In sales, DISC is not about you

Arm your salespeople with one of the most important tools

With thousands of self-assessments on the market, DISC is one of the most important for salespeople.  There are several versions of DISC on the market.  One uses four colors, another uses four types of birds, and another uses four animals.  All are processed similarly.  Once you complete the assessment, you are given your results on where you fall on the spectrum of these four areas. 

Typically, after taking the assessment, your company hosts a training session to help you better understand your results.  That’s great, but many of those training sessions are mainly focused on teaching you how to interpret yourself.  They give you your results and then spend most of the training session on what it means to be you.  How to understand your communication style, your decision-making style, and other important factors in your profile.

Again, that’s all great, but that training stops just short of the most important element of DISC in sales.  Understanding yourself is step one.  An important step for sure, but in my opinion, not the most important step in how to use DISC in a selling situation.

The next step in using DISC is to identify, communicate, sell, and negotiate in your customer’s DISC profile.  Too many salespeople fail to consider the different DISC styles of each individual customer.  To be more authentic, they will communicate in their own style.  This is especially true when we get nervous.  Under stress, like on a cold call or an important sales presentation, we revert to our strongest DISC quadrant.  The C (conscientious) person will dump more data, charts, and info into a sales call because that’s what is important to themselves.

The problem:  Your customer does not care!  They want you to communicate with them in their DISC profile.  If you and your customer are both in the “C” quadrant, great. You will enjoy easy communication with them.  However, odds are likely, they are in one of the other quadrants.  This results in a communication disconnect, decreased interest in your product, and ultimately, fewer sales. 

While you are busy rattling off your product stats, your customer is silently thinking in their own style.  Your “D” prospect is thinking about how they can control the conversation and buying decision.  Your “S” prospect is wondering who else needs to be in on this decision.  Who else needs to be consulted before making a purchase?  Your “I” prospect is completely zoned out and bored with your continuous data dump.  They were ready to say “Yes” or “No” ten minutes ago. 

If you want to connect better on all of your sales calls, then get better at identifying your customer’s DISC style.  Look for both verbal and non-verbal cues.  Once you practice this a little bit, the verbal cues will jump out at you in discussions.  Are they talking a lot about their accomplishments or all the people they know?  Are their discussion points bigger picture with very few details, or are they trying to impress you by getting down in the weeds on every technical point?

On the non-verbal side, are they extremely organized or disorganized?  Are they a deep thinker and seem to be contemplating as you speak, or are they frequently cutting you off? 

You don’t have to be a psychologist to understand that someone who organizes the pen colors and sticky note pads on their desk is expecting you to do the same in your presentation.  All you need to do is take a few seconds to observe, listen and make a small adjustment to their DISC style (If you can pick it out).  The more you try, the better you get at determining your customer.  And the better connection you will make when communicating with them.

One of the best ways to practice identifying a person’s DISC style is with your fellow employees.  If your company went through the DISC assessment and had some training, then you have the real results in your company.  I encourage the sales teams that I work with to share the results.  You work with these people all day and know their habits and behaviors.  Once you learn their DISC style, you can piece together how those styles turn up in their actions and words. 

One of the most engaging sessions in a sales training workshop is where we guess each person’s DISC style.  It always amazes everyone to find out how closely another person matches their style.

If you are interested in having your team go through this training, please reach out.  After nine years of holding these training sessions, it is the most enjoyed part of every workshop.  Learning and engagement are high in these sessions.  The greatest part of it all is that it doesn’t just apply to customers.  Using DISC helps communication with fellow employees and in their personal lives.