Winning Customers:

Differentiation Strategy

Differentiating With Different Types of People

Selling Products to Sensors, Intuiters, Thinkers, and Feelers

Face the Reality

There are many models for understanding and characterizing the styles of interaction different people prefer to employ. Different people take in the world through different senses – seeing, hearing, or feeling it. Further, different people tend to lead their decision-making process decisions with one of the four functions: intuition, thinking, feeling, and sensing. Vividly differentiated differences that are anchored to a product and engage the above functions can enhance memory of your current and prospective customers.

Connect with Senses

People have three basic methods of perceiving the world around them:

• Visual (see the world)

• Auditory (hear the world)

• Kinethetic (feel the world).

Individuals have different preferred ways of thinking and communicating their experiences – some express themselves in pictures, others talk about how things sound to them, and others speak about how things feel. If you want to connect with your target customers, you have to:

• figure out which sense they favor

• use right predicates to establish rapport with them

• let the visuals see, the kinethetics feel, and the auditories hear about the unique benefits your product/service offers to them to wake their emotions up

 Case in Point  Marketing Ten3 e-Books

E-sales of Ten3 e-book "Cultural Intelligence & Modern Management" rose by 30% within a week after the description of the product in the advertisement was changed from "e-Book" to "e-Book + 50 slides". The word "slides" not only communicated the simplicity and easy understanding of the material presented in the e-book, but also established fast connection with the visuals reading the ad.

Help Different Types of People Solve Their Problems

Different people pay attention to different things and apply different criteria for making decisions. When people solve problems, the four functions - feeling, sensing, thinking, and intuition – come into play in different combinations. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a widely used approach for understanding and characterizing the styles of interaction different people prefer to employ. It is based, in particular, on the following dimensions of a person's preferred approach to life.

• What you pay attention to (Sensing vs. Intuition)

  • A Senser focuses on facts and the five senses

  • An Intuiter focuses on what might be and the sixth sense

• How you make decisions (Thinking vs. Feeling)

  • A Thinker tends to use reason and logic

  • A Feeler tends to use values and subjective judgment

"People often are a mixture of these functions. "Intuiters" and "Feelers" both tend to dislike too much detail. "Thinkers" and "Sensors" work with more information. But they all are trying to make a decision on what to buy, one way or another."¹

Let's looking at these functions from a selling point of view.

Bibliography:

1. "Differentiate or Die," Jack Trout with Steve Rivkin

2. "Selling With NLP", Kerry L. Johnson

3. "Quick Guide to the Four Temperaments and Sales," Brad Cooper