great verbal skills, Leone says, which strips most salespeople of their greatest tool. “If you’re a great salesperson, you rely on your verbal skills, but when you’re selling to a C, the better your verbal skills, the less they trust you,” he says, because they consider you a smooth talker, just saying what you think the client wants to hear.

But this personality type does appreciate numbers — and sometimes wants you to back those figures up. “I used to say to a client, ‘You’re going to save $15 a month on electricity based on my calculation,’” Leone says. “A high-C would say, ‘Show me the formula that you used to come up with $15. And what is the rate per kilowatt hour you used?’”

Critical thinkers need enough information to make their decisions, Phillips says, but you don’t want to get them embroiled in the unimportant. “You want to keep the conversation focused on what it is they’re trying to buy,” he says. “If you start throwing at them a bunch of things they hadn’t already been thinking of, you might spin them [into] a paralysis of analysis.”

FEATURE STORY
They've Got Personality
Gaining your clients' trust requires keying into the needs of their specific personalities.

MORE INFORMATION
Dominants/drivers
This personality type likes to make things happen.

Interpersonal/
interactive
Clients with this personality tend to be the life of the party.

Stable/security-minded
This group hates disruption, hassle, change and risk, experts say.

Keeping in step
To be successful, sales professionals must also understand their own personalities.