How can I make customers listen to me?! How to identify and fix your communication style.

We've all made mistakes when communicating with friends, family, colleagues and customers. 

Years ago, bright-eyed and full of enthusiasm, I bounced into a customer meeting at an institute in London. My customer was an introverted scientist who seemed to hide behind his glasses. I was an extroverted sales rep bubbling over with confidence.

My approach was overwhelming. Within minutes, my customer had gone from sitting upright in his chair to being, metaphorically, curled up in a ball. I hadn’t read his cues, I hadn’t respected his personal boundaries, and my direct style had caused a complete communication breakdown. I was mortified.

Adapting your communication style to your audience is what makes you an effective communicator, and it’s essential to building trusted customer relationships, negotiating successfully, and winning business.

Understanding before being understood

To adapt your style to your customer, you first need to understand how they prefer to communicate. The model we use in our WINN Selling programs looks at two simple questions:

• Do they tend to assert or to probe? Asserting communicators drive the conversation and state their views. Probing communicators hold back, ask questions, and take their time.
• Do they screen for facts or for feelings? Some people filter everything through data and logic. Others pay more attention to people, relationships, and how a decision will feel.

Put those together and you get four styles: the Eagle (Director), the Parrot (Expresser), the Owl (Thinker), and the Dove (Harmonizer).

Nobody is exclusively one style. Most of us are a blend, with one style that tends to dominate. You may naturally favor one or two, but you’re capable of using all four, and that’s what makes flexing possible.

The four communication styles

The Eagle (Director)

How to spot them. Eagles are all about action. They have little time for small talk, make decisions quickly, and like to keep things moving. They’ll ask plenty of questions, raise objections, and challenge you. Listen for conversations about goals, results, performance, efficiency, change, and moving forward.

How to appeal to them. Get straight down to business. Lead with the result or conclusion, make a clear recommendation rather than offering a menu of options, and keep things visual and concise, using summaries and bullet points. Respond quickly to requests and follow-ups. Don’t get too personal, because Eagles aren’t looking for a friendship.

The Parrot (Expresser)

How to spot them. Parrots are animated, full of ideas, and have plenty to say. They often go off on tangents, and listening isn’t always their strength. They love talking about innovation, new methods, potential, and thinking outside the box.

How to appeal to them. Turn on your listening skills and resist the urge to interrupt. It can be frustrating when you’re struggling to get your point across, but Parrots will warm to you if you let them talk. Allow extra time in the meeting to explore options, and don’t get impatient with the tangents. When it’s your turn, stress what makes your solution unique and talk about future-proofing.

The Owl (Thinker)

How to spot them. Owls tend to be cautious, reserved, and sometimes shy. They talk about facts, procedures, planning, proof, testing, and detail. Looking back, the scientist in my London meeting was a classic Owl, and many scientists are. If you sell into research groups or laboratories, you’ll meet a lot of Owls.

How to appeal to them. Be precise and come armed with data. If your enzyme works ten times faster than the competition’s, an Owl will want to see the numbers. Provide detail with your quote or recommendation, be extra careful with spelling and grammar, and be frank about the pros and cons of any option. Every product has limitations, and Owls know it, so don’t try to hide them. Above all, don’t rush them for a decision.

The Dove (Harmonizer)

How to spot them. Doves care about people. If your customer is focused on how your product or service will affect their team, how easily it will fit into their current way of working, and what support they’ll get after the sale, you’re probably talking to a Dove.

How to appeal to them. Doves want to get to know you. Allow time for conversation, ask about their life outside work, and share a little about yourself. Keep your written and verbal communication warm and informal. Emphasize the relationship between your organizations, walk them through your post-sale support, and share references and testimonials from customers you’ve partnered with successfully.

How to identify their style: active listening

Knowing the four styles is only half the job. In the moment, how do you tell which one you’re talking to? You listen. But there’s a difference between hearing someone and truly listening to them.

Many of us spend conversations thinking about how what’s being said affects us, or what we’ll say next to get what we need. We tune in and out and jump to conclusions. Others listen passively: we hear the words and follow the logic, but we stay on the surface and never really engage with the person speaking.

Active listening goes further. It means giving the customer your full attention, taking in both what they say and how they say it, and setting your own thoughts aside while they talk. It’s a skill, and like any skill it can be practiced until it becomes second nature. These are the seven skills that make it up:

• Be attentive. Give the customer your full focus. Put the phone away, make eye contact, and notice their body language and tone as well as their words.
• Ask open-ended questions. Invite detailed answers rather than a simple yes or no. “Walk me through your current process” tells you far more than “Are you happy with your current process?”
• Ask probing questions. Follow up to dig deeper into something the customer has said and uncover the specifics behind their needs and challenges.
• Request clarification. If something isn’t clear, ask. Checking your understanding is far better than acting on an assumption.
• Paraphrase. Put what the customer has said into your own words, such as “It sounds like…” or “What I’m hearing is…”, so they know you’ve understood and can correct you if you haven’t.
• Be attuned to and reflect feelings. Listen for the emotion behind the words, whether it’s frustration, excitement, or concern, and acknowledge it.
• Summarize. Pull together the key points at natural breaks and at the end of the conversation to confirm you’re both on the same page.

Don’t be afraid of silence, either. Pausing for a few seconds after the customer finishes speaking often draws out the most valuable information. Listen this way, and your customer will tell you, in what they talk about and how they say it, exactly which style they are and how they want you to communicate with them.

Flexing your style

Which style are you? I’m naturally an Eagle. My bold, direct style works well with other Eagles but can be overpowering for everyone else, as my London customer discovered. When styles are badly misaligned, misunderstandings follow, and you can even come across as incompetent.

We already flex our style every day without thinking about it. You speak differently to your boss, your best friend, your partner, and a toddler. The same principle applies to customers. If you don’t get on their wavelength, your message gets muted, however good it is.

So don’t let your preferred style dominate. Listen first, identify how your customer likes to communicate, and take control by adapting your approach. Practice the styles that don’t come naturally to you until they do. Your customer relationships, and your sales results, will reflect it.

If you or your team would benefit from building these skills, take a look at our WINN Selling programs.