Have you ever heard of the similar-to-me effect?

It is a cognitive bias that explains our tendency to prefer people who look and think like us. This bias, however, is very effective in sales as customers feel more comfortable and connected while talking to reps who share similarities with them. 

When sales reps mirror the communication style, behavior, and values of their prospects, they create a sense of familiarity with them, leading to high-impact conversations. 

In this article, we will learn briefly about common prospect profiles and how selling to DISC personalities can be incorporated into your business.

An overview of DISC profiles 

The DISC model is a popular tool for understanding and categorizing human behavior based on four common personality traits. 

Dominant (D): Individuals with this profile are typically self-assured, decisive, and results-oriented, keen on achieving goals and overcoming challenges. 

Influential (I): People with such a profile are outgoing, social, and enthusiastic. They focus on building relationships, networking, and influencing others.

Steadiness (S): Individuals with a Steadiness profile are known for their patience, active listening, reliability, and supportiveness. They prefer stability & cooperation in their relationships.

Conscientiousness (C): These people are detail-oriented, analytical, and systematic. They value accuracy and precision and analyze data before making decisions.

DISC profiles offer a unique advantage in sales as they provide a thorough understanding of different customer preferences and communication styles. By tailoring sales pitches to match the specific prospect profiles, sales reps can successfully connect, engage, and influence decision-making processes. 

Why should you use DISC profiles in selling?

Here’s how selling to DISC personalities can impact the big picture of your business. 

1. Better alignment with customer needs

With insights into the preferences and communication styles of your prospects, your sales reps can seamlessly match their approach to the prospect’s personality. This ensures your product/service is offered in a way that resonates with their problems and priorities.

For example, if you are offering a CRM, then you should focus on highlighting features that help increase productivity or save costs. You may include features like automated data entry or follow-ups in your pitch. This is because prospects with dominant personality are more result-oriented and focus more on eliminating challenges and friction. 

2. Reduce miscommunication

DISC profile segmentation helps you match the communication style of your prospects by identifying their pace, tone, and level of detail. This allows you to deliver messages that are clear and easily understandable. You can also proactively anticipate the customer's reactions and adjust communication accordingly. 

3. Identify buying signals and negotiate better

Using DISC profiles, sales reps can understand the prospect’s behavioral cues and purchase intentions, allowing for more persuasive negotiations. This helps the reps be better prepared for objections and convert smoothly. 

How to sell to different DISC personalities?

Let us dive deep into the communication styles, sales approaches, and negotiation techniques suitable for selling to DISC personalities. 

1. Selling to the D-type personality

When communicating with the dominant personality, it is important to be on point and demonstrate how they can win. If you’re interacting with them over emails, SMS, or any other channel, ensure the messages are crisp, action-oriented, and benefit-driven.

Structure your sales pitches in a way to clearly states the problem and how you will solve it. If you’re in SaaS, a demo can help build your case.  

Moreover, you should avoid telling them what to buy directly. Giving them options to make the choice will keep your chances of conversion high. While dealing with options, don’t give them too many and list the benefits of each. This helps them to stay in control. 

During negotiations, be prepared for a desire for control. Acknowledge their need for autonomy and again present a few different options to negotiate terms.

2. Selling to the I-type personality 

Prospects with an influential personality prioritize relationships, teamwork, and positive interactions. While trying to sell to an I-type, invest your time to establish a friendly and personal connection before getting down to business. Put the social aspects and benefits in the spotlight.

Use a storytelling tone and go big on testimonials as these prospects respond well to real-life examples. Take them through your success stories that highlight the positive impact of the offering. 

Frame your negotiation in a way that demonstrates how agreeing to your terms can improve their reputation, status, or personal brand. Listen actively to their feedback, validate their perspective, and provide tactful responses. 

For example, when selling project management software, you could underline its collaborative features for better teamwork and communication. This will improve their standing among their team members and give them the required recognition. 

3. Selling to the S-type personality

When selling to S-type prospects, you need to be all ears and actively listen to them. This will show them that you’re interested in building a valuable long-term relationship and that they can easily rely on you. You need to assure them that you understand their needs and can help them achieve their goals. 

If most of your prospects belong to this personality type, you need to consistently maintain a customer-focused outlook. S-types like to keep it slow, so don’t push them into quick buying decisions. However, you must not forget to regularly follow up. When turned into a customer, this personality type demonstrates the highest brand loyalty. 

When negotiating with them, highlight how your offering is consistent and will yield guaranteed results. Be an advisor, not a salesperson, and build your narrative around features that ensure reliability over time like ongoing support. 

4. Selling to C-type personality 

C-style prospects are the most objective and analytical. When selling to this DISC profile, ensure your product knowledge is A-grade and you have your facts straight.  You’ll be cross-questioned many times, so try to show references wherever possible.  

These people don’t prefer to socialize and like to stay on track. They would want you to answer all their questions logically and thoroughly so that they can assess your answers to make an informed decision. 

Stay formal with them and focus on factual accuracy and evidence of quality. Be prepared to answer all their whys. They are obsessed with numbers, so ensure you have important numbers at your fingertips. While negotiating, back up your claims with data, statistics, and case studies, and answer as many questions as they might have.

How to incorporate DISC profiles into selling

The next step is to integrate DISC profiling into your sales processes and ensure they’re in alignment with your sales methodologies. Below are some essential steps you need to follow for selling to DISC personalities.

1. Conduct DISC assessment 

The first step for selling to DISC personalities is to circulate the DISC prospect personality assessment among your sales team and potential customers. 

This test includes a series of questions that can be answered on a scale of strongly agree and strongly disagree. This self-assessment usually takes 15 minutes or less and helps you determine the personalities of your business prospects. 

On the other hand, prospects can also receive personalized customer experience from the sales team, better understand how the offering aligns with their needs, and efficiently address challenges and make decisions. 

Stressing on such benefits can convince them to take the assessment. You may also consider offering small incentives like Amazon vouchers, discounts, and more. 

2. Analyze and create customer profiles

Once you have collected the data from DISC assessments, study the results to create detailed customer profiles. Identify common behavioral traits, communication preferences, and decision-making tendencies among your target audience. 

The next logical step is to segment your prospects into the four DISC personality types. 

3. Train your sales team

Now, collate extensive training material of DISC profile segments to coach your sales team in various aspects of the sales process. 

This includes helping them 

• Understand different communication styles
• Build a sales prospecting plan that includes different sales prospecting techniques
• Drafting personality-specific sales scripts and pitches
• Handling objections specific to each personality type
• Experimenting with different negotiation techniques
• Implementing effective follow-up strategies 

4. Implement and iterate 

Integrate the DISC-focused initiatives into your workflows. Now, continuously monitor and analyze sales interactions to assess the effectiveness of the approach. Gather feedback from sales team members to identify if DISC-specific adjustments have been successful. Make changes as needed, and repeat the process. 

Personalize selling for each type with Happysales

Each DISC personality has a different communication style, motivations, negotiation technique, and decision-making process. This diversity makes it impossible to sell to DISC personalities of four different types without AI and automation. 

Happysales comes to the rescue with its AI-powered sales suite that can help you do just this. It reduces hours spent on research and eliminates guesswork by relying on AI-generated prospect and account intelligence. 

Happysales gives you a 360° external view of every prospect and customer and helps you easily identify the DISC personality types they belong to. This way, you can get accurate AI recommendations on approach, messaging, and persona to seamlessly match personality, market, and account. 

You can achieve more with the AI-infused sales cycle management of Happysales. Join the waitlist to learn how the platform can turn the tables for your business.