Style Flexing to Service your Customers Well

I like to believe that most people in sales and service try hard to help customers and prospects make good decisions, but sometimes the people serving me use the same approach they do with everyone else. Why? Because they are not communicating with me the way I want and have a one-size-fits-all mentality. They are not conscious of the other person.

We all do it at one time or another, but the answer to this problem is “style flexing.” I learned this concept in a leadership training program 20 years ago and it really helped me with managing my team.

Style flexing is an easy concept to grasp, but difficult to do. It is not manipulative, but other centric. You need to concentrate on the other person’s needs and how they want to be communicated with when making decisions.

One way to break this down is to look at each person’s leadership style. We are all leaders in some way, and leaders make decisions. We all make decisions. There are four types of leaders—peer oriented, system oriented, boss oriented and goal oriented. We all know people who lead by employing one of these styles, but the best leaders are able to style flex and don’t get stuck in one leadership style all the time.

By the way, we all use each of these orientations at some point, but have a predominant style. When we are under stress, our dominant style jumps out in front and it is beautiful or ugly.

Let’s see how this concept helps in selling and servicing customers and prospect.

Peer Orientation. These people, for the most, part need support and love badly. They need others to make decisions for them, and decisions are made by committee. They love to chat and hear how you are doing. They hate getting right down to business, and they want to get to know you extremely well.