Tom Stieghorst
If you get the chance to hear Trafalgar USA president Paul Wiseman talk about sales, don't pass it up.
I heard Wiseman speak at the Cruise Planners annual conference in Miami recently. In addition to being very entertaining, Wiseman elaborates on a concept that every travel agent can benefit from.
Too many agents, Wiseman said, are only comfortable selling to people like themselves. That means they're passing up a lot of sales. And modifying your behavior to reach out to prospects who behave and process the world differently than you do isn't that hard, Wiseman said.
The core of his 90-minute talk is based on a typology of behavior developed by Harvard psychologist William Marsden, who also invented the lie detector and created the Wonder Woman comic superhero.
Marsden's DISC model says people tend towards one of four behavior modes: Dominant, Influencing, Steadiness, or Conscientious and Compliant. To make them easier to remember, Wiseman makes each type a bird: Eagles (Dominant), Peacocks (Influencing), Doves (Steadiness), and Owls (Conscientious and Compliant).
Most travel agents are Doves, Wiseman asserts. But if they only sell to other Doves, they miss out.
For example, a good share of rich people are Eagles. "These people own the world," Wiseman said.
So for a Dove to make the sale to an Eagle, it helps if the Dove can speak the Eagle's language and modify its behavior to make an Eagle comfortable.
"Sales is not about you; it's about them and making a connection to them," Wiseman said.
Eagles are commanding types that relate to goals and results. Their intent is to "overcome and conquer," Wiseman said. Their communication style is to tell. Doves relate to service and teams, their intent is to be supportive and their communication style is to listen.
So to make the sale to an Eagle, Doves need to modify their behavior.
"Eagle up. Be relentless. Anybody can do it," Wiseman said. In a similar fashion, an agent Peacock making a sale to an accountant client might be advised to "tone it down some."
Most people are not pure or "high" examples of the type. "All the birds are in the nest," Wiseman said. It's mostly a question of which predominates.
By taking a little time to speed-read clients and assign them the type that seems strongest, then modifying behavior so that client feels at home, agents can sell to every type of person and not just those they are instinctively comfortable with, Wiseman said.