Communication-Powered Growth- Workshop 2 (Five Dimensions of Unique Purchaser Curiosity)
The Appleton Greene Corporate Training Program (CTP) for Communication-Powered Growth is provided by Ms. Spencer Certified Learning Provider (CLP). Program Specifications: Monthly cost USD$2,500.00; Monthly Workshops 6 hours; Monthly Support 4 hours; Program Duration 12 months; Program orders subject to ongoing availability.
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Learning Provider Profile
Ms. Spencer has been passionate about using words with purpose since she was a young girl who realized the power that written and spoken communication had in her own life.
After spending 10 years in the nonprofit world as a humanitarian worker in Hungary and Greece, and 3 more years as a book services provider, she started working with business owners exclusively. Ms. Spencer taught her clients how to tell their personal stories as a way to improve their marketing based on the knowledge she acquired in both the Comparative World Literature program at California State University of Long Beach (2005) and her Copyediting Certification from the University of California, San Diego (2020).
That’s when she realized that she could use her love of language to transition into the professional space of business development and became trained as a Certified Copywriter through the Written Results Academy (2020). Several years later, she pursued more specific business through completing Cornell University’s Women’s Entrepreneurship program (2023).
Ms. Spencer has since written over 30 books and spent time as a ghostwriter on the bench for Forbes Books, where she worked with businesses to use book writing as a strategic tool combined with custom-created offers to grow their businesses. Plus, she helped them increase both their impact and influence.
In addition to this work, Ms. Spencer is also a founding member of the consulting group She Has Infinite Potential (SHIP), which has worked to create better and more profitable opportunities for professional women in industries where they are underrecognized, such as business development and technology. In 2023, SHIP was recognized as having one of the most influential panels at the Women in Tech Global conference.
Ms. Spencer’s skills include: customized offer creation; expert level copywriting; creative marketing solutions; business-wide communication improvements; diversity and equity training; creative mindset coaching; conflict resolution; business storytelling; futurecasting. Ms. Spencer has over 15 years of experience as a professional writer and communicator and is a lifelong learner who helps her clients improve their revenue and productivity.
MOST Analysis
Mission Statement
For this workshop, our main touchstone principle is that we want you and the people in your organization to better leverage curiosity to make discoveries about the people you serve—your unique purchasers—so that you remove judgement, in order for your team to determine which sides of each personality-trait scales fit your organization and how you can communicate to them no matter whether they’re an intuitive, logical, or emotional purchaser. It’s time to level up in communication and thought when it comes to the people you serve, and how your organization shows up to connect with them in the first place.
Objectives
1. Engaging Curiosity — When you learn how to engage and re-engage curiosity no matter where you are the process of thinking about your unique purchasers, you’ll be able to switch off judgement and find solutions that will help your organization create better results.
2. Outreach & Response — Whether you’re using word-of-mouth referrals or first-, second-, or third-party data, you’ll discover what steps to do in what order to create outreach and response teams that excited to get to work.
3. Purchaser Journey — While it is a common myth that purchaser journeys can be expertly controlled, your team will explore how to create successful avenues that allow your purchasers to control their own journey in a way that points them to reaching out directly to your company.
4. Why No? — By mining the different reasons and meanings that happen behind every “no,” your team will discover how to use valuable information to determine when and how changes should be made, and when they shouldn’t. Not every “no” should try to be turned into a “yes.”
5. Problem Solving — As your organizations solves problems for your unique purchasers, you will have amazing opportunities to create follow-up offers to solve new problems as they appear once your first round of work is completed. Discover how to decide which problems to solve as you grow and scale.
6. Your Person — Thinking deeper about your unique purchasers will give you better clarity when you show up to create connections and provide them with your solutions. Start thinking like they do by answering questions that unlock the results your team has been looking for when it comes to the people you serve.
7. Genial or Introspective — Having a friendly purchaser isn’t always the best choice. Learn about this personality-trait scale to find out whether a genial or introspective purchaser makes more sense for your organization.
8. Interactive or Self-Reliant — Depending on how involved you want your purchaser to be in the process of getting the results your organization specializes in, you’ll want to think more about whether your offers work better with those on the interactive or self-reliant personality-trait scale.
9. Diligent or Disorganized — Find out if disorganized is as bad as it sounds by evaluating how the benefits your organization creates fit better with someone on the diligent or disorganized side of this personality-trait scale.
10. Amiable or Self-Concerned — Explore this personality-trait scale to find out whether an amiable or self-concerned purchaser makes more sense for your organization. The answer might surprise your team.
11. Nervous or Even-Tempered — Discover the truth about nervous purchasers as you go deep to determine whether someone on the nervous side of this personality-trait scale is someone your organization could work well with. Plus, learn what benefits and difficulties face companies who target purchasers on the even-tempered side of this scale.
12. Purchaser Types — Unlock the secrets behind communicating efficiently with the three different types of purchasers: intuitive, logical, and emotional. And learn how to play a game based on these ideas that will set your team up for success.
Strategies
1. Engaging Curiosity — Have each individual come up with a plan that is tailored to helping them re-engage curiosity depending on their habits and attitudes toward task-switching and thinking about your unique purchasers.
2. Outreach & Response — Determine which touchstone principle most shapes the way your organization functions in relation to the content in this specific course manual. Then think about how this causes your organization to shape the way you interact with unique purchasers.
3. Purchaser Journey — Define as a team the five most important values of your organization based on the information in this particular course material.
4. Why No? — Evaluate your team’s attitudes about negative responses and discuss how they need to shift or be reinforced based on the content in this course manual.
5. Problem Solving — Go through material and have a discussion on what problems solving looks like inside your organization based on the material and what steps you can take to ensure you achieve concision without sacrificing understanding.
6. Your Person — Determine whether you have the necessary information to create an action plan when it comes to evaluating changes in your organization approach to your person, or to changes that seem to happen naturally to the way your person thinks.
7. Genial or Introspective — Go through material and have a discussion on what side of this personality-trait scale makes sense to target for your organization based on the material and note what steps you can take to ensure you achieve this.
8. Interactive or Self-Reliant — Determine whether you have the necessary information to create an action plan when it comes to being curious about which side of this personality-trait scale is a good fit for your company.
9. Diligent or Disorganized — Use the course material to develop a list of pros and cons for each side of this personality-trait scale based on the offers your organization sells.
10. Amiable or Self-Concerned — Work with your team to think about a situation in the past where having this information could have made a difference.
11. Nervous or Even-Tempered — Have your team decide on the most important takeaway they feel they can implement from this particular course manual.
12. Purchaser Types — Have your 10 leaders write out their initial responses to the idea of what it would look like to implement the game in this course manual in a consistent way inside your organization.
Tasks
1. Engaging Curiosity — Discuss the individual plans for re-engaging curiosity and determine which tasks are prone to neglecting that re-engagement.
2. Outreach & Response — Task your leaders to each come up with an attitude and goal that can be used to reinforce the touchstone principle you determined that would most help your organization take action related to the content in this course manual.
3. Purchaser Journey — Have each leader discuss the five organizational values with their individual teams and report back with feedback to determine which values make sense to include in an action plan.
4. Why No? — Ask your customer support team to sit down in a meeting with the 10 department leaders and explain the most common reasons for returns they experience. Use their feedback to make adjustments based on your conversation in relation to purchasers saying “no.”
5. Problem Solving — Have the leaders of your departments send poll their departments to find out what problem-solving approaches they prioritize.
6. Your Person — Ask each department leader to share the findings of your team’s determination of your action plan immediately. Within a few days, have department leaders collect responses from their team members and meet back to discuss the results.
7. Genial or Introspective — Discuss how your organization is going to adjust based on the information in this course manual. Make a plan of action to implement those adjustments in a timely manner.
8. Interactive or Self-Reliant — Discuss how your organization is going to adjust based on the information in this course manual. Make a plan of action to implement those adjustments in a timely manner.
9. Diligent or Disorganized — Take your team’s responses about purchasers on each side of this scale and create a list of ideas that will help your organization be more efficient when it comes to outreach and response. Have department leaders share this list with each of their teams.
10. Amiable or Self-Concerned — Have your team take situation the concepts in this course manual could have address in the past. Then have them discuss what it would look like to use this story as a preventative lesson in what to avoid.
11. Nervous or Even-Tempered — Work with your team to create a list of five actions they can take to create an environment where the takeaway they decided on in the strategy for this course manual is more likely to happen.
12. Purchaser Types — Give your leaders time to go through the resources in the Preliminary Analysis section of this workshop to find areas of further study they are curious about and have them share their findings with the group through the filter of purchaser types.
Introduction
It’s time to dive into the five levels of curiosity while thinking through more refined psychographics and purchaser preferences. In this course manual, you’ll explore how to engage curiosity on five different levels first, and then use those as filters to explore problem solving, outreach and response, the purchaser journey, and personality-trait scales. All so that your organization can make better, long-lasting connections with unique purchasers your team will love to serve.
Focus on Engaging Curiosity
Curiosity is vital for understanding unique purchasers and fostering innovation within organizations. This course manual emphasizes the intentional practice of curiosity to develop strategies and cultivate creative and inclusive approaches tailored to both the industry and the purchasers.
Emphasizing Outreach and Response
Effective communication builds trust with unique purchasers and drives organizational growth. This section focuses on integrating curiosity into outreach and response strategies, emphasizing the role of asking questions and adapting processes to meet purchaser needs.
Understanding the Purchaser Journey
Purchasers want to navigate their own paths, influenced by various factors such as referrals, search engines, and content. Companies must adapt their approaches to align with purchaser preferences and behaviors, analyzing data and performance indicators to enhance the purchaser journey.
Interpreting “No”
Understanding why purchasers say “no” provides valuable insights for improving communication and processes. This manual explores common reasons for rejection, including lack of connection, mismatched value preferences, financial constraints, perceived lack of urgency, and insufficient trust.
Problem-Solving
Curiosity plays a crucial role in problem-solving for both purchasers and internal team dynamics. This manual guides teams in addressing purchaser problems, implementing idea-test rounds, maintaining focus, and avoiding distractions to effectively meet purchaser needs.
Understanding Unique Purchasers
Tailoring communication and strategies to align with purchaser preferences is essential. This manual explores outreach strategies, purchaser journeys, rejection factors, and problem-solving outcomes to improve purchaser interactions through strategic storytelling and data gathering.
Personality-Trait Scales
Learn how to break down the five personality-trait scales to unlock new psychographic information and build better, deeper connections with the purchasers who make the most sense for your organizations’ offers and touchstone principles.
Executive Summary
Chapter 1: Engaging Curiosity
Curiosity is one of the most important filters we can use to understand unique purchasers while creating opportunities for innovation within any organization. This is why we start out with a call to engage curiosity at the beginning of this course manual.
Emphasizing the intentional practice of curiosity helps us by providing us with strategies as long as we make a concentrated effort to engage curiosity inside of our daily habits. Although we might think curiosity happens on autopilot, it actually needs to be re-engaged throughout the day, especially when we switch tasks.
Intentional curiosity can be fostered by knowing which questions we can ask ourselves to turn it on, which will lead more creative and inclusive approaches not only to an organization’s industry, but also their unique purchasers.
In addition to helping you understand helpful strategies for task switching and “eating the frog,” you will also learn how to prioritize time for moments of wonderment to promote curiosity and empathy.
The way you think about your unique purchasers shapes everything your team does, and thinking about them through a lens of judgment will stall your problem-solving approaches and growth.
Chapter 2: Outreach & Response
Effective communication is so valuable because of the opportunities it creates to build trust with unique purchasers. Unless your organization is constantly reaching out to consumers and responding when they initiate outreach, you won’t discover people who need your company’s help.
This part of the workshop focuses on how to bring curiosity into the outreach and response process, the role of asking questions when it comes to the style of outreach and response that best fits your team and the processes and systems you use to get results for others.
When it comes to maximizing your outreach efforts, this part of the course will help your team:
• Learn how to find outreach leaders on your team that emphasize empathy in an effort to connect with others who also understand the depth of each one of your organization’s offerings.
• Discover the value of using diverse methods for outreach to impact a wider audience more effectively.
• Explore the significance of building responses that trust and foster purchaser relationships.
And then, when focusing on your response methods, your team will find out how to:
• Build out a response team based on the number of inbound messages you’re receiving.
• Analyze your standard operating procedures (SOPs) so that you know which systems are in place to support your organization’s response time.
• Tailor your responses based on the preferences of each unique purchaser without investing a ton of time or resources.
Both outreach and response are valuable for any organization to evaluate and rethink with curiosity-based approaches, and with this course manual, your company will be ready to do that and more.
Chapter 3: Purchaser Journey
Every purchaser has a journey, and while many marketing professionals argue that a purchaser’s path can be expertly directed, the truth is that in today’s world of information overload, many purchasers prefer to pave their own journeys or paths.
Whether it’s through word-of-mouth referrals, recommendations of search engines, or content on various platforms, it is valuable to think about the types of milestone markers your organization has out in the world to help the purchaser as they walk along this journey.
Companies must continually analyze and adapt their approaches to make sure that the preferences and behaviors of unique purchasers are being met. It is helpful to ask the following questions as your team curates the options for your purchasers’ journeys:
• Are we providing valuable information that will help purchasers get closer to making a decision to work with us?
• Is our approach in creating content and providing information flexible enough to adapt to changing purchaser preferences?
While there will always be challenges for both organizations and purchasers when it comes to shaping these paths, there are ways to implement the use of strategic content and communication to encourage connections between the two.
With a look at first-, second-, and third-party data along with key performance indicators (KPIs), this course manual will help your organization feel much more confident when it comes the purchaser journey they’re building.
Chapter 4: Why No?
While we are often shaped not to like the sound of the word “no” as part of the collective human experience, the reason behind “no” can be a huge source of valuable data just waiting to be mined to improve any organization’s communication.
This course manual will help your team understand that feedback helps us improve both internal and external processes to better serve our unique purchasers and grow our companies.
In it, we will address a few of the most common reasons that purchasers say “no,” including:
• A lack of connection between the pain of purchasers the offers we use to address that pain.
• Mismatched value preferences that keep purchasers from choosing our organizations even when our offers are clearly articulated to them in a clear, confident way.
• Financial constraints that should have been identified before we started to invest direct organizational time in the purchaser journey.
• A perceived lack of urgency that leads the purchaser to thinking that they will always be able to act later without taking opportunity costs into consideration.
• Insufficient trust on the part of the purchaser toward the organization.
Plus, you will also learn when your team members shouldn’t try to turn a “no” into a “yes” for the benefit of everyone involved.
Chapter 5: Problem Solving
Curiosity is a key factor in problem-solving for both unique purchasers and internal team dynamics. In this course manual, your team will learn that are inevitable problems in the lives of your unique purchasers, and how you can address and solve them to create new problems that your company can then address.
You will learn which questions to ask and how to implement idea-test rounds to see if solving a new problem would actually be beneficial to your organization and your unique purchasers.
Plus, you’ll learn how to solve problems by getting clear, calm, focused, centered, honest, and specific.
And, your team will find ways to beware of distractions that creep in from other industries and disguise themselves as problems in your unique corner of the professional world.
By using tools like curiosity, reflection, and strategic planning, your organization can effectively address the problems faced by your unique purchasers one step at a time.
Chapter 6: Your Person
By taking a deeper look at the different thoughts, feelings, and preferences your unique purchasers have, you will be able to better tailor your communication, outreach, and follow-up.
This course manual is an exploration of outreach strategies, purchaser journeys, rejection factors, and desired problem-solving outcomes that will help your organization reflect and reveal on the way positive psychographics can improve all of your purchaser interactions.
Through this manual, we will explore two main factors that work to help us complete a curiosity quest:
• How to identify unique purchasers who align with organizational values.
• Discovering a way to understand the changing characteristics unique purchasers as organizations also change over time.
Your team will also learn how to take a deeper dive when it comes to psychographics and building deeper, more authentic connections with unique purchasers through strategic storytelling and data gathering.
Chapter 7: Genial or Introspective
As we go through a breakdown of the genial to introspective personality-trait scale, your team will learn how to view purchasers on each side of the scale with real-world examples, purchasing behavior, decision-making preferences, and priorities for visual marketing.
On the Geniality Side
A genial personality type is characterized by warmth, optimism, and friendliness. They also often look for the good things in life. They frequently place a higher value on relationships than on other things and are constantly searching for ways to improve both their personal and global environments.
Their viewpoint is frequently collectively-focused, which means that if given the option, they will typically pick what is best for the group over what is best for themselves.
On the Introspective Side
Due to their propensity for autonomous action, unique purchasers who fall more on the introspective end of this spectrum frequently believe that they can always act later. They are happy to be by themselves and take their time processing their ideas. They utilize their alone time to refuel and are more inclined toward more contemplative, meditative pursuits.
They would rather be more reserved and are less likely to come out and tell you straight how they are feeling. This means that it’s critical to formulate and pose pertinent inquiries to aid in their ability to express their suffering and desires.
An introspective person is more likely to hold off on communicating until they have something that feels really important, even though it might require a little more work to find out what they are thinking or feeling. The delay is worthwhile in order to get those informational jewels.
Taking a Step Back
Human behavior and personality traits serve organizations well, but only if companies understand that generalizations should be avoided and they focus on how the offers connect to those traits instead of the personalities that are evident inside their teams.
Chapter 8: Interactive or Self-Reliant
As we go through a breakdown of the interactive to self-reliant personality-trait scale, your team will learn how to view purchasers on each side of the scale with real-world examples, purchasing behavior, decision-making preferences, and priorities for visual marketing.
On the Interactive Side
When it comes to personality traits, being interactive means that a person is open to learning about other viewpoints, cultural experiences that are different from their own, unconventional methods (some of which are even presently undergoing testing), as well as innovative outreach approaches and creative expressions.
They are open to engaging in interactions with the outside world that facilitate the acquisition of new knowledge. Furthermore, they frequently exhibit a great deal of flexibility in acquiring and using this new knowledge.
On the Self-Reliant Side
When a unique purchaser possesses self-reliant personality features, they tend to search within themselves for more conventional solutions that they were taught growing up. They frequently show less enthusiasm in discovering novel facts and fresh cultural encounters that broaden their understanding.
Even though a lot of businesses could view a self-reliant individual as a less-than-ideal unique purchaser for their business, a lot of other businesses could gain from developing marketing and content that emphasizes the character attributes of self-reliance.
For people on this end of the spectrum, having straightforward, understandable, and easily accessible information is crucial to their decision-making when making a purchase.
Because they value reliability over the benefits of new technologies or approaches, they frequently have little interest in businesses that are at the forefront of technological innovation.
Taking a Step Back
Human behavior and personality traits serve organizations well, but only if companies understand that generalizations should be avoided and they focus on how the offers connect to those traits instead of the personalities that are evident inside their teams.
Chapter 9: Diligent or Disorganized
As we go through a breakdown of the diligent to disorganized personality-trait scale, your team will learn how to view purchasers on each side of the scale with real-world examples, purchasing behavior, decision-making preferences, and priorities for visual marketing.
On the Diligent Side
A person who exhibits the diligent trait might be described as tenacious, thoughtful, obedient, disciplined, persistent, and confident. This is the diligent side of the personality-trait scale.
They are aware that they can obtain the facts necessary to build a self-assured attitude even in the absence of an opinion regarding an alternative that is presented to them. They adore standard operating procedures (SOPs) and frequently find that the “how” is just as fascinating as the “why.”
Even though they like to do incredible feats, they are first very hesitant to adopt novel concepts or cutting-edge technologies. Setting goals is typical of this personality type. They don’t always reject new ways to solve their issues, but if you want them to become customers, you can’t skip the research stage.
They have a strong follow-through ethic and are totally committed to keeping any promises they make. You should expect the email to arrive on schedule if they claim they will send it to you by the end of the week. Instead, as long as you collaborate, people count on you to deliver on your commitments and meet the deadlines you set.
On the Disorganized Side
Although the term “disorganized” tends to conjure up negative thoughts, having disorganized tendencies is not always a bad thing. It is similar to the interactive list of personality traits in many aspects. Buyers who are unique and fall into this group tend to be creative by nature, receptive to new ideas, and less concerned with the method than with the final product of working with you.
Taking a Step Back
Human behavior and personality traits serve organizations well, but only if companies understand that generalizations should be avoided and they focus on how the offers connect to those traits instead of the personalities that are evident inside their teams.
Chapter 10: Amiable or Self-Concerned
As we go through a breakdown of the amiable to self-concerned personality-trait scale, your team will learn how to view purchasers on each side of the scale with real-world examples, purchasing behavior, decision-making preferences, and priorities for visual marketing.
On the Amiable Side
It is common to characterize a unique buyer with pleasant personality attributes as someone who is cooperative, modest, morally upright, sympathetic, and trusting of others.
Although this may sound like a desirable, one-of-a-kind customer, serving someone who is friendly on this personality-trait scale can provide challenges. It’s possible for someone with such a strong moral compass to be rigid. Furthermore, it could be challenging for a modest individual to articulate their preferences and strong points.
Furthermore, if someone is overly cooperative, they may never truly communicate their needs to you, which could lead to a situation in which the outcomes you obtain for them fall short of their expectations.
Considering all of that, the best buyer on the pleasant end of the scale has excellent boundaries and a strong sense of self. This helps your team serve them well and increases the likelihood that they will receive better results as a result of putting their trust in your team to provide knowledgeable assistance.
On the Self-Concerned Side
Although being self-concerned has historically been linked to selfishness—that is, prioritizing one’s own needs and desires over those of others—self-concernedness actually has more to do with the buyer waiting to act until they have the knowledge and experiences that they find valuable.
Self-concerned people are usually content with being viewed as unconventional or different from their peers, wary of other people, tenacious, self-aware, and proud of their prior wise choices.
Even if some people may be more selfish than self-concerned, most businesses that provide services or goods to support people who fall on the self-concerned end of the personality trait scale are able to differentiate their offerings in a way that discourages selfish people from doing business with them.
Buyers who are selfish are frequently intransigent, unyielding, mistrustful, and overconfident. This distinction is crucial since some buyers are fantastic to deal with yet are self-concerned. Nevertheless, teams in all industries frequently find it very challenging to work with selfish buyers.
Taking a Step Back
Human behavior and personality traits serve organizations well, but only if companies understand that generalizations should be avoided and they focus on how the offers connect to those traits instead of the personalities that are evident inside their teams.
Chapter 11: Nervous or Even-Tempered
As we go through a breakdown of the nervous to even-tempered personality-trait scale, your team will learn how to view purchasers on each side of the scale with real-world examples, purchasing behavior, decision-making preferences, and priorities for visual marketing.
On the Nervous Side
A unique purchaser who leans toward the nervous end of the personality-trait scale would typically consider potential issues before they arise. They frequently have a high threshold for stress, worry about possible consequences, seek reassurance that everything has been or will be carefully attended to, and do not wish to increase their operational vulnerability.
Even while this particular personality-trait scale has a bad side, without buyers at least somewhat connecting with some of these features, many of the ways we communicate about offers and sales would not exist today without them. In reality, if consumers didn’t want to know that they would have control over the consequences of life-threatening occurrences like disease, accident, or property loss, the insurance business as a whole would not even exist.
On the Even-Tempered Side
When a buyer exhibits even-temperedness, it indicates that there is nothing that you or anybody else in your company can do to undermine their self-assurance, decorum, and composure. They frequently maintain themselves under duress and exude confidence in their identity rather than their actions.
When making a purchase, buyers typically conduct extensive preliminary research before deciding to buy as soon as they believe they have obtained sufficient data. Because of their even temperament, they are typically slow to offer a lot of praise or criticism when your team works with them.
They are naturally interested and inquisitive, and your team of curiosity experts (which we’re sure they are by now) should have no trouble responding to them.
Taking a Step Back
Human behavior and personality traits serve organizations well, but only if companies understand that generalizations should be avoided and they focus on how the offers connect to those traits instead of the personalities that are evident inside their teams.
Chapter 12: Purchaser Types
There are three main purchaser types, and although there are stark differences between them, your team can still learn to write communication that addresses all three. At the same time, there are valuable questions they can use to discover the purchaser type of someone they are with in person to tailor their conversation.
In this course manual we will go over:
• Intuitive Purchasers
• Logical Purchasers
• Emotional Purchasers
First up is the Intuitive Purchaser, who is known for acting on instinct when making purchases. This type values simplicity in asset descriptions and trusts to their gut when making a buy. The main emphasis is on making intuitive selections, while some people could base their choices on their relationship with the seller.
There are two subgroups within the Logical Purchaser: those who seek knowledge on the organization’s systems and strategies, and those who prefer information based on facts and data. They are driven by rational justifications of how the good or service will help them, emphasizing the useful effects and consequences.
In contrast to popular belief, the Emotional Purchaser does not currently make decisions based only on feelings. Rather, they imagine their feelings after using the product or service to solve their problem. Persuading people to buy something requires that you understand the expected emotional response.
Organizations can engage with their unique purchasers more successfully will eventually increase sales by customizing their communication to cater to the interests of distinct buyer types. The course manual highlights how important it is to comprehend customer behavior in order to build deep relationships and provide customized solutions that, in the end, support organizational success.
Curriculum
Communication-Powered Growth – Workshop 2 – Five Dimensions of Unique Purchaser Curiosity
- Engaging Curiosity
- Outreach & Response
- Purchaser Journey
- Why No?
- Problem Solving
- Your Person
- Genial or Introspective
- Interactive or Self-Reliant
- Diligent or Disorganized
- Amiable or Self-Concerned
- Nervous or Even-Tempered
- Purchaser Types
Distance Learning
Introduction
Welcome to Appleton Greene’s Communication-Powered Growth Training Program.
We’re thrilled to have you join us on this exciting journey through the Communication-Powered Growth corporate training program. Here at Appleton Greene, we’re dedicated to providing you with a unique and engaging learning experience that you can easily implement in your professional life.
Learning Made Easy
Get ready to embark on an enriching learning adventure. Our program is designed to make your educational journey not only beneficial but also enjoyable. We understand that diving into distance-learning might feel a bit daunting if you’re new to it, but we’re here to guide you every step of the way.
Creating Your Study Space
First things first, it’s time to set the stage for your success. Find a quiet spot where you can focus without distractions. Whether it’s a dedicated study room or a cozy corner in your home, make it your own. Surround yourself with everything you need to feel comfortable and motivated, like soft lighting, soothing music, and maybe even a nice view.
Equipping Yourself
Ensure you have the right tools for the job. You’ll need access to a computer, scanner, and printer with internet connectivity. Plus, a comfortable chair and a good filing system are essential for a smooth study experience. You don’t need to let unreliable tools keep you from making progress.
Taking Responsibility
As a distance-learner, the responsibility for your success lies within you. It’s time to embrace your self-discipline and motivation, and remember why you’re here. Keep your goals in sight, and don’t hesitate to inspire yourself with encouragement along the way.
Learning is a big investment, both in time and money. When you’re in a training program, whether in person or through distance-learning like ours, the responsibility for success falls on you. It’s natural to feel frustrated when things don’t go as planned, but ultimately, your success is in your own hands.
Each student is different, and what works for one person may not work for another. That’s why it’s important to take personal responsibility for your study plan. If things don’t go well, don’t be too hard on yourself. Instead, focus on finding a plan that works for you and keep moving forward. Remember, you are responsible for your own success, and we’re here to support you every step of the way.
Determine Your Best Learning Habits
Understanding your learning style is key. Take some time for self-assessment to identify your strengths and weaknesses as a learner. This will guide you in creating a study plan that plays to your strengths and addresses your weaknesses.
At Appleton Greene, our training programs are designed for post-graduate students like you. This means you’ve likely already earned a business-related degree and already have experience learning. By now, you probably have a good idea of your study habits. Do you work better in the morning or at night? Are you someone who likes to tackle tasks quickly, or do you prefer a steadier approach? Understanding yourself as a learner is key, and it’s something we encourage from the start.
Take a moment to reflect on your strengths and weaknesses as a student. What do you excel at, and where could you use a bit of extra support? Taking a moment to reflect and self-asses, much like a SWOT analysis, can be incredibly valuable as you begin to plan your studies. By recognizing your strengths, you can use them to your advantage, while also addressing any areas that may need improvement. This will set you up for success as you embark on your learning journey with us.
Planning for Success
Planning is your best friend on this journey. Take the time to map out your study schedule and set realistic goals. Break it down into manageable tasks and milestones to keep yourself on track. Another aspect of planning well for your present educational journey is setting realistic expectations with your family and support system to help them understand what you need when it comes to study time. Let them know when you’ll be in focus-mode ahead of the time so they don’t interrupt, and ask them if they’d like help being accountable to their tasks so that you can cheer each other on.
If you have children, you can let them know ahead of time when you’ll be studying and then create a reminder for them. A Post-It note on your office door with a time you’ll be finished is a great way to reinforce that you will be finished with your work soon and can spend time with them then.
Your Study Goals and Tasks
Let’s get started by setting your program objectives. These are the reasons why you’re taking this training, so it’s important to prioritize them. Keep your objectives clear and concise to avoid confusion.
Here’s a simple way to do it: First, think about different areas like Customer Service, E-business, Finance, and so on. Make a list under each area of what you want to achieve. Then, organize these ideas by priority.
Try to limit yourself to five main objectives. These will be the most important goals for your program. If you find that achieving these goals will also cover other items on your list, that’s amazing. If not, go back and refine your objectives until they align with your overall goals for the course.
Timelines and Expectations
Let’s talk about how long the Appleton Greene Communication-Powered Growth corporate training program might take you. Typically, it spans about 12 to 18 months, but this can vary based on your schedule and other commitments. Why the range in timeline? Well, everyone is different. Each person will need to set their own pace based on their current responsibilities. Plus, since this is a distance-learning program, it’s designed to fit into your real life.
Because of this, you’ll want to plan carefully. Think about how much time you can realistically dedicate to studying each week. Then, break the program into smaller, manageable parts. These can be your milestones along the way. You can use tools like spreadsheets or personal organizers to help you stay organized.
When it comes to tasks, refer to your program objectives and figure out when each task should be done. Remember, it’s not just about finishing tasks, but also making sure they align with your training modules. Break down each task into smaller steps to make them easier to tackle.
By planning ahead and breaking things down, you’ll have a clear idea of what needs to be done and when. This will help you stay on track and reach your program objectives.
Tracking Progress
Monitor your progress regularly and adjust your plans as needed. Keep a close eye on your performance to ensure you’re staying on course. Remember, consistency is key. Whether you use a digital checklist, old-fashioned Post-It notes, or a day planner, be sure to give your brain quick wins by marking off progress you’ve made as you go through the course material.
One trick that Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach teaches is to journal three things you’ve accomplished in your journal before you go to bed so that you set yourself up for real rest that allows your mind to process the wins you’ve had that day instead of stressing about what went wrong or what could go wrong tomorrow. It is also helpful to have your overarching goal in mind so that you have a reminder that you are working toward something tangible and important. Each of your smaller goals should contribute to your main goal, and marking your progress along the way will help with that. You are amazing and we believe that you absolutely can learn how to grow your organization via the power of clearer, more-focused communication.
Reach Out for Support
Don’t hesitate to reach out for help whenever you need it. Our team of experienced professors and tutors is here to support you every step of the way. You can let us know about your progress and any challenges you face, and we’ll be there to guide you.
We keep track of all tutorial support emails to make sure professors and tutors have the full picture before responding to you. This helps avoid any confusion or repeating information. Plus, it ensures there’s a record of all your conversations, which helps prevent misunderstandings.
If you’re having any issues with the program, don’t hesitate to reach out via email. Chances are, they’ve dealt with similar problems before and can offer useful advice. For more details on using tutorial support effectively, check out the Tutorial Support section of this guide. It’s there to make sure you get the most out of the support available and enjoy success in your training program.
Share the Journey
Don’t keep your journey to yourself! Share your progress with your colleagues, friends, and family. Engage with them, ask them for help when you need it, and make your learning experience a collaborative effort.
Making it Relevant
Make your learning experience relevant to your own circumstances. Relate the program content to your professional and personal life, and set clear objectives for what you want to achieve.
Throughout the program, it’s important to connect what you’re learning with your own life. You can do this by reflecting quietly or talking it over with colleagues, friends, or family. This is a crucial part of turning your studies into real self-improvement.
Be clear about how you want the program to help you. Set specific goals related to understanding the content, doing research, or relating it to your own experiences. It’s okay if your goals change as you go along—just update your study plan to keep track of what you’re aiming for and why.
Your Distance-Learning Checklist
To sum it up, here’s a handy checklist to guide you through your distance-learning adventure:
1. Set up your study environment and tools.
2. Assess yourself as a learner.
3. Create a study plan format.
4. Define your study objectives and tasks.
5. Develop a study forecast.
6. Evaluate your study performance.
7. Adjust your study forecast as needed.
8. Stay consistent with managing your study plan.
9. Use your Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) for tutorial support.
10. Keep in touch with your support network.
We’re excited to see you thrive in the Communication-Powered Growth training program. Remember, we’re here to support you every step of the way. Happy learning.
Tutorial Support
Tailored Solutions for Business Improvement
At Appleton Greene, we specialize in both standard and customized corporate training programs designed to instill improved business-process knowledge deep within our clients’ organizations. Each program is carefully crafted to focus on implementing a specific business process, making it easy for clients to measure their return on investment.
We offer a wide range of corporate training products across various sectors, including customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing, and production. Whether our clients’ employees are in one office or spread across multiple international locations, we have the expertise to bring them together to learn and implement targeted business processes.
Our approach to global localization ensures that clients receive a personalized, international service. Whether delivered virtually or locally, each Appleton Greene corporate training program is unique, focusing on a specific business function. These programs are implemented over a sustainable period, with ongoing support from qualified learning providers who are also specialist consultants. Our main goal is to ensure your success.
Support and Guidance in Your Learning Journey
During your learning journey with us, you’ll have a designated Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and an Accredited Consultant to guide you along the way. We encourage you to communicate with them as much as you need to.
All tutorial support is provided online, allowing us to keep a record of all communications for the sake of consistency. You’ll also be submitting your work to the tutorial support unit for evaluation and assessment.
You’ll receive individual feedback on all your work, along with specific recommendations for improvement. If needed, you can re-submit project studies until they meet the required standard.
Ultimately, the only reason you might not succeed is if you don’t put in the effort. Whether you complete the program in 12 months or 18 months, what matters most is that you achieve the same high-quality standard in the end.
The Guidance and Assistance Process
To ensure efficient support, please send all future emails to the designated Tutorial Support Unit email address provided. Avoid duplicating or copying emails to other AGC email accounts to prevent unnecessary administrative tasks.
We aim to respond to emails as promptly as possible. However, during busy periods, please allow up to 20 business days for responses to general tutorial support emails. Project studies may take up to 30 business days for evaluation and assessment, excluding weekends and public holidays. Please factor this timeframe into your planning.
All communication is managed online via email, allowing tutorial service support managers to review previous communications before responding. This ensures that all correspondence is retained for future reference in your personal CLP study file at Appleton Greene throughout your study period.
If you need assistance or clarification, don’t hesitate to contact us by forwarding an email. We’re here to help. When asking questions, please list and number them clearly to ensure that we can deliver specific answers to each query in a way that is easy for your to understand.
Flexible Time Management for Customized Success
In our Communication-Powered corporate training program, in general, you’ll have around one year to finish. This includes attending 12 monthly workshops, each lasting 6 hours. Additionally, you’ll need to dedicate about 4 hours per week of your personal time over the course of a year.
You have the flexibility to study from home or work at your own pace, taking responsibility for managing your study plan. There are no formal exams; instead, you’ll be evaluated based on your project study submissions and the quality of your internal analysis and supporting documents.
Since most students are working full time while studying, the program is designed to accommodate busy schedules. You can adjust your study time as needed, contributing more when you have the availability and less when you’re busy.
Whether you complete the program in 12 months, or take up to 18 months, what matters most is that you achieve the same high standard of quality. We prioritize flexibility and personalized learning to ensure your success in our programs at Appleton Greene.
Your Essential Guide to Distance Learning Success
Starting your training program with the “Distance Learning Guide” is key. It’s your go-to resource for planning your study schedule, creating the right study environment, and getting into the right mindset. By laying a strong foundation during the planning stage, you’ll set yourself up for a more enjoyable and productive training experience later on.
This guide helps you adjust your lifestyle to make time for studying and develop effective study habits. It also guides you in tracking your progress, so you can see how you’re doing as you work to reach your goals. Plus, it explains the tools you’ll need for studying and how to use them effectively.
Take some time now to go through your distance learning guide thoroughly. Building firm foundations will ensure you get the most out of your distance learning program.
At Appleton Greene, there’s no need for in-person workshops or classes. The entire program is conducted online. Course materials and project studies are accessed through the Appleton Greene website and email. This means you can study at your own pace, whether you’re at home or in the office, as long as you have a computer and internet access.
Mastering Your Study Approach
In the “How To Study” guide, you’ll discover everything you need to know about Appleton Greene’s distance learning methods. This guide gives you a clear overview of what to expect in your training program.
You’ll learn about the step-by-step approach Appleton Greene uses, and how course materials are linked to project studies. You’ll also discover the importance of research so that you can provide evidence to support your ideas. Plus, you’ll get insights that will help you excel and achieve top grades for your project studies.
Additionally, you’ll discover tips on being innovative and creative as you develop your Unique Program Proposition (UPP). With this guide, you’ll be well-equipped to navigate your training journey with confidence.
Maximizing Your Tutorial Support Experience
At Appleton Greene, we’re dedicated to providing top-notch tutorial support for our Communication-Powered Growth corporate training program. Here’s how it works:
1. Online Support Channels: You can access tutorial support through the Appleton Greene Client Support Portal (CSP) or via email. This ensures easy and efficient communication.
2. Designated Program Administration Manager (PAM): Your tutorial support requests are managed by a dedicated Program Administration Manager (PAM). They’ll connect you with the right professor or tutor based on your needs.
3. Response Time: We strive to respond to general support queries within 20 business days and evaluate project studies within 30 business days. Your patience during busy periods is appreciated.
4. Effective Communication: To make the most of tutorial support, follow our guidelines for formatting your emails. Clearly reference the course manual or project study you’re working on and list up to five specific questions per email using numbers so that we can respond in a way that is easy for you to understand.
5. Utilizing Support for Success: Our training programs are designed to empower you to take charge of your learning journey. Tutorial support is here to assist you in implementing what you’ve learned effectively.
6. Long-Term Benefits: Distance learning with facilitation offers sustainable knowledge growth. Learn to leverage tutorial support to maximize the benefits of your training experience.
7. Comprehensive Guide: Refer to our guide “Tutorial Support” to understand how and when to use tutorial support effectively. It covers each training function and provides valuable tips for success.
By following these guidelines and making the most of tutorial support, you’ll enhance your learning experience and achieve your training goals with Appleton Greene.
Your Tutorial Support: A Helpful List
At first, students might be unsure about how and when to use tutorial support with Appleton Greene. The following guide will help you understand how to maximize the benefit of using tutorial support. Make sure to refer to it regularly to ensure you’re using the service effectively.
Tutorial support plays a crucial role in the success of your training experience. Understanding when and how to use it is key to maximizing its benefits. Successful students are often positive, proactive, and productive when utilizing tutorial support.
Engage With Your Support Team in a Friendly Manner
When you reach out to the tutorial support unit, remember that you’re communicating with real people. Treat them as you’d like to be treated. Being positive, kind, and friendly in your emails can lead to a more pleasant and productive interaction for everyone involved.
Creating Positive Impressions through Effective Communication
When you communicate, you leave an impression that can be positive or negative. Take a moment to think about which impression you want to make. Keep in mind that all tutorial support emails are saved electronically, and tutors refer to past emails before responding. Over time, people form opinions about your character, attitude, and abilities based on your communication.
Handle your frustrations and moods professionally, without involving the tutorial support team. Showing frustration or impatience can be seen and interpreted as weakness.
The advantage of written communication is that you can review and proofread your message before sending it. This allows you to communicate professionally and consistently, avoiding hasty reactions.
Remember, the CLP Tutorial Support Unit evaluates your work and may provide recommendations to others. It is helpful for both you and the team if you work to maintain control of your emotions and strive to make a positive impression.
The Benefits of Concision
When you email the tutorial support team, remember that it’s not like using Twitter or Text Messaging. Avoid sending emails every time you have a thought as it may not be productive for you or the support team.
Take the time to prepare your emails properly, as if you were writing a professional letter to a colleague. Make a list of questions you have and include them in one email, perhaps once a month. This helps the support team understand your context, application, and study methodology better.
Develop a consistent routine for sending tutorial support requests and use the provided template for all your emails. It is helpful to understand that the CLP Tutorial Support Unit’s role isn’t to give you all the answers upfront. They need to evaluate and assess your requests carefully and professionally.
Use Specific Questions to Receive Specific Answers
When composing tutorial support emails, avoid writing lengthy essays. Being too verbose can confuse the tutorial support team about your questions or objectives. Instead, be clear and specific about the questions you need answers to. Numbering your questions can help ensure you receive precise responses to each one. This clarity is the primary goal of using tutorial support via email.
Keep Records of Your Communications
It’s crucial to save all tutorial support emails you receive. This way, you can easily refer back to them when needed, preventing any duplication, misunderstandings, or misinterpretations.
Clarification on Tutorial Support at Appleton Greene
At Appleton Greene, we want to ensure fair treatment for all students. Therefore, we don’t offer separate tutorial support meetings, workshops, or telephone support for individuals. This policy is in line with our commitment to equal opportunities.
All tutorial support is provided online via email. This approach allows us to keep a record of all communications between students, professors, and tutors for future reference. It also ensures that you receive detailed and thoughtful responses to your queries.
When reaching out for support, feel free to number your questions to receive specific answers to each query. This not only helps you understand the material better but also creates a record of your communication with us.
By providing tutorial support online, we aim to make the process more efficient and avoid any confusion or duplication. Thank you for understanding.
Guidelines for Sending Tutorial Support Emails
When you need help or clarification while studying, follow these guidelines for sending tutorial support emails. It’s important to use the correct format for all your emails to ensure a smooth process.
If you need help or have questions while studying, please follow this tutorial support format. It’s important to use the same format for all your support emails. Create a standard email template to use whenever you need assistance.
Please note: Emails sent to Appleton Greene must follow this format. If not, they may be returned to you by the (CLP) Program Administration Manager. You can expect a detailed response within 20 business days for general queries and 30 business days for project evaluations. This doesn’t include public holidays or weekends. Your requests and replies will be saved in your electronic TSU file for future reference.
Subject Line:
Include “Appleton Greene (CLP) Tutorial Support Request: (Your Full Name) (Date)” in the subject line.
Main Body:
1. State “Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) Tutorial Support Request.”
2. Provide your Full Name.
3. Include the Date of your support request.
4. List your Preferred email address.
5. Provide a Backup email address.
6. Mention the Course manual page name or number (reference).
7. Include the Project study page name or number (reference).
Subject of Enquiry:
Summarize your inquiry in a maximum of 50 words.
Questions:
Ask up to 5 questions, each with a maximum of 50 words. Be concise and clear in your queries.
Remember to stick to this format for all your tutorial support emails. This helps us assist you effectively and keeps a record of your requests for future reference.
Your Effective Tutorial Support Procedure
Here are the steps to follow for effective tutorial support:
1. Prioritize Your Questions: List your questions and arrange them by priority. Reference them to course manuals or project studies if needed.
2. Be Specific and Relevant: Ensure your questions are specific and numbered. Plan the content of your emails to make them relevant.
3. Use Correct Email Format: Follow the provided Tutorial Support Email Format.
4. Save Copies: Save a copy of your email and include the date sent in the subject title. Keep all tutorial support emails in the same file and in date order for easy reference.
5. Allow Time for Response: Give up to 20 business days for general support queries and up to 30 business days for project evaluations. This doesn’t include public holidays or weekends. Responses are given in the order received.
6. Follow Up if Necessary: If you haven’t received a reply within the expected time, forward another copy or a reminder to the tutorial support unit. Emails can get lost due to the volume we receive.
7. Save Replies: Save replies immediately for easy reference. For project studies, keep track of separate emails from the tutorial support unit.
8. Be Positive and Friendly: Remember to maintain a positive and friendly tone in your emails.
9. Avoid Repetition: Try not to repeat questions already asked. The tutorial support unit may refer you to previous answers.
10. Retrieve Lost Records: If you lose your tutorial support email records, contact Appleton Greene for a copy, but note there may be an administration charge.
Follow these steps for effective tutorial support.
How To Study
Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant are here to assist you in creating a task list to kickstart your training journey by planning a task list. This helps you clarify your goals and priorities. Plus, it’s a great opportunity to introduce yourself to the tutorial support team. They’re here to support you every step of the way.
Creating a Supportive Study Environment
Your study environment plays a crucial role in your training program experience. Think about the space you have: Is it comfortable, private, and free from distractions? The tools and facilities you use for studying are also key. Your tutorial support unit can offer helpful advice, no matter where you’re starting from. Getting your study setup right from the beginning is essential for a successful training journey.
Setting Your Program Objectives
Before diving into your training program, it’s crucial to establish a clear list of study objectives that are prioritized according to importance. Your tutorial support unit is here to help you with this process, ensuring that your objectives receive the attention and priority they deserve.
Optimizing Your Study Schedule
As a distance-learner, you have the freedom to study on your terms, at your own pace, and according to your goals. This flexibility allows for efficient studying outside of a traditional classroom setting. However, it’s essential to plan your study schedule well to maximize your strengths and opportunities. Your tutorial support unit is available to provide guidance and helpful tips tailored to your individual strengths.
Organizing Your Study Tasks
It’s important to know which study tasks to focus on along with the priority level of each task, ensuring they align with your program objectives. The distance learning guide and tutorial support guide for students are valuable resources for this. However, if you need further clarification or assistance, don’t hesitate to reach out to your tutorial support unit. They’re here to help.
Managing Your Study Schedule
To stay on track with your program, it’s crucial to schedule dedicated study times in your calendar. Taking responsibility for planning and managing your study time is key to your success. If you’re facing challenges with your schedule, don’t hesitate to reach out to your tutorial support unit for assistance. They’re here to support you every step of the way.
Staying Connected
Consistency is essential in this program. If you communicate irregularly or too frequently in short bursts, it may raise questions about your ability to manage your studies effectively. Your consistency reflects your control over your study plan. Being consistent shows that you’re in control, while inconsistency often leads to incomplete tasks.
Tracking Your Progress
Your tutorial support team is here to assist you in tracking your study progress. Check your distance learning guide for more information.
Making Your Training Program a Success
Your success in the training program depends on your effort and understanding. You’re in control, so make sure you have a plan to succeed. Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can help you plan, develop, and implement your program.
Effective Reading and Note-Taking Techniques
When we each interpret information, everyone does it differently. But we can enhance and measure our interpretation by using consistent methods. Sometimes, outside distractions like family, TV, or the Internet can affect our understanding. Also, other thoughts may take precedence in our minds. To boost productivity, try using the following established and well-recognized reading and note-taking techniques. They help us stay focused and organized when reading important information, rather than reading for leisure.
Speed Reading
When you start reading your course manuals, try setting your reading speed slightly faster than usual. This will prevent you from focusing too much on individual words or tables. With practice, aim to read an A4 sheet of paper in one minute. You won’t grasp every detail, but you’ll get a good overall understanding. This big picture view will help you later when you need to keep things in perspective. Speed reading engages your memory, so don’t focus too intently on what you need to remember just yet.
Content Reading
Now that you’ve done your speed reading, it’s time to employ more focus. Choose a specific section of your course manual and read it carefully. Take detailed notes as you go along. This method, known as Content Reading, will really solidify your understanding of the material.
Creating Structured Notes
During content reading, it’s important to take detailed notes that are well-organized and informative. Use a Microsoft Word document on your computer for this purpose, as it allows you to easily edit and update your notes as needed.
Organize your notes under three main headings:
1. Interpretation: Write down your interpretation of the material to clarify your understanding.
2. Questions: List any questions that arise from the material to address any uncertainties.
3. Tasks: Identify any tasks that you need to undertake based on the material, such as further research or practical applications.
This note-taking method is likely familiar to anyone who has completed a business-related degree.
The Effective Organization of Study Notes
To keep your study notes well-organized and easily accessible, consider transferring them to a separate study notebook. This could be a Microsoft Word Document, an Excel Spreadsheet, an Access Database, or a personal organizer on your cell phone. By doing this, you can cross-check and verify your notes, which helps you a great deal when it comes to understanding and interpretation. The better you become at organizing your notes, the more likely you are to achieve your study objectives.
Question Your Understanding
Challenge your understanding by explaining concepts in your own words through writing.
Clarify Your Understanding
If you’re unsure about anything, reach out to your tutorial support unit for clarification.
Question Your Interpretation
Challenge your interpretation of concepts and qualifications by writing them down.
Clarify Your Interpretation
If you’re unsure about your interpretation, don’t hesitate to email your tutorial support unit for assistance.
Qualification Guidelines for Accredited Communication-Powered Growth Specialist (ACPGS)
To become an Accredited Communication-Powered Growth Specialist (ACPGS), you’ll need to successfully complete the project study and exercises associated with the Communication-Powered Growth corporate training program. Aim for a pass with merit or distinction in each case. Monthly workshops should be implemented and tested within your company. The beauty is, you can undertake these project studies at your own pace, in the comfort of your home or office—no formal exams required.
These project studies go beyond theory; they involve real program processes that demand thorough research and development. By completing these projects, we can gauge your comprehension and application of the training program, allowing us to assess your qualification merits. Project studies are designed to integrate your newfound knowledge into your corporate training practice, providing a practical understanding of the program’s content.
Team Accountability – Grading Contribution
Project Study – Grading Contribution
Human Resources – 10%
Product/Project Management – 10%
Information Technology – 05%
Sales – 10%
Marketing – 10%
Operations – 10%
Finance/Accounting – 05%
Corporate Communications – 10%
E-Business – 10%
Business Development – 10%
Customer Service/Customer Experience – 10%
TOTAL GRADING – 100%
Qualification grades
A mark of 90% = Pass with Distinction.
A mark of 75% = Pass with Merit.
A mark of less than 75% = Fail.
If you fail to achieve a mark of 75% with a project study, you will receive detailed feedback from the Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and/or Accredited Consultant, together with a list of tasks which you will need to complete, in order to ensure that your project study meets with the minimum quality standard that is required by Appleton Greene. You can then re-submit your project study for further evaluation and assessment. Indeed you can re-submit as many drafts of your project studies as you need to, until such a time as they eventually meet with the required standard by Appleton Greene, so you need not worry about this, it is all part of the learning process.
When marking project studies, Appleton Greene is looking for sufficient evidence of the following:
Pass with merit
A satisfactory level of program understanding
A satisfactory level of program interpretation
A satisfactory level of project study content presentation
A satisfactory level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
A satisfactory level of the practical integration of academic theory
Pass with distinction
An exceptional level of program understanding
An exceptional level of program interpretation
An exceptional level of project study content presentation
An exceptional level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
An exceptional level of the practical integration of academic theory
Preliminary Analysis
Reading
Based on what you’ve gone through in the course document, you’ve already seen references to some important reading materials on the different subjects related to communication-powered growth. In this section, you’ll find recommended reading that you can do in the form of books and articles to expand your knowledge and give you more examples of these strategies in practice. The following reading recommendations are categorized by the section in which they appear.
Engaging Curiosity (WDP 2.1)
Books
Eat That Frog!: Get More of the Important Things Done—Today! by Brian Tracy (author, keynote speaker, and human potential enhancement expert).
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear (author).
Outreach & Response (WDP 2.2)
Book
Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things by Adam Grant (author, podcast host, organization psychologist)
Article
“7 Ways to Reduce Customer Service Response Times” by SuperOffice, September 1st, 2023
If you would like to read this article, please visit:
https://www.superoffice.com/blog/response-times/
Purchaser Journey (WDP 2.3)
Book
They Ask You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Consumer by Marcus Sheridan (author, keynote speaker, and inbound content expert).
Digital Resource
Answer the Public
If you would like to use this digital resource, please visit:
Article
“Case Study: Starbucks’ Success Elevating Customer Experience with Customer Journey Mapping” by Carsten Krause, May 9th, 2023
If you would like to read this article, please visit:
Why No? (WDP 2.4)
Article
“New Balance Explains the ‘Secret Sauce’ Behind Its Collabroations Strategy” by Hypebeast, August 26, 2021
If you would like to read this article, please visit:
https://hypebeast.com/2021/8/new-balance-joe-grondin-collaborations
Problem Solving (WDP 2.5)
Article
“How the Founder if IT Cosmetics Went From Being News Anchor to Leading a $1.2 Billion Makeup Company” by Renee Jacques, August 12th, 2016
If you would like to read this article, please visit:
https://www.allure.com/story/it-cosmetics-story-jamie-kern-lima
Video
“Melinda Mae” by Shel Silverstein
If you would like to watch this video, please visit:
Your Person (WDP 2.6)
Article
“5 Mini Case Studies About Understanding and Serving the Customer” by Daniel Burstein for MarketingSherpa, October 6th, 2020.
If you would like to read this article, please visit:
Genial or Introspective (WDP 2.7)
Article
“What Marketers Should Know About Personality-Based Marketing” by Christopher Graves and Sandra Matz, May 2nd, 2018
If you would like to read this article, please visit:
https://hbr.org/2018/05/what-marketers-should-know-about-personality-based-marketing
Interactive or Self-Reliant (WDP 2.8)
Article
“Personality Traits and Behavioral Segmentation” by Fastercaptial, December 12th, 2023
If you would like to read this article, please visit:
https://fastercapital.com/content/Personality-Traits-and-Behavioral-Segmentation.html
Diligent or Disorganized (WDP 2.9)
Article
“Why Visionary Leadership Fails” by Nufer Yasin Ates, Murat Tarakci, Jeanie P. Porck, Daan van Knippenberg, and Patrick Groenen, February 28th, 2019
If you would like to read this article, please visit:
https://hbr.org/2019/02/why-visionary-leadership-fails
Amiable or Self-Concerned (WDP 2.10)
Article
“5 Examples of Brands with Successful Customer-Centre Marketing” by Marketing Evolution, September 26th 2019
If you would like to read this article, please visit:
Nervous or Even-Tempered (WDP 2.11)
Article
“5 Examples of Brands with Successful Customer-Centre Marketing” by Marketing Evolution, September 26th 2019
If you would like to read this article, please visit:
Purchaser Types (WDP 2.12)
Book
Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things by Adam Grant (author, podcast host, organization psychologist)
Article
“Business Marketing: Understand What Customers Value” by James C. Anderson and James A. Narus, November-December issue of HBR 1998
If you would like to read this article, please visit:
https://hbr.org/1998/11/business-marketing-understand-what-customers-value
Course Manuals 1-12
Course Manual 1: Engaging Curiosity
How can we turn curiosity on each time we sit down to think about our unique purchasers?
Earlier in the course, we talked about how important curiosity is when you’re thinking about your unique purchasers and what they need, want, and don’t like. In this course manual, we’re going to think about how to use pointed curiosity to work through the five levels of unique purchaser curiosity so that you can re-engage your curiosity each time a new unique purchaser type presents itself. Or when you want to get in front of a new audience.
This is a vital step when it comes to foundational work as far as your organization’s communication, but it is also important to remember as you grow and scale into the future.
While we will discuss the valuable practice of embracing wonderment later in this course manual, we also need to talk right now about how curiosity can be a practice. A lot of people view curiosity as a naturally occurring thought process, and while the way toddlers ask questions proves this to be true, like any worthwhile endeavor, it can also be extremely intentional.
However, as with all areas in life, intentionality takes practice and is supported by purpose. So, let’s take a look at how we can purposefully be more curious by taking strategic steps.
Thinking about being curious isn’t enough if we want to use this valuable way of looking at the world, and our unique purchasers, into daily practice. This is why it is important to understand why we’re taking action to encourage this inconsistent thought-pattern into a laser-focused skill. When we understand the “why”, our minds are much more likely to engage with whatever skill we’re trying to turn into a habit.
Here are a few reasons why curiosity is an endeavor worth pursuing:
• Purposeful curiosity takes us past the traditional thoughts our competitors have.
• Curiosity encourages us to go into empathy mode, which improves our connections with the people we work with and serve.
• Curiosity opens us up to new ideas without activating the alarms that our brains turn on when we’re trying something different.
• Curiosity makes us better at serving unique purchasers who are generally underserved.
And here are a few ways that you can encourage curiosity to join you as a daily habit:
• Whenever you have a thought that someone should be doing something differently, ask yourself why you think they’re doing it that specific way.
• Spend 10 minutes each workday reading articles that aren’t related to your field and be curious about how the principles or lessons apply to you personally and professionally.
• Decide to focus your energy on getting to know one member of your team better per week and be curious about how they ended up on the team with you and what is going on in their life.
• Select one client or customer per week that many of your team members love working with and be curious about what makes your team prefer to work with them.
• Sit in a chair away from your desk for 10 minutes a day being curious about what is ahead of you.
Engaging curiosity isn’t always as simple as the list above makes it sound. How can you re-engage curiosity each time you switch your focus to a different task? Let’s take a look.
How can we re-engage curiosity each time we switch tasks?
There is already a lot of advice out there about task switching in general because it can feel difficult or tricky for a lot of us. At the same time, it is necessary to be able to switch tasks in the world where we live. In general, a great approach that helps task switching cause less fatigue is to eat the frog.
In his book, Eat That Frog!: Get More of the Important Things Done—Today!, author Brian Tracy advocates that people should do less task switching, but they should also approach their most difficult tasks each day as soon as possible. As an expert on the enhancement of human potential and individual performance, he also advocates for us to do fewer tasks whenever possible.
So, before we set the stage to re-engage your curiosity each time you switch tasks, take a look at the next week and determine which of your tasks can be canceled or delegated. Now, with whatever is left, you can assign each to a related group. Next, determine which of those grouped-task chunks is the most difficult for you to do. That’s your frog. And those should be slotted for the morning hours of your workday throughout the week. Any task group chunks that are simpler or more enjoyable for you should go toward the end of each day during your week.
Now that you’ve adjusted your schedule and batched activities, it’s time to set yourself up for curiosity.
When it comes to starting the most difficult tasks each morning, ask yourself the following questions:
• Why is this difficult for me?
• Is there anything I could do differently that would engage my skills and preferences when it comes to these tasks?
• What can I learn about myself in this situation?
• Is there anything that makes this easier for me such as listening to instrumental music quietly?
The nature of these questions will help you start being curious about yourself and the way that you interact with those tasks. We all must complete tasks that we don’t appreciate in life, but that doesn’t mean we have to ignore our feelings around them. Being curious about ourselves will put us into a no-judgment zone as we examine our difficulties with greater self-compassion.
Even enjoyable tasks can also be switched into without re-engaging curiosity. In fact, it is easier to switch into these tasks which means we do this more on autopilot, which causes us to be less likely to be curious about ourselves, the nature of the task, or the person who will interact with the end result of this task (who is often a unique purchaser).
With that in mind, each time you switch tasks, even if what you’re moving toward is something you like, get in the habit of asking yourself a few of these questions to re-engage curiosity:
• What about this task makes me curious?
• Do I feel creative about any aspect of this task?
• Who is the person that will interact with the result of me doing this task?
• What do they want from me specifically?
• Is there anything I need to do before I get started?
• How can I show up for this task as my best self?
• What do I need to know about performing this task that I don’t already know?
The difficult thing about these questions is that if you ask them in the wrong state of mind, they can cause you to employ more self-judgment. However, if you use the first two questions to re-engage your curiosity before you go through the rest of them, you should be able to use any of the resulting questions to carry that curiosity further.
Knowing which questions to ask and how to ask them makes all the difference. But a lot of us are not in the habit of asking questions or being curious about ourselves or our tasks.
In his book, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, James Clear recommends habit stacking. This is when you take a new habit and attach it to a habit that you already have. Do you go get coffee in the morning? Stack that habit by having a Post-It note with the curiosity questions on it and ask yourself those questions after you pour your coffee but before you go back into your office.
Engaging wonderment, or thinking more deeply about each task and wondering about its potential, will help you learn to be curious about the way your skills and actions inside your organization interact with your unique purchasers. That will create a lasting-transformation as you and your team members embrace this way of thinking.
With a busy schedule, how do you budget time for wonderment?
We all know that there are a finite number of minutes in each day. So, how can we carve out time for wonderment, and why would we want to? The truth is, the more you sit and wonder about your unique purchasers, the more likely they are to feel that you have thought about them when you create products or offers for them.
Wonderment is unique in that it is a state of respect or admiration that is often caused by curiosity. In general, the reason why this is so powerful is because it assumes that your unique purchaser is smart but needs expert help. If you spend time with your team members talking about how unintelligent your customers are or how they should know why your offers are important, you kill all sense of wonderment about them.
Unique purchasers can sense this and it will build up their mistrust.
However, if you really talk about how amazing the people you work with are and why they don’t know that they need your help, you engage curiosity and empathy, and both of those qualities will do a lot to alleviate customer or client mistrust.
So, individually, as a team, or both, actually schedule in wonderment. This means that you have intentional, uninterrupted time to think about what makes your unique purchasers so amazing. In response, you will want to think of ways to help them solve their problems.
You can also use the thoughts you cultivate during scheduled wonderment to think of questions that help both you and your unique purchasers go through a phase of discovery. In this case, the discovery should inspire steps that help your unique purchasers become problem aware, solution aware, and aware of your organization. If you have questions that make purchasers feel supported instead of a script that tells them why what they’ve been doing is wrong, you are going to get an extremely different result. This is also a principle you can use when speaking with a struggling team member. Do they know what the problem is? Help them see it with empathy and compassion. Engage their wonderment in the process to help you both see potential solutions.
Case Study: The US Steel Industry Gets Cooking
Steel is a resource used for many products, whether its use is commercial or industrial. We can look at an ordinary household item, like the stainless-steel pan, and see recent innovations that have been a result of the US Steel Industry’s approach to wonderment.
While steel itself is not a material that maintains or produces the most consistent heat when it is cooked in, it is an extremely durable material.
So, when innovators in the cookware industry decided to take a second look at steel as a material to cook in, they knew they were going to have to change something about the way the pan was created if they wanted to convince unique purchasers that a stainless-steel pan could be used to cook consistently.
The way they were able to rethink the options for this material and this specific use was through wonderment. They knew that it was a durable material that would stand the test of time. They also knew that conductivity wise, it didn’t work as well as consumers would like. So, they started testing different ways of building the pans, including the use of other metals between layers of stainless steel that were known for more consistent conductivity.
Because they knew the strengths and weaknesses of the material they wanted to use, they were able to come up with a process called clad or cladding where they layer the steel with other metals in such a way that delights both home cooks and professional chefs.
Wonderment was at the root of this innovation, which now serves millions of happy stainless-steel pan and pot owners across the globe.
What are the levels of unique purchaser curiosity and how do they work?
Unique purchaser curiosity will help each team member in your organization think more about the holistic picture of the services or products that you offer. But this curiosity will do more than that. It will also help you achieve a type of depth that many of your competitors are willing to invest in. This is a huge advantage.
The best way to achieve this depth is to travel through different levels of curiosity. In each level, there is a different goal which means there will be different, further clarified answers. And this will give your organization the information you need to conduct continued market research. Ultimately, the is goal is to work on creating an exponentially better service or product and, as a result, a similarly magnified future.
Level 1: Thinking about the way you find them.
ABC might as well mean “Always be curious,” especially when it comes to how you’re finding your unique purchasers. You might have a proven method, but even if you do, you should be curious about whether there are other ways to expand your approach: This will allow you to find more, or higher quality, unique purchasers.
Is your organization open to trying non-traditional methods of outreach? Why or why not? What is possible if you expand your options and get curious about where groups of underserved unique purchasers are?
Level 2: Thinking about the way they find you.
While it is virtually impossible to control the path a unique purchaser follows in our day and age (just think about how many options there are on a single company website), we can still think about the ways people find us. If your organization hasn’t already thought about where your unique purchasers are spending time, it is a great exercise to have your sales or marketing department do a bit of research. They can ask your favorite unique purchasers what activities matter most to them and how they invest their time.
Bonus: This is also a great way to find talent. Ask your best-performing team members where they spend their time and how they found out about your organization.
Level 3: Exploring why they say “No.”
Although some don’t prefer to find out why a potential unique purchaser declined their product or service, this is extremely useful information. Be actively curious about why your offer wasn’t a fit for them. While there will be reasons that are out of your organization’s control, there will also be things you can adjust if that particular type of unique purchaser feels like they would be amazing to work with.
Level 4: Discovering the problems they have.
If you aren’t curious about the problems your unique purchasers have, you will fall short of growth goals and miss moments for expansion in your industry’s market. The reason businesses exist in the first place is to solve problems.
Organizations that are growing are often curious about how the problems they solve will create a new problem in the lives of their unique purchasers. We know that when we help them with one thing, other, new issues that need solving will pop up as a natural result.
Level 5: Thinking about their personality traits and purchasing types.
Over the next eleven course manuals, we are going to talk in-depth about personality traits and how to determine which ones make more sense for the offers that your organization presents. For now, though, it is helpful to start getting curious about why the people your team members love working with are the ones they’re excited to hear from. It is also useful to think about which people have personality traits that seem to help them get the best results from using your products or services.
When your team is willing to work through these distinct five levels of curiosity, they will be able to pinpoint greater potential for your organization. They will also get used to doing deep work, which often yields the best results for the amount of effort put into the related task.
How can I leverage my natural, self-focused thoughts to be more curious about myself, my personality, and how that interacts with my organization and the people who hire or purchase from my organization?
This is an amazing question. Let’s go ahead and break it down by topic covered.
How can I leverage my natural, self-focused thoughts to be more curious about…
Myself?
Do I often think about why I make the choices I make or have the preferences I have? This is deep, root level work.
My personality?
Am I thinking about the way I act and the reason I behave specific ways in different circumstances? Wondering about this will allow me to be curious without employing self-judgment.
My organization and unique purchasers?
How do the choices and personality-based behaviors I exhibit shape the way I interact with my organization and the unique purchasers I serve? Being curious about this answer will reveal adjustments that can be made, while cementing behaviors and choices that shouldn’t be adjusted.
Exercise 2.1
Course Manual 2: Outreach & Response
A huge part of dispelling client and consumer mistrust is communicating with them in the places they feel most comfortable, and then replying in a timely manner once they respond.
Or, if someone has reached out to you, a timely response is just as important.
Because we’re talking about communication and how it shapes the growth of your organization, both inside and outside of your company, in this course manual, we’re going to take a look at the value of outreach and response. First, let’s re-engage our curiosity.
How can curiosity help with communication when you don’t know someone?
Curiosity can only continue to be a professional superpower as long as we turn it on each time we think about our unique purchasers. In this case, a reminder that we’re essentially going to communicate with strangers is a good one. Why? When we don’t know someone, there is a huge cavern of information waiting to be unearthed, and curiosity is the industrial drill that can get that job done.
This is a bit tricky, though, because when it comes to communicating with unique purchasers, we want to use targeted curiosity. Do we care that they have a pet guinea pig? Maybe. But probably only if we’re selling pet products or services.
So, before you start outreach, it’s important to understand which questions will give us the information we need to better understand the unique purchasers we hope to serve.
Here are a few to think through:
• What problems do we solve that I can ask a potential client or customer about?
• What pain are they experiencing right now that is related to what we provide?
• Do they know who we are? If not, what places can we show up in to help them know we’re here to address their problems?
• Am I coming into the interaction with an open mind and curiosity about the solutions they really need, or am I going to try to sell them a solution we came up with in isolation that might not even be a good fit?
If you dove into the five dimensions of curiosity deep enough in the previous text, you should have a better idea of potential solutions to the problems your unique purchasers really have. But there’s an extra step here because it is vital to be open to hearing about different approaches to solving the problems they have. This is different than trying to solve the problems you theorize they have. The only way to discover the difference is to actually talk to people who could be your unique purchasers.
Because of this, the first goal of outreach is usually research. Once you finish this section of the workshop, you’ll have all of the information you need to determine the psychographics of the unique purchasers you need to have research conversations with. For now, though, we’re going to assume you have already done some or quite a bit of research, and we’re going to dive into outreach that aims to find more unique purchasers who will invest in working with your organization.
Who on your team loves outreach?
Every team has individuals on it that have strengths and weaknesses. We shouldn’t assume that we should only give tasks to team members who love the task itself, because then we would be limited when it comes to perspective. However, the person heading up your outreach should absolutely love it.
The specific qualities that matter in an outreach leader might surprise you. Let’s take a look.
• They care about helping others.
• They can read people.
• They often forge a connection with others quickly.
• They possess a deep understanding of your products or services and can explain related concepts clearly and simply. And, they know how these products or services will benefit the person they’re talking to.
Here’s the surprise:
They do not need to be extroverted. Some of the world’s most influential business leaders are introverted. However, their passion for helping others and providing innovative solutions often keeps them from isolating themselves from unique purchasers in one of the departments that focuses less on outreach.
If you are able to put together an outreach team, it is often extremely valuable to pair an introvert with an extrovert because they will each notice different qualities about your unique purchasers. Introverts are often good at listening and are more introspective, but this also means they will understand when their team member’s approach is too direct or boisterous for a unique purchaser who is introverted.
We need all sorts of people on each team in every department. This creates unique opportunities for growth that are powered by alternative perspectives being clearly and confidently communicated.
What if more introverted team members don’t feel they can contribute to outreach?
While extroverts will often be more naturally inclined to outreach because being around others seems to charge them up, introverts are sometimes less inclined because being around others seems to drain them.
One way to help the introverts on your team feel valued during outreach assignments is to remind them that they offer unique perspectives and will be able to help others better when they point out this perspective-based information to their team members. A group effort will produce the best results for your clients or customers.
It is also helpful to remind them that your organization will be serving introverts, extroverts, and ambiverts, so having these three types of people doing outreach on behalf of your team will create exponential benefits. Just make sure that your organization provides a supportive environment for outreach.
There is a common misconception that supportive means comfortable, but that isn’t true. In his book Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, Adam Grant talks about how a scaffolding approach allows team members to approach various leaders instead of just their direct supervisor when they have an idea. This led a materials science company (W. L. Gore & Associates Inc.) to invent a long-lasting guitar string that went on to be a huge hit in the music space.
A supportive environment is one that creates a scaffolding around team members who are actively engaging in discomfort in the name of both personal and professional growth.
What diverse methods are you using for outreach?
This is about the time in the training where we reference the popular saying about not putting all one’s eggs in one basket. Although, if you’re collecting eggs, it’s doubtful that you would do anything else. Storing all one’s eggs in one basket, well, that is another thing entirely.
When it comes to your outreach, you don’t want to rely solely on one source. There has been a lot of debate about this with TikTok because it can be a great marketplace for products due to the visual nature of some products and how they appear on video—add that to an already-present audience. The reason that TikTok is such a stark example is because they can remove an account for a long laundry-list of reasons, and don’t have to respond when an organization appeals to have their account reinstated.
This is why it is important to use varying strategies for outreach. While it is valuable for every organization to have first-party data (which is data you own directly), the business world has also seen significant impact from second- and third-party data, which, in the professional world we often refer to as other people’s audiences.
If you are using an outside firm to connect you with unique purchasers for the purpose of outreach, it is extremely important that such a firm understands your touchstone principles, the benefits of your offer, and who your offer best serves.
Unfortunately, some firms are interested in making high profits for doing little work and they will connect you with anyone who is willing to connect. These are not vetted or qualified connections and should not be used for research or outreach because, most of the time, these types of connections will waste the time of your team members. Time is our only non-renewable resource.
Whether your organization is outsourcing outreach or you have an interior team who does your outreach, they need to be able to find out the following things about the unique purchasers before someone on your team reaches out to connect:
• Does this unique purchaser seem to fit within the values system we’ve established for finding high quality leads?
• If the unique purchaser wants to make a purchase with us, do they have the resources to do so?
• Are they looking for help with the solutions we provide in a timely manner?
While it is impossible to be sure that person has the values, resources, and time availability to work with your organization, it is vital to at least try to determine whether this is the case. Otherwise, your team will be talking to unqualified leads all day and that will bring the entire team down. Plus, you’ll be wasting a lot of your organization’s money to invest time in people that have no plan to purchase.
Even if you’re in the research phase, you must be speaking to people who actually have the potential to be a purchaser, or the data you gather won’t be reflective of what you need to know.
What new ways of outreach does your team want to spend time being curious about?
As your organization grows and scales, your team will need to be curious about different types of outreach so that you can reach people you might not reach using whatever strategies or places you’re using now.
Plus, at some point, you might decide to shift to outreach that focuses on the unique purchasers you’ve identified as high-quality clients or customers, which means you’ll need to shift the way you do outreach to find them.
Many traditional methods of outreach disappeared for a period during the global COVID pandemic, and there were people in every industry who said, “This will never be the same again.” However, we have seen that, in general, people are excited to travel again and that conferences and trade shows have come back and are steadily increasing in demand.
While the pandemic did transform some of the ways we do business, we are seeing that a solely digital approach to outreach isn’t the same as in-person connecting or networking.
What do your responses look like as an organization?
When you have clear methods of outreach in place (hopefully varied methods), the most important piece isn’t actually the outreach itself. It’s the follow-up. When you use clear communication that helps you grab the attention of your unique purchasers, glue them to your organization through connection, and give them what they need to take action by communicating back with you, the worst thing you can do is miss the final step: you must provide a way for your relationship to grow beyond.
It is vital for you to respond in an appropriate way to their communication as well—and as quickly as possible.
Why? Because only if you do this last step well will you be able to actually get them the results they’re looking for. And, if you don’t respond well with speed, you won’t get the result your organization is looking for: more repeat and referred unique purchasers who are adding to your profit margins.
Because this is such an important thing to get right, here is a short SOP that will help your team adjust or implement quick, high-quality responses to anyone who reaches out to find out more about your products or services.
• Have a list of all your communication channels and allocate each one to an individual or a small team to monitor.
• Create a communication policy that lets your clients know when they can expect to hear back from you. This includes your working hours, an estimate of when you will get back to them (try to keep this under 3 business days if possible), and where they should look for a response (is it an email or a message in the platform where they reached out?).
• Have a plan of how to add team members to the response team if you suddenly have a jump in inquiries.
• Have an organizational document that contains swipe files that can be customized depending on the different inquiries to save time. These files should use language that reflects the values and touchstone principles that you agreed upon earlier.
• As you build responses to inquiries, build a robust help center or Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page on your website for people to use if they are waiting on a human response.
• Avoid using only AI to deal with these kinds of requests. When consumers cannot get in touch with a human at all, this contributes to client mistrust.*
• Establish the use of a CRM or other system to keep track of who has been responded to.
It has often been said that the best defense is a good offense, and when it comes to responding to unique purchasers, that is definitely the case. Make sure that you have a plan to consistently follow-up with people who have taken the time to communicate with you. You won’t be sorry.
*While we understand that AI-powered help centers are more cost effective than using human employees, it is still worth having people on your team to respond to any unique-purchaser-initiated communication. Even if you have AI as a first response, there should be a way for people to interact with a team member if the unique purchaser doesn’t find that satisfactory. It is our strong belief that as AI response bots become more and more popular, that offering human interaction will be one of the things that differentiates organizations as being more caring and responsive than their competitors.
What kind of response-time fits your unique purchaser?
The speed of travel, information acquisition, and purchasing power has changed many societies to prefer instant gratification. With that in mind, it is important to think about your unique purchasers and what they find reasonable as far as a response time.
Because instant gratification seems to be in high demand, even when organizations respond to an inquiry with an estimate of when a response should come through, they will often also point to an FAQs page or help portal in the meantime.
While unique purchasers don’t generally expect your FAQs page or support portal to hold all the answers to their questions, they at least like to be able to look to see if something helpful is there.
Case Study: SuperOffice Brings the Facts
SuperOffice is a business that uses a CRM platform to help their clients keep track of unique purchaser interaction, and in order to show why most organizations need to use a CRM platform, they worked together with author, trainer, and speaker Jeff Toister to analyze data to determine exactly how much the speed or response impacts revenue.
They surveyed more than 500,000 interactions and found that clients are more likely to
make larger purchases from companies that answer their inquiries promptly. In other words, quick responses bring in more money.
While the numbers in the study show a clear correlation between speed of response and increased revenue, SuperOffice theorizes that when you respond to a communication quickly, you’re meeting customer expectations. Otherwise, if someone feels that you have taken too long to communicate, they either choose not to do business with you or stop doing business with you.
When the CMO Council did a study to find out what was important to a customer’s experience, those surveyed responded that fast response times were the most important 75% of the time, beating out consistency across multiple platforms, having a knowledgeable staff, clear consistent messaging, and several other options. You can see here that if you have all of the communication pieces you’re building in this course, but you don’t use them in conjunction with fast response times, you will miss out on opportunities to serve unique purchasers who otherwise would have been extremely satisfied by your services or products.
Does this communication fit your unique purchaser’s preference?
Depending on the expenses related to your offer, you might not want to use email or a portal response to follow-up with the unique purchaser who has reached out. This is especially true with any high-ticket offer, as live communication is often the only thing that will give you an opportunity to really work through the significant sales psychology steps required to address their concerns and make a sale.
Your client or customer support team can often be just as important in securing sales as your actual sales team. While sales teams have specific and measurable objectives, don’t neglect to give your support team the information they need to promote your services or products.
Often, before someone feels comfortable making a purchase, they want to know that there will be someone there for them to talk to before they’ve made that decision, and that’s where your support team comes in.
How can you make sure that both outreach and response are a cohesive experience for your unique purchaser?
While SOPs are definitely a great help, the only way to be sure that your unique purchaser was satisfied with your outreach and response is to ask them. This is why many organizations employ survey services to follow up with clients after communication has happened.
When you talk to people to find out how they felt about your communication, your team can collect that information and adjust as necessary.
Exercise 2.2: Response Time Expectations
Course Manual 3: Purchaser Journey
In this section of the workshop, we are going to get curious about how the person who reaches out directly to your organization—without any initiated contact on your part—finds you in the first place.
A need for purchase-related information has arisen in all of us at various times. We know that we need some sort of product, program, or expert to help us. So, what do we do? We might reach out to a friend who we know understands the related field.
For example, if you’re planning on getting a puppy, you might text a friend who got a puppy the previous year. They will probably have updated information on all of the things you need, including a puppy pen, puppy potty training supplies, and an amazing dog training they can recommend. Or, if it’s early in the morning and you want to know more about your puppy planning but your friend isn’t awake yet, you probably turn to your favorite search engine and type in something like “What I need to know about getting a puppy.”
Even though your organization isn’t dealing specifically with helping a new pet owner raise and train their puppy, you want to be sure that when a unique purchaser needs your help, they can find you. Whether you’re using the power of the almighty personal referral or a concentrated search-engine ad that helps your audience understand what you do when they type in specific keywords, you need to be curious about your purchaser’s journey.
How is it that they go from having a specific problem or need to showing up at your physical or digital door?
What steps do they go through to build know, like, and trust with your organization before they send out that first email or message?
Are there videos they can access? Do they have to slog through a bunch of industry jargon on your website (we have discussed this before, but it’s great to bring it up again here because the purchaser journey is one of the reasons why we are so adamant that you use clear, concise, consistent, and correct communication).
These are all important questions to consider, and since the purchaser journey can take an unlimited amount of twists and turns depending on the process you have set up, along with the preferences of each unique purchaser, we need to dive into the specific what ifs of your organization’s version of a choose-your-own-adventure novel. Let’s do this.
How is the person who reaches out finding you?
This question is so vital that each quarter, you need to have your team determine where people who reach out directly are finding you. Because this can change over time, it is important to make sure that you are building up resources that can be easily searched and delivered in the type of media that your unique purchaser wants to interact with.
And this isn’t just something that the marketing team needs to understand and address. Every person on your team, especially those in management, should have an understanding of how different purchaser journeys work within your organization—all so that they can properly support team members who are building content with the information your unique purchasers most care about.
The point is to leverage the power of communication to grow, and the purchaser journey has a huge part in that process.
Earlier, in a different workshop, we talked about how important it is to stay consistent throughout all of your content across all platforms. In the case of the purchaser journey, we also need to consider the application of consistency to content as it is created over days, weeks, months, and years. In his book They Ask You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Consumer, Marcus Sheridan explains that one of the best things your team can do is create consistent content that answers the questions that arise during your purchaser’s journey. Then, he recommends doing consistent and updated research to find out what new questions come up so that you can answer those as well.
This is how Sheridan helps organizations build enough high-quality information over time to give their unique purchasers a journey that often results in contact that is initiated by the purchaser directly to his marketing clients.
Though the purchaser knows they have questions about their problems and their specific needs, they might be confused about what their problem actually is. This is why your team needs to research to understand what questions they have about the pain they are feeling and answer them. We can always lead them to seeing the real problem by first addressing what they think is the problem, but only if we have done the research to understand what they think their problem is to start with.
A great way to see what questions people are asking in various search engines about your product or service is by using the service Answer the Public, which can be found at answerthepublic.com. While this is a paid service, they offer several free searches per day so that potential clients can test out their product. It is best to put only one or two words into the search.
For example, if you are selling puppy products, you might search “puppy” and see what questions come up. One of the most asked questions is “Where puppy should sleep at night?” If a team selling puppy products can answer that question, they will have created useful information for their unique purchasers to digest.
If your content team can answer those questions using clear, concise, consistent, and correct language, you will be far ahead of your competitors when it comes to meeting unique purchasers on a customer journey where they’re already looking for solutions to their problems.
Can we be certain that we can actually shape a purchaser’s journey?
The reason why sales funnels have gained the attention and traction they have in the marketplace is because they are amazing at shaping the way that each and every purchaser has to travel through a journey. Copywriters who are amazing at writing long-form sales pages for these types of funnels know how to work the different steps of sales psychology into this extremely controllable journey. They also know how to drop strategic copy into the proper parts of the sales page for different purchasing types (which we will cover in a later course manual in this workshop).
However, many purchasers have experienced what we’re going to call sales funnel fatigue. They are tired of long-form sales pages. So, even in the case of an extremely controllable purchaser journey, you can’t be certain that you can control how they maneuver through your content because many of them are now weary to begin. They don’t hit “play” on the video sales letter that’s above the fold (at the top of the page). Then, they refuse to read through the giant chunks of text to get the sales psychology they need to make a decision.
These shifts lead to an important question, “Can we be certain that we can actually shape a purchaser’s journey?”
The answer is not one that marketing firms and consultants like to admit because their honest response would be “Probably not.” Even if you have a visual product that would do well on a video platform, you can’t control when and how people see you. If you find the perfect influencer to promote your brand, even influencers don’t control the way their audience interacts with the information they’re bringing to them about your organization.
In today’s age of digital options, we can’t be sure exactly what path our unique purchasers will take. The best example of this is a website. While you can try to limit the number of pages you have on your website so that your purchaser’s journey has limited options, you still can’t control which page they visit first.
Most people will enter through your homepage, but there isn’t one way for them to interact with your information after that. This is how leads who aren’t informed or qualified end up reaching out. They go to your home page, they don’t want to read through articles or watch videos, and they reach out to your team to do the educating for them.
In order to save your team both time and energy, it is wonderful to have your them up resources over time that answer the questions you see most often, so all they have to do is copy and paste a link that takes the purchaser to a specific site instead of making them fish through your Frequently Asked Questions page.
The simple truth is, you can’t control the purchaser’s journey, as it is often led by them and the preferences they have. But you can start to build a collection of responses to help them get the information they need when they need it. And in the world of content creation, publishing this type of data will also help you appeal to the search-engine robots.
However, there is always room to improve the purchaser’s journey based on the feedback you get. Let’s take a look at how Starbucks was able to gather and address friction in their own purchasers’ journeys.
Case Study: Starbucks Asks Questions Instead of Just Taking Names
In an effort to better understand the pain points and friction that their unique purchasers were experiencing, Starbucks decided to employ journey maps to get more focused information. Their main goal was to find out what main touchpoint their unique purchasers wanted while alleviating any pain those same unique purchasers didn’t want.
In order to gather this data, they used surveys, interviews, transactional information, and real-life observation in some of their stores.
Based on a more detailed look at their purchasers’ journeys, they found that there were areas they could improve along the journey, such as long wait times, a lack of understanding related to their rewards program that needed fewer touchpoints and explanations, and a lack of consistency—meaning that when a drink from the menu was ordered in various locations, it didn’t always taste the same.
Remember that long wait times in line can occur in two places, before they purchaser and while they’re waiting to pick up. Long wait times before purchases could cause the unique purchaser to give up their intent to purchase and walk away with their money still in hand.
With this list of areas where there were purchaser-journey breakdowns, Starbucks was able to adjust and use its app to improve the order process and reduce wait times. They also made changes in the app so that the rewards program was easier to understand. Finally, they invested more in training across all locations to improve the consistency of the end product, making the taste of the same drink across different locations more similar.
Imagine what changes your organization could make if you were able to identify similar bumpy areas in your purchaser’s journey.
Are there any additional ways we can encourage unique purchasers to reach out to us directly?
Not every organization has the problem of too many unique purchasers flooding their company inboxes. If you notice that there aren’t as many points of connection as you were hoping for from your purchasers directly, it’s time to get curious.
Think through the following questions to help you find opportunities to encourage direct communication.
• Where are our unique purchasers investing time that we could do strategic, direct outreach?
• Is there a member of our team who loves to network and could build possibilities for direct outreach from people who are already in contact with our unique purchasers? What specific time investment are we willing to have them make? What results would we hope to see within three months?
• Is there something of value that we could provide to our unique purchasers outside of a traditional lead magnet? Where can we show up in person or digitally to give this to them?
• If we need support creating high value for those who need our help most in a complementary way, whose help can we enlist?
• What can we do to encourage direct outreach from unique purchasers—those who need our help and have the resources to enlist them—that is different from what our competitors are doing?
And for each idea you begin to develop, make sure to also answer this question so that you understand which options best fit your organization’s touchstone principles:
• What would it look like to follow up with a direct response so that we have a higher likelihood of making a sale and better helping that person?
The great thing about being curious when it comes to getting direct outreach from your unique purchaser is that you can always make adjustments, or pause your efforts temporarily when you’re busy fulfilling orders for products or services.
As you invest in these activities over time, you will see which ones work better not just for your unique purchasers, but also your team members.
How can we use first-party data to encourage this type of interaction?
When we own the direct data that allows us to reach out to the unique purchaser without the use of a platform or other go-between, we can use email or direct mail to encourage them to contact us using different methods.
While many business advisors or gurus have said that both email and direct mail are outdated ways of reaching unique purchasers, we know that direct communication will never go out of style.
It is true that unique purchasers are more careful about which direct communications they will respond to, but your organization has put in the hard work to be both clear and consistent in its communication through this workshop. This gives you a natural advantage over your competitors or even non-competitors when it comes to getting information in front of people that they are willing to respond to.
Plus, outsourcing research to increase your number of qualified leads has also become much more cost-efficient in the digital age. While it is not recommended for you to purchase low-cost, bulk lists from vendors, you can employ small research teams who specialize in finding people who both need your help and can afford your prices. If you’re in the market for this kind of contracted team, the best way to find one is to ask your friends from other organizations who they are using to increase their first-party database information.
Since these firms are contracted and not usually organization-specific, many of your colleagues from other companies may be willing to refer them to you without any complaints.
How can we use second- and third-party data to create engagement?
While we all prefer to own our leads through the creation of first-party data lists, there is something to be said for renting another person’s audience. When your team is using other platforms or creating collaborations with other related companies based on complementary services, it is important for them to have some sort of baseline for the results they’re expecting to see.
Many organizations have gotten caught up in the excitement of what could happen as a result of utilizing second- and third-party data only to feel regret later when inflated budgets fail to result in high-quality interactions with unique purchasers.
This is where the world of direct outreach meets the world of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). While it can feel intimidating to set pen to paper (or type in a word processing document) when it comes to establishing clear results that you want to see based on your efforts, it doesn’t have to be.
Here are a few important goals to remember before you decide which KPIs to enlist in your data-collecting adventure:
• How will this collaboration or strategy push us out of our comfort zone to achieve goals we haven’t ever set before?
• How long are we willing to invest in this collaboration or strategy to see if it will deliver what we’re hoping?
• What markets are most important to us when it comes to results? Financial? Quality of clients or customers? The types of results we’re able to get for unique purchasers? Team satisfaction?
In order for real growth to occur in any area of your organization, there has to be a level of discomfort that your team is willing to engage in.
When it comes to setting your KPIs, we recommend including what level of discomfort you are hoping to achieve, and reminding your team during analysis meetings that if they are not reaching this level of discomfort, they might need to adjust how curious and creative their approaches are. Often, the more creative and curious your team is, the more outside of their comfort zones they will travel.
There is a unique danger when it comes to establishing new goals for the use of second- and third-party data: the recent trend.
While using trending content isn’t a bad idea in general, chasing trends for views is not necessarily going to improve any of the KPIs that your team sets. Make sure that you are measuring real results instead of views, likes, and clicks, and your team will be able to stay on track.
Exercise 2.3
Course Manual 4: Why No?
In this section of the workshop, we are going to be curious about the different reasons that unique purchasers say “No.” When we can use the feedback our team is getting to make adjustments to the processes both inside and outside of our organization, we are better able to focus on serving our unique purchasers.
However, there are also reasons why we wouldn’t want to try to change a “no” into a “yes,” and we will go over those instances in this course manual as well.
What are the main reasons that unique purchasers say no?
There are certain conditions that will get an automatic no from unique purchasers based on several different things. Let’s examine those conditions and how they influence purchasing decisions.
• They don’t make a connection between what you have to offer and what will really help them.
This is one of the biggest obstacles that any organization can face. If someone doesn’t understand the value of your offer, then they won’t want to purchase it. You won’t be able to get any of the purchasing types on board if they don’t see a clear path between the pain they are currently feeling, the way your offer helps alleviate that pain, and the hope your offer can give them about avoiding experiencing this type of pain again in the future. We’ve already discussed benefit-focused language, but this concept extends one step further.
In order to think with more depth about the pain your unique purchaser is in and the value your organization brings, a comprehensive process is to sit down with your team and be curious about several different mile markers. You want to plot a course along on the path from where your unique purchasers are now and where they can go with your organization’s help. It is up to you not only to discover these mile markers, but to create a clear path for your unique purchasers to work through them.
Important sidenote: This is also true in your organization. When you have a new team member, they need mile markers along a clear path to training. Even if they have the skills they need to accomplish the tasks in the job description you’ve provided for them, every organization is at least a little bit different. While it is important to find team members who take initiative, no one can intuitively understand a process they haven’t been walked through by someone who already understands and can break down that process.
• Your company’s offers don’t match their preferences.
We’ve already discussed values a lot up to this point, and we’re going to get further into personality-trait scales as we work through this manual. However, it is helpful to take a step back and think about the big picture. With generational wealth changing hands, it will help us to think about the shift in unique purchaser preferences. If we cannot attract people who have money, in this case we’re specifically talking about younger generations, then we cannot make sales or increase revenue. Many of their purchasing decisions are shaped by the values of the organization itself and the kinds of contributions it makes to a greater community or the environment.
Taking a big-picture glance at your organization’s values in connection with the values of your unique purchaser will help you understand whether you’re standing out as a value-match, or blending into the crowd of your competition. Think about the indicators you are giving off with your brand voice, brand colors and overall aesthetic, the content you’re putting out, etc.
Case Study: New Balance Revamps Grandpa Shoes
We’ve already mentioned in a previous case study that New Balance was able to increase their annual revenue by embracing the fact that their shoes last—a really long time. But it wasn’t until they looked at the psychographics of the true fan, the collectors of their shoes, that saw a unique opportunity.
By creating collectible shoes in limited-edition runs that had their high-quality approach mixed with fun, vibrant colors and collaborations with popular artists and creators they were able to engage more fully with the people who already enjoyed their product. This helped them secure more purchases from people who had previously only bought one or two pairs of their shoes ever couple of years.
The fact that New Balance’s shoes last so long appeals to their unique purchasers in various ways. Long-lasting wearable items are better for the environment because replacing them often causes pollution in sourcing materials, manufacturing, and disposal of the product after its use.
They didn’t change who they were by making cheaper shoes that needed to be replaced more frequently. Instead, they created a way to offer their true believers more options and added a collectability feature based on what the market was already demanding from their specific type of goods.
New Balance looked at the preferences of their unique purchasers and gave them more of what they wanted, but by using what they knew their unique purchasers already liked and making preference adjustments from there. What areas of growth would be available to your organization in your market if you gave your unique purchasers more of what they wanted in a way that matched the preferences you aren’t currently addressing?
• They honestly can’t afford your prices.
When a unique purchaser understands that they are in pain and that you can help them alleviate that pain—both now and in the future—they will want to work with you. However, if they don’t have the resources to purchase your product or your services, they are going to feel frustrated and disappointed. These feelings will also be present in your team when they invest a lot of time and resources in trying to secure a unique purchaser who doesn’t have the money to actually make a purchase. This is why it is vital to have conversations about prices as soon as possible in the purchaser journey.
While one popular way to approach pricing in the business world is to keep the price from the unique purchaser as long as possible. Why? To try to work through as much sales psychology as they can before the purchaser gets to see a price. The truth is, this tactic often backfires.
And in a world where purchasers control their own journeys due to the unprecedented access to information in our present age, they will be able to find a price if they really want to, even if you try to safeguard that information. So, why not give it to them sooner?
Making your prices available when you can will help your team avoid spending countless hours with unique purchasers who can’t really send that deposit or make that payment at the end of the day.
And if they still want to purchase after they hear a price that doesn’t reflect the current numbers in their bank account, many of them will be thankful for the upfront information because they will often create a plan to save or to get the money.
While not all organizations can give pricing in early phases due to customization options, you can always say something simple like, “Prices starting at…” and go from there. This will help you discover who honestly can’t afford your prices faster—to the benefit of everyone involved.
• It seems like they have plenty of time to make the changes your offer proposes.
One of the most powerful selling tools is scarcity. If your offer feels like it will be there forever, people are less likely to take action to purchase your product or services. This is why those selling products offer discounted prices. The discount itself introduces scarcity by saying “Yes, you can get this product any time, but you can only get it at this price for a limited time.”
Another way to introduce scarcity is to help them understand that by not taking action sooner, they will experience significant opportunity costs. While many would say this has to do with the way humans crave instant gratification, assigning actual opportunity costs to your unique purchaser as a result of not taking decisive action goes a step further. This often introduces a level of wanting that is higher than the wanting they experienced before.
A great example of how this can be an extremely effective way to wiggle away from a “no” is the world of safety products. These products are preventative, but the way they sell them is to remind you that if you wait until some aspect of your safety—or the safety of someone you love—is a problem, you will have waited too long. What good will a fire-extinguishing blanket do you if you purchase it after a fire has happened?
If unique purchasers feel that your offer will wait for them to be ready, this may trigger an automatic “no” from them even thought they could see immediate benefits from your product or services.
Because this is a significant factor in the mind of a unique purchaser when they make a decision, it is important to sit down as a team and think about the related “no” that can pop up due to a lack of scarcity, and make a plan to address it. This is what New Balance did when they created limited runs of collectable, long-lasting tennis shoes. And your organization will be able to come up with some equivalent.
• So far, they haven’t consumed enough consistent information for your organization to earn their trust.
When people don’t feel like they know your organization well enough to make a purchase, this will register as an automatic “no,” but also might be a simple “not yet.” The best way to deal with this type of “no” is to make sure that you have plenty of content for them to consume across multiple platforms.
By multiple platforms, we don’t mean that your organization needs to be active and present on every platform. A great strategy, though, is to repurpose content across the platforms where you know your unique purchasers are engaging with content.
Your team can also create articles and videos for your website and then add those videos to YouTube, which isn’t really a social platform, but a sophisticated search engine.
While there really isn’t a number that tips the scale to the side of “too much” information for a unique purchaser, there can definitely be “too little” for them to engage with, which is why it is best for your team to continually create content while using your messaging breakdown (or other messaging and value documents) to make sure your brand voice stays consistent.
What questions will help us get curious about whether any of the automatic “no” conditions exist for our unique purchasers?
Part of the process for determining where an automatic “no” might pop up is being open to asking new questions. It also helps to get curious about how the answers to questions that were previously asked have changed.
This kind of activity can sometimes cause team members to feel a bit defensive, because they are often working hard behind-the-scenes to answer these questions every day. Reminding everyone to engage their curiosity before going through these questions will help your team remember that their previous work isn’t being questioned, but that your team is working toward being open to the changing world around you and the complex humans who make up your unique purchasers, as they are also constantly changing.
Based on the five reasons a unique purchasers might say no, here are questions that can guide your team during this important discussion:
• Thinking through the lens of the unique purchasers we’ve loved working with in the past and present, have we noticed that some of the people who have fit into this category decided not to purchase with us even though we knew we could help them?
• Have we recently heard from any unique purchasers that they were wanting to choose our organization to help them, but eventually went with another organization? How can we create an opportunity with them to follow-up and find out why?
• Are we making sure that we are stating our prices, or estimated prices, for people as early in our sales process as possible? Do we have compelling reasons ready to go for our prices? Do we have a way to tell if someone isn’t able to afford to work with us in a way that doesn’t embarrass them?
• Is there a compelling reason for scarcity that we can introduce if we don’t already have one? How are we going to make sure that the scarcity we’re introducing is real (and not just a gimmick we repeat that will offend unique purchasers)? Why do unique purchasers need to act with us now? What opportunity costs are they paying if they wait to purchase?
• Are we making sure that our content increases with consistency over time and that we’re repurposing across multiple platforms? If not, how can we turn this into a fun activity to our team? Can we gamify content creation?
You can come back to these questions at any time. Be sure to look at them through the lens of curiosity so that you can find fresh answers.
When should we resist trying to get unique purchasers to say “yes” instead of “no”?
There are a few areas where we wouldn’t want to try to change a “no” into a “yes.” The most obvious one usually has to do with price. While you might want to adjust prices to seem more competitive or to get more clients, you also don’t want your organization to get into a race to the bottom.
A race to the bottom happens when competitors start reducing their pricing to try to get clients to decide to use them based on price alone. This is especially dangerous when you have any sort of team, because when you lower your prices without increasing efficiency, you are creating a hostile situation that leads to burnout for you and your team members.
The only situation that merits reducing pricing for a predetermined amount of time is if you are in a testing phase and you don’t yet have consistent results.
It is also vital to avoid trying to shift someone to giving your team a “yes” if it means that to get that “yes,” you must compromise your touchstone principles. Any time someone wants your organization to sacrifice the standards set forth in any of your touchstone principles, they are not a good fit. Accept their “no” and move on as quickly as possible—yes, even if the offer they are making you is monstrous.
The next thing to consider is when a “no” is happening. If you can determine when they are happening, you will also be able to point to extra purchasing-decision information that goes past the most obvious reasons.
Timing is an aspect that not every organization will consider, but it can communicate a lot about your purchaser journey and where adjustments can be made. Yes, we’re interested in how adjustments can be made, but when is just as important.
By thinking about when you see a majority of “no” moments happening, you can determine which step of your purchaser journey to adjust. Are they saying no right before it comes time to sign on the dotted line? You probably haven’t given them enough information about how you can help them avoid the pain they’re experiencing now in the future. Maybe you haven’t offered them enough content to digest so that they feel confident in their decision.
As a team, if you notice a trend where you see a lot of “no” at one point in your sales process, it’s time to sit down and get curious about why that’s happening and what you can adjust to limit those moments of “no”.
Are there offers your unique purchasers are choosing from other organizations?
While it isn’t good to fixate on your competition and why others are choosing them over you (your organization is a unique organism, after all), it is useful to observe and be curious about why people who reach out directly to your organization end up hiring someone else.
Again, if you notice this as a trend happening with people your organization has interacted with, sit down as a team and get curious about the possible root issues of this unique purchaser behavior.
What about your processes and systems could be adjusted based on the different moments of “no” your team gets?
Curiosity lives at the center of being willing to adjust the tactics and systems that your organization is using. If there is a certain process or system that introduces confusion into the way you interact with unique purchasers, get curious about how you can clarify or eliminate it. And encourage team members to bring their moments of “no” to the team so that you can all discuss whether it was a “no” that could or should be adjusted for.
Keep in mind that it isn’t a goal of your organization to turn every “no” into a “yes.”
Exercise 2.4 Remembering No
Course Manual 5: Problem Solving
Whenever we notice problems for our unique purchasers, or for our team as a result of working with unique purchasers, we are presented with opportunities for experience-based education.
If we are curious about a problem and dig deeper to understand what caused it, we can try to make changes to fix that problem. However, if we aren’t willing to be curious about the cause, we will also fail to be curious about possible solutions.
Humans are complex, and it makes sense that problems will arise, even with the most experienced teams. The best thing to do is acknowledge the problem as quickly as possible so that it can be addressed.
While a lot of the course manuals in WDP 2 are focused on unique purchaser curiosity, it will also help to focus on organization and team-member curiosity when it comes to problem solving.
Let’s take a look at several questions that will help unleash the power of curiosity in the problems our unique purchasers face.
What problems do your unique purchasers have that you wish you had solutions for?
It is well-known in the world of business, as soon as we’ve solved one problem for our unique purchasers, they usually experience a related problem that is introduced into their lives as a result of the previous problem being solved.
The question here is about the problems we wish we had solutions for. But, of course, these solutions need to be within our organizational skill sets to solve. On every curious team, there are often unspoken questions about the problems your team members see that they feel strongly your organization could solve. However, we need to create a safe space to share and be curious so that we can get those questions out of our team members and into discussions that help us find solutions that will better serve our clients or customers.
Sometimes, while we are already solving problems purchasers have, there is a faster, better solution out there. Not only will innovative solutions help our unique purchasers, they will also help our organizations deliver results easier without as many overhead expenses. As we’ve talked about before, even saving time is extremely valuable as it is our only non-renewable resource.
When thinking about how to solve problems, it is always helpful to have your team bring up issues they see—before they need to be addressed with emergency means. A great way to cultivate a communication culture that encourages your team to trust you with problems is to create a bimonthly or monthly problem-solving forum where you can discuss what problems they hope to solve for your unique purchasers as they pop up in real time.
Plus, if your team is used to having these kinds of discussions, when they notice a problem, they can note it down to discuss during that specific meeting instead of bringing non-emergency issues to your attention when you aren’t prepared to set aside time to address them.
Have your team keep individual documents handy where they can think through updated answers to the questions “What problems do our unique purchasers have that you wish you had solutions for?” and “What problems do our unique purchasers have when it comes to implementing our solutions?” This way, they can record their thoughts whenever they discover a new problem.
Why don’t you think you’ve been able to solve those problems yet?
One of the best follow-up questions to ask about a problem your team hasn’t been able to solve yet is to ask why they don’t think they’ve found a solution.
Potential answers to the questions of why a problem hasn’t been solved could be:
• We lack the know-how or experience to address this as of yet.
• We are missing resources to address the details of the problems.
• Our team doesn’t prefer to focus on this problem, so it often gets left toward the bottom of our to-do list.
The more curious we get about the root causes of these unsolved problems, the more likely we are to find solutions. However, the truth is that even a large organization cannot possibly hope to solve every problem.
It is worth asking, “Is this the kind of problem we want to try to solve?” Not all problems that pop up in your unique purchaser, even if they seem related to the problems you usually help them solve, can or should be managed by your organization.
Another useful question is, “Do we want to help with this type of problem?”
Your organization won’t be able to solve every purchaser problem related to your specific skill sets. However, for moments when you decide there is a problem that follows up or goes before the ones you do want to solve as an organization, it is valuable to have a strategic partner lined up who can serve your unique purchasers where they’re at.
Having a recommendation for a unique purchaser with a different organization that you know will really earn trust for your organization and cause unique purchasers to come to you for follow-up. Or, it can encourage those purchasers to refer you to others who are in a different phase than they are in.
Why did you originally get into solving these particular types of problems?
When it comes to problem solving, it is easy to find discouragement in the form of unsolved problems, or problems that lack more effective solutions. This is why it is important for each organization and each team member to have a moment of truth they can reflect on when it comes to why they wanted to solve the problems related to your organization and industry in the first place.
Case Study: Jamie Kern Lima and IT Cosmetics
One of the best examples of a compelling “why” is the story of IT Cosmetics founder, Jamie Kern Lima, a woman on a mission to solve her personal problem first and help others working through the same problems.
As a news anchor, she struggled to conceal her hereditary rosacea on new and improved HD cameras. After spending most of her paycheck each month to find a product that would work well under the scrutiny of HD, she decided it was time to address the problem herself, while assembling a team of experts who could make her HD-worthy makeup dreams a reality.
While the products she created were amazing and started to sell out after she demoed the makeup herself, rosacea and all, when a major corporation wanted to purchase the company, their main deterrent was that they didn’t believe consumers would purchase from Lima because she didn’t look like a model. Even though she had proven over and over again on QVC segments that she could sell out her products by being herself and showing up even though her personal looks didn’t necessarily match the industry’s popularized standards of beauty.
In the end, Lima was able to have IT Cosmetics acquired by L’Oréal for $1.2 billion without having someone else show up as the new face of her brand, and went on continuing to do amazing things in that specific space.
Her belief, her “why,” was that every woman is beautiful, and that beauty includes imperfections like acne and rosacea, and she set out to prove it. On the other side, she also believed that women should have support to show up with coverage for those imperfections when they needed to, and when she couldn’t find that, she built it from scratch.
While it is okay to decide which stories to hold on to or let go of, and when to update the stories that form your why, it is helpful to have questions that frame your “why” as you grow in your role and industry. And also for your team members to have these questions so that you all remember the reason you started solving problems related to your organization and industry in the first place.
First, before you start digging into the questions, it is important to remember that as we learn and grow as individuals, we may find that it is more important to be those who embrace truth rather than those who keep stories we’ve collected. When something about a past story is proven not to be true, we can still collect the lessons that were true while acknowledging that the rest of the story is false and can be released.
The different questions below can be used in different circumstances depending on how you feel about the problem you’ve been working to solve. Go through and choose which ones feel relevant for you right now. If you’re building organization-wide stories to help you create content or rekindle the passion for your touchstone principles, you may want to answer a few or all of the questions.
• Who was the first person I helped with a problem related to this corner of the universe? How did it feel to provide that help?
• Who was the last person I helped with a problem that gave them a major breakthrough related to my industry or specialized skills?
• What did their life look like before I helped this (first or last) person?
• What transformation of emotions and thoughts happened as a result of this help?
• How did I first discover I had a passion and ability to solve problems in this unique space?
• What was the original problem I sought to solve in my industry before I became actively engaged in it? How did wanting to solve that problem shape the way I show up professionally in the present?
• What kind of unique purchasers do I love to help most?
• Is there a pressing problem they have that I want to try to solve?
• Have I succeeded if I didn’t find a solution but I still found a way to help that person or to connect them with someone who could give them more specific help?
A lot of the work that goes into problem solving has to do with mental fortitude and is foundational work. These questions will help you adjust your mindset so that you’re more open to finding answers when difficult problems arise, but will also help you accept when certain problems are not meant to be solved by you or your team.
How can you build a plan to solve these problems?
In Shel Silverstein’s poem, “Melinda Mae,” he uses a visual of extremes to illustrate an important point. Melinda Mae is a tiny girl who sets out to eat an entire, giant whale. In the poem, everyone tells Melinda that she’s too small and the task is impossible. However, because she is able to take a bite-by-bite approach, her persistence pays off and she delivers on her promise to eat that whale. Sure, it took her into her eighties, but Silverstein makes his point.
We have to take things one step at a time to finish daunting tasks. And until you break the problem you’re trying to solve into bite-sized pieces, it will seem as if you are trying to eat a whale.
Here are the steps that will help you plan out each problem-solving journey your organization or specific team members take on:
• Get clear.
What different parts of the problem exist? What is the chronological order in which they need to be solved? In Melinda Mae’s case, she decides to start with the tail of the whale.
• Get calm.
When you feel stressed about finding potential solutions to your problems, you are much less likely to find creative ways to address those problems. Engage your curiosity to get calm and creative.
• Get focused.
Looking at the smaller parts you’ve identified of the problem will help you focus on each aspect individually before you try to combine your different approaches together to create an effective solution.
• Get centered.
When you know what outcome you hope to achieve, you can center all of your efforts on that. Combining the small pieces of your problem with one, central outcome will help you understand which smaller solutions will contribute to a bigger impact of that centralized end goal.
• Get honest.
What parts of the problem are causing things to break down? Be specific and look for inefficiencies and broken pieces in the problem itself. What isn’t working? What is working? What parts can be replaced? What parts need to be taken out and abandoned?
• Get specific.
If there are any skills your team needs to fix these problems (and it is a problem your team has decided you all want your organization to fix), then take a look at whether there are people on your team who possess those skills. If not, it’s time to look for outside help as you work to solve that specific problem.
Once you’ve worked through these steps, you should have a much better idea of what you actually need to adjust and address to solve the problem your team is facing.
How can your team anticipate the next round of problems that your unique purchasers will have as a result of you solving one of their previous problems?
As we solve one problem for a client, more will inevitably arise as they discover needs they hadn’t anticipated—needs that are introduced once they begin to move past what we helped them with to start.
So, one way to scale and grow your organization is to think about each related possibility for arising needs. Then, for each one, decide whether it is something your team can assist with. Then, you have to take an honest look at whether your team would want to assist with that specific type of follow-up problem solving.
Just because you can solve a problem doesn’t mean you should automatically try to bring that service or product into your organization’s business model. When you are going through the process of looking for a natural follow-up offer or product, remember to engage your team’s curiosity and measure any potential idea against the touchstone principles of your organization.
You can also always engage in idea-test rounds where your team works together to see if there is a solution to a follow-up problem without having to fully develop a service or product by doing market research. Ask unique purchasers who have already worked with you to evaluate your potential future plans, and give them some incentive to participate.
You can discount future services, bring them on as an affiliate, or whatever other idea your team thinks up as a way to say “Thank you” for the time they’ve invested in one of your idea-test rounds.
Never assume that a unique purchaser who has previously worked with your organization will want to do this for you. But you can ask nicely and mention whatever incentive your team has decided on.
Are we focused closely enough on solving problems in our unique corner of the world?
One of the biggest distractions that any organization faces is trying to solve problems that exist outside of their corner of expertise. While it is good to want to solve problems, it is important to remember that your organization will be more efficient if they focus on the 20% of activities that drive results. It is worthwhile to continually measure all of your activities against the Pareto Principle where 20% of what you do brings in 80% of your results.
This means that as you evaluate different types of problems to have your team problem-solve, it is valuable to measure them against the Pareto Principle and your touchstone principles.
While it is also important to have your team members give an honest appraisal of the way they feel about creating follow-up offers or products, just because your team gets excited about an idea doesn’t mean that you will automatically end up adding it to your organization’s repertoire.
However, it is a good idea to allow your team to explore why they feel so enthusiastic about solving a new problem, even if you don’t implement related services or products.
Up until now, you have been building filters and questions that will help your team know whether or not you want to move into a stage past idea-creation for solving new problems. It is valuable to trust those tools as you build the future of your organization and remain dedicated to your unique corner of the world.
And if you ever feel that you want to pivot to changing problems in a different unique corner of the world, make sure you shift and pivot as an entire organization, and do it out in public. This way, your unique purchasers will understand that a change is taking place and your organization is less likely to amplify client or customer mistrust.
Keep in mind, though, that any pivot must still be in line with at least your organization’s main touchstone principle. And try to help your team avoid shiny object syndrome: Just because something new seems exciting, that doesn’t automatically mean it is worth pursuing.
Exercise 2.5: Dreaming Up Future Problems to Solve
Course Manual 6: Your Person
Now that you have a deeper understanding of outreach, purchaser journeys, why people say “no,” and the problems your team actually wants to solve, it’s time to get deeply curious about your unique purchasers. In this course manual, we’ll be doing an overview of the psychographics we plan to break down further in the rest of workshop 2.
First, we’ll dive into some curiosity-engaging questions. Next, we’ll do a short review of what makes up the different psychographics. And then, we’ll talk about how you can have open dialogues with your team members to gain understanding based on their personal experiences with your products or services and processes—all so that you can unlock a new layer of relatability when it comes to your unique purchasers.
Curiosity-Engaging Questions
As we’ve learned throughout this program so far, curiosity allows us to go deeper than our competition when we’re thinking about the people we serve, the way we serve them, and how we can show up in a crowded space and be heard, understood, and trusted.
When it comes to thinking about the people who are your people, the ones your organization can get the best results for and loves to work with most, it is also helpful to be curious.
There are so many organizations that have meetings where team members sit around and complain about the unique purchasers they help. And while we understand that no one likes to work with people who don’t value their skills or abilities, it is important not to slip into and stay in the judgment zone when it comes to your unique purchasers.
There are two parts to completing the curiosity quest well. Part one entails making sure that you are curious about the kinds of unique purchasers that will light up your team and make collaboration with them a joy, even in difficult and uncomfortable times. Business is difficult (if it wasn’t, everyone would create and sustain these amazing machines made out of benefits, systems, and innovation).
Part two is understanding that continued curiosity about what makes your people (the unique purchasers your team loves to work with) who they are. And these questions will definitely help with that second part.
• What about a person makes them your organization’s person? (Think about qualities, likes, dislikes, backgrounds, etc.)
We already discussed asking a similar question in an earlier course manual. But here, what we want to focus on is continuing to ask these questions about your unique purchaser preferences and organization’s 20% focus changes over time. While your main touchstone principle will always be the same, the way you show up to address that principle might change as you hone in on your 20%. This happens when you identify a specific group of unique purchasers that you can get even higher-quality results for.
Since your organization is a living, breathing organism (made up of many organisms also known as humans), it will inevitably change. And the answers to the important, ongoing questions you ask will change right along with it.
• Based on the team’s favorite previous unique purchasers, what is a quality or value that we feel we should double-down on embracing in targeting?
When you’re asking this question to a group of team members, you have a unique opportunity to look for intersectionality, which is just a fancy word that means the places where at least two things meet.
Are there any unique purchasers who seem to have one group of qualities, but also exhibit the behaviors and results of a favorite group of unique purchasers that have different qualities?
Is there an emerging industry that feels like it could potentially have your favorite unique purchasers hidden within it?
Looking at the past to find answers in the future takes up a whole genre of education: history. And your organization can use your history to unlock patterns about the people who get the best results from working with your organization while engaging with your team in a meaningful way.
• What unique quirks do we appreciate in our unique purchasers, and should we consider communicating more specifically to them?
A few times throughout this workshop so far, we’ve used the example of a banana slicer. This is the kind of product that actually takes a quirky unique purchaser to appreciate it. It’s disguised as a semi-functional item, but in reality, it’s an entertainment piece. And the kind of organization that sells a banana slicer (and other entertainment pieces) is looking for a unique purchaser who doesn’t take themselves too seriously. They are usually playful but can pull off seeming serious. They enjoy making others laugh and have no problem being the one getting attention at the center of the room.
With all that being said, the way we communicate toward a unique purchaser who appreciates the novelty of a banana slicer isn’t the same way we would communicate to someone who doesn’t understand why anyone else would actually purchase said slicer.
Whenever your team is able to identify a specific quirk that usually identifies that a unique purchaser will be amazing to work with, have them spend some extra time asking this unique purchaser what their communication preferences are. This way, your team will be able to hone your communication toward those who will get better results from working with your company. Not only will this give your team better case studies to share, but it will also improve the attitude of those on your team because of the sense of accomplishment they will feel as the result of happy, satisfied unique purchasers.
Psychographics—A Review
At this point, a refresher on the aspects that qualify as psychographics seem worth going over again, briefly. In contrast to demographic information which focuses on physical and practical information, psychographic information focuses on psychological demographics including the way people think and feel.
A value is an idea that conveys the significance, worth, or utility of anything; the ideals or standards of behavior of an individual; and the evaluation of what is important in life. And values can be broken into three types of ideas: way of life, personality traits, and convictions.
Way of Life
The actions, customs, and beliefs of a particular person or group can be used to define the term “way of life.” For example, if a vegan food company considers the lifestyle of its customers, one of the shared values within that community is that each of us has a greater personal and collective responsibility for the environment.
Personality Traits
The academic world generally agrees that there are five primary personality traits: amiability, diligence, geniality, and anxiety. The acronym GIDAN helps us remember them more easily.
Geniality: People who are deemed genial are frequently characterized as warm and welcoming and have a propensity to enjoy socially-focused interactions with others. Introspective people are typically seen as the opposite of genial.
Interactivity: This characteristic highlights how transparent and cooperative a person is in terms of ideas, choices, and overall life philosophy. Someone who does not fit into the interactive category could be seen as independent.
Diligence: Those who possess this quality frequently concentrate on how they wish to do a task completely and also show that they take other people’s requirements into serious account. An industrious individual would be the opposite of carefree, unproductive, and frequently unorganized.
Amiability: People who are friendly are typically seen as helpful, thoughtful, understanding, and pleasant. Rather than prioritizing their personal interests or preferences over the requirements of the group, they will frequently look for a compromise that will satisfy all people involved. One word we might use to characterize the contrary is self-concerned.
Nervous: People with a tendency toward nervous perceive the outer world as frightening, dangerous, and disturbing. They are more likely to go through complete emotional upheaval. Someone opposite on this scale could be seen as moderate or even-tempered.
Only when all three of the following criteria are met is a personality feature said to exist in an individual: continuity, long-term frequency, and distinctive ability. We anticipate observing the personality aspect in various settings, over time, and with attributes that are applicable to various people.
These 5 main traits can also be summarized by placing your unique purchasers on each of the following five scales. They would then range between:
• Genial and introspective.
• Interactive and self-reliant.
• Diligent and disorganized.
• Amiable and self-concerned.
• Nervous and even-tempered.
Convictions
Strongly held beliefs or points of view are what we refer to as convictions. Personal convictions matter because they serve as the basis for our actions, values, and beliefs. Our convictions help us make decisions, navigate moral conundrums, and stand up for what we believe in. We couldn’t articulate our ideals without these guiding principles.
Now, as we move through the rest of the documents in this course manual, you have a point of reference for the different personality breakdowns we’ll go through together.
Keep in mind that you can reference the review in this course manual any time you find it helpful to do so.
Creating Discussions Focused on Your Person
Like everything else in this course, it is helpful to frame every discussion you have about a topic through the lens of engaged curiosity. However, we also want to have targeted team discussions where the main focus is on thinking more about your unique purchasers.
The list of questions below are provided for you to use anytime you work with your team to have a discussion focused on being more curious about your unique purchasers. All so that you can relate to them better. Feel free to use these discussion questions monthly or quarterly to make sure that your entire team understands more and more about your organization’s unique purchasers.
First, the questions we’re going to go through will focus on curiosity engagement. With the next questions, the goal is to start thinking about your unique purchasers, what they believe, and how they decide to take action in new, previously-undiscovered ways.
• Who do I know outside of work who fits our idea of a high-quality unique purchaser?
Thinking about our unique purchaser in terms of the people we know outside of work will help us frame the people our organization is reaching out to as real people. Plus, answering this question helps us to engage curiosity in that the team might not have tried to apply work ideas to their outside lives before.
• What about my individual values, beliefs, and convictions help me relate better to our unique purchasers?
By first thinking on an individual level, you are priming the minds of your team members to start thinking of your unique purchasers as individuals as well. It is common in service- and product-based businesses for team members to think of unique purchasers as a large group.
Instead of thinking of the people your organization serves as a molded Jell-O dish with individual fruit pieces thrown in, you want them to think only of the individual fruit pieces.
• What about our organization’s values, beliefs, and convictions help us relate better to our unique purchasers?
While it is important to have your team think about themselves and each unique purchaser from an individual standpoint, it is also extremely valuable to think about how your collective organization offers unique purchasers group-based support.
Case Study: Doubletake on Unique Purchaser Communication
Doubletake is a tennis and pickleball bag company that was struggling to sell directly to consumers (DTC) through their website. And even though their CEO, Shawna Gwin Krats, had worked for over 10 years as a marketing researcher and strategist for top brands before heading to Doubletake, she was missing an obvious problem that was contributing to the low DTC sales.
By having an outside team come in and also work with unique purchasers to discover what gaps in understanding the unique purchasers had, the team realized that the copy for the website was vague and didn’t actually say what the organization sold.
The main headline read, “Sports Meets Style,” but didn’t explain how the company was creating a way for sports to meet style. They also didn’t know what they were shopping for because the main button only said “Shop.”
After working with this firm who reached out to unique purchasers, they changed the copy to include “gorgeous yet functional tennis and pickleball bags” and also changed the button to “Shop Bags.” These small changes made a huge difference. But, without asking for feedback, the organization was just too close to see the communication problem. The simple adjustments they made increased the website’s rate of conversion by 191%.
Finding Relatability Between Your Team Members and Unique Purchasers
For many unique purchasers, even if they are also a part of a larger organization, they often feel alone in their struggles. This is a common emotion in the realm of human experience. And because your team and the individuals on it exist within the human experience, you can find clues to solve the mystery your unique purchasers want help with all through one important quality: relatability.
One of the many reasons that authenticity has become a business buzzword (it was Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2023) is that being authentic means that relatability is more likely to happen.
Inside your organization, you have as many opportunities for relatability as you have team members. But, how can you create work-appropriate opportunities to help your team realize what moments of relatability they can use to help your company build important relationships with unique purchasers to help you grow?
Earlier we talked about how there is a helpful guideline about when to share, and when not to share. As your organization creates pieces of content to share publicly, this guideline ends up being equally helpful:
Wisdom is shared in public, validation happens in private.
For this reason, it is beneficial to make sure that your team is using strategic goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help them ask specific questions through the lens of personal relatability. What does that mean?
Well, when you are gathering information about an offer, product, or service from a unique purchaser, you want to avoid asking questions that make it seem like you expect them to solve all of your problems for you.
Vague questions will often feel this way to unique purchasers.
So, when your team is collecting data, they should be looking for a specific type of information that they can ask several unique purchasers about. And in order to get the best data, it helps if they have a personal story that adds relatability to asking the unique purchaser that specific question.
This is what getting information from unique purchasers using the dynamic force of
relatability might look like:
• You know that there are ways to better serve your unique purchasers your organization either hasn’t thought of, or is having difficulty implementing. In the private walls of your organization, your team works to validate their feelings about a specific service or product.*
*Note: This does not mean they are asking for validation about their personal worth or feelings, just about the services or products.
• Based on the feelings you have, your team works on creating questions based on past experiences (wisdom) to help you get clear about serving your unique purchasers better.
• Each team member should look at the questions you’ve decided to ask as a group, and think about a time when they had to ask themselves the same type of question. This is the relatability piece.
• Have each team member write out their relatability story, making sure that their real story (no fictional examples allowed) has:
-A beginning (the first inkling of pain related to a problem).
-A middle (the quest to find the solution to this pain).
-An ending (when they found a solution to their pain and how it felt to have that pain relieved).
This way, when they show up to do active research using the predetermined questions, they also have their story ready to share if they need it.
While market research tends to be a responsibility that only touches one department, you can increase the potential to get answers to your questions that are higher in quality if you allow members from outside departments to make calls with their relatability stories when possible.
Communication to and from your person—the unique purchaser your organization serves best—is vital to your growth. And thinking about them with more focused curiosity and relatability will help you understand which approaches will better serve your company as it moves into the future.
Exercise 2.6: Moving Toward Greater Depth
Course Manual 7: Genial or Introspective
As we work through the rest of this particular course manual, we will be looking at a breakdown of each of the five personality scales. Through that work, we will also go over examples of when a particular side of the scale might match more closely with the products or services an organization offers, and how we can tailor our communication based on each scale.
While personality traits help us as a form of psychographic information, there will be overlap between some preferences for unique purchasers on different scales (though they are usually based on different underlying reasons). In addition, not every generalization will match each unique purchaser.
The point of learning and implementing the different personality trait scales is to help your organization communicate more effectively with your unique purchasers, not to communicate perfectly. Because of the complex nature of humans, perfect communication simply does not exist.
Personality Traits:
The 5 academically recognized personality traits include geniality, interactivity, diligence, amiability, and nervousness. They can be remembered using the acronym GIDAN.
In this particular manual we will be going over the geniality to introspective scale.
Let’s start off by describing what a unique purchaser looks like on both sides of this personality-trait scale.
What does genial mean?
A person with a genial personality trait will be warm-hearted, upbeat, and friendly. They also frequently search for the positive aspects of life. Often, they prioritize connection over other priorities and are looking for opportunities to make not just their personal world better, but to make the world a better place.
Their perspective is often collectively-focused, meaning that if they have to choose between what is best for them and what is best for the group, they will often make a choice that benefits the group most.
If we look for public examples of what a person with these personality traits is like in real life, we can look toward both Frank Sinatra and Katy Perry. Sinatra was well known for being outgoing, activity driven, and having a warm personality. The same is true of Katy Perry.
How does a person who is more toward the genial side of this scale act?
While there are exceptions to every rule, in general, those who are on the genial side of this particular personality-trait scale will often be more energetic, adventurous, cheerful, assertive, social, and outgoing. They look for excitement, connections with other warm people, and can often be activity-driven.
What happens to their purchasing behavior when they lean toward genial and away from introspective?
If we’re looking at the value aspect of their purchasing decisions, those with genial personality traits are going to prefer products and services that are more communal in nature and have activity-based properties.
This could mean that the product or service reflects these values itself, or that the organization has partnered with a nonprofit that is reflective of their brand, but emphasizes group-minded benefits.
Leaning away from introspective means that they will look for offers and organizations that are less reserved, meditative, relaxed, and solo-focused.
A great example of the direction someone with a genial personality trait will lean toward is can be explored by looking at their preferences for individual versus group coaching. If they lean toward the genial side of this scale, they are more likely to look for a coaching service that at least has a follow-up group activity, even if initially they know they need to be assessed and directed individually. Whereas someone on the introspective side of this scale will probably avoid group coaching until the pain they’re experiencing outweighs their natural inclinations to remain independent.
• Which messaging tones do they respond to?
Because of their preferences for feel-good, group-centered organizations, they prefer an organization that has a friendlier tone. While this might seem counterintuitive based on the fact that those with introspective personality traits prefer organizations to have an element of being relaxed, genial learners also prefer for organizations to take feelings-centered approaches that are not overly professional, strict, or rigid. The cheerful and energetic tones they often like are not overly information-driven or scholastic. Instead, they want to know that the organization they end up choosing prioritizes relationships and engagement over almost anything else.
Because of this, the tone of messaging they like often takes the “Who we are” approach over the “What we do” method.
• Which processes do they prefer?
Often, instead of needing to sit down to learn a new method or system, they want to be walked through the learning process by another cheerful, engaging person. Since the relationship is more important to them than the method or system itself, they need to feel human connection while taking action to get the most out of any professional interaction.
It is because of this personality trait that many companies have the option to initiate a walk-through call upon the unique purchaser’s first paid engagement with the organization.
In general, during a human-to-human interaction, those with genial personality traits will be more trusting of the process than if they are left to their own devices to comb through information and implement it on their own.
They are likely to do exactly what you advise them to do, but more so if you are there to
help along the way.
• What types of visual marketing are they most interested in?
Since they are motivated by action and adventure, they are more likely to engage in visual marketing that depicts smiling, diverse individuals, and bright, playful colors. While this doesn’t mean that you should tell your design team to implement Roy G. Biv as your company color scheme, you should think about how you want to use color in an intentional way in ads and content if you are aiming to attract those who have genial personality traits.
You will also benefit from showing groups of people in your advertising as opposed to an individual, since they are motivated by friendship and group engagement.
For font families, they will tend to be drawn more toward sans serif over serifs that are traditionally categorized as academic. Though serifs are still preferable for large bodies of text due to their ease of reading, for headlines and subheads, sans serif fonts will create ads and content that make those with genial personality traits feel more at home.
• How involved do they want to be in the process that creates the end result they’re looking for?
While those with genial personality traits are happy to do work and get their hands dirty if needed, they prefer not to be bogged down with administrative tasks that others enjoy doing in solitary. Any activity that leads them into isolation can feel difficult or challenging. This is why many of them prefer to outsource certain necessary things like bookkeeping or replying to emails but might be glad to hop into a last-minute dodgeball game at the park.
Since the preference is for activity and adventure, tasks that are less focused on those aspects will need to be rooted for those with genial personality traits by creating group situations that are focused on deliberate play (the idea of turning a task into a purpose-filled experience).
In his book, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, Adam Grant helps the reader understand what deliberate play looks like by outlining the practice routine of the best solo percussionist in the world who also happens to be deaf. Evelyn Glennie was guided by her teacher to create practice routines based on deliberate play that helped her learn to feel sounds when she could no longer hear them.
If you know that your methods or systems will require someone with genial personality traits to engage in more reserved and independent work, it is important to make it fun for them. Deliberate play allows you to do this by thinking through ways you can still engage their friendly, excitement-seeking preferences for activities that are not naturally suited to such personality traits.
In general, those on the genial side of this scale will want to be as involved as you want them to be due to their tendency to prefer helping and participating in group activities. But, they also appreciate when you can take solo tasks off of their plates.
• How many pieces of content do they want to digest before making a decision?
When dealing with unique purchasers that tend toward the genial side of this scale, they will want to have multiple interactions before determining if your organization is a good fit for them.
They will also want to know how your team provides support and builds relationships. And, they will be curious about why you make it a priority to engage your community and unique purchasers.
While the general number of touchpoints that unique purchasers need to have before they will make a decision can range from 12 to 20, those on the genial side of the scale will usually need more, and may prefer between 30 to 40 touch points depending on how they show up in the other four personality-trait scales.
It is also helpful to remember that because of their assertive and energetic natures, those on the genial side of the scale will want to take fast action as soon as they have made their decisions, even if that occurs after watching one of your videos or reading one of your articles in the middle of the night. In this case, it is of great benefit both to your unique purchaser and your team to give them a way to at least set up an appointment for a follow-up chat that happens during business hours no matter what time it is when they are browsing.
Case Study: IBM Addresses Self-Reporting Biases
One of the tricky aspects of using personality-trait scales is that when people take quizzes or answer questionnaires based on what they believe their personality traits are, often they have a bias in mind of what they want the results to verify or what they want to prove to the test giver (this is especially true in terms of potential employees taking personality-trait assessments as part of their interview or onboarding processes).
In order to address these unconscious biases, IBM’s Watson Personality Insights uses data the individual has created and shared on numerous digital platforms to construct a more accurate personality profile. And while there have been organizations that have used these types of profiles in ways that have been pointed to as unethical, this doesn’t mean that it is impossible to use personality-trait information in ethical ways.
In order to show that their theories about personality-trait uses in marketing have practical uses, IBM has also created a collection of studies that shows there is scientific evidence that messaging can be customized to target people with specific personality traits. While we see that there is a lot of room to grow as we move these theories out of the lab, large companies like IBM are paving the way for ethical applications of personality-trait based messaging and marketing.
What does introspective mean?
A unique purchaser who is more on the introspective side of this scale will often feel that they can always take action later, especially because they tend to prefer independent moves. They are content to be alone and spend significant time sorting through their thoughts. More meditative, thoughtful practices are preferred and observed, and they use alone time to recharge.
They are less likely to come out and tell you directly how they are feeling, as they prefer to be more reserved. This means that developing and asking the right questions to help them articulate their pain and desires is vital.
While it may take a bit more of an investment to find out what someone with introspective qualities is thinking or feeling, they are also more likely to wait until they have something that feels extremely worthwhile to communicate. It is worth the wait to obtain those gems of information.
We can see this dynamic evidently in the personality traits of two well-known introspective entertainers, Keanu Reeves and Snoop Dogg. While it is often thought that those who seek to be on stage must be outgoing and genial, this isn’t always the case. Those who prefer their independence often feel more comfortable addressing a large group than they do with one-to-one interactions.
Both Keanu and Snoop are known for using quiet voices in personal interactions and for pausing to reflect often.
While it may seem that someone who lives on this side of the scale isn’t engaged with the group, they are often taking information in and reflecting on it. They are not automatically looking inward for everything, and will still be open to receiving outside solutions to help them deal with their pain and are benefit-focused.
How does a person who leans to the introspective side of this scale act?
Again, there are exceptions to the rule—and in particular, many introspective people who are in business mask their introspection because they feel pressured to show up as a more genial team player—but those who are toward the introspective side of this personality-trait scale are thoughtful and solemn.
What happens to their purchasing behavior when they lean toward introspective and away from genial?
Because they are more likely to want information they can digest in their own time in an independent way, introspective purchasers will want more information, often in the written form. And they want access to guides that help them digest and process that information in an order that builds as it progresses.
While they are interested in knowing how an organization serves its community through likeminded partnerships, they want to gather this information independently, and they also want to know what each organization is doing to create more education-related efforts in their industries.
They often dislike high-pressure sales tactics because they want to feel free to take their time to come to a decision thoughtfully, after careful consideration.
While it is important to create an opportunity for that space, they also often appreciate follow-up information that will guide them as they come to a decision, and they often want to be pursued for these follow-ups in a relaxed manner rather than have to take initiative to pursue an organization with ongoing attention.
• Which messaging tones do they respond to?
While they are not opposed to warm-sounding content and ads, they prefer any communication to be delivered in a straight-forward way. While they still experience emotions and pain, and want to be assured there is a way your organization can help them alleviate this pain, they don’t want to feel like they have to engage in adventure to find a solution.
Their preferred tone is reflective, informative, and expert-driven. They want to know that the person they trust is someone who has really thought through the process they’re providing.
• Which processes do they prefer?
They often prefer to have access to self-guided walk-throughs of what your organization does, why it focuses on those things, and what previous clients have said.
As far as the processes that happen as they work with your organization, they want to have a deeper level of understanding the foundations of your processes. While it is unreasonable to believe they could understand everything your company does based on your collective wisdom and experience, they will often ask for more information than purchasers with genial personality traits.
• What types of visual marketing are they most interested in?
They prefer clean, more academic looking content and information. In addition to preferring serif fonts for headings and text, they also prefer little color. When color is present, they like colors to reflect relaxation without feeling childish. Muted blues and sage greens create the solemn feeling they identify with.
• How involved do they want to be in the process that creates the end result they’re looking for?
While they don’t want to be super involved in the execution of the concepts and systems you use, they want to be able to understand the foundational methods you’re using—whether it’s in the creation of products or use of services.
• How many pieces of content do they want to digest before making a decision?
They often tend to be on the heavier side, preferring between 20 to 100 pieces of content. They want the focus of that information to be on data and processes over relationships and connection.
What generalizations can we make about purchasers based on where they fall on this specific scale?
The way that unique purchasers fall on this scale will affect the way they view our content, messaging, and visual elements. But it will also influence the way they want to gather information from us and which type of information and implementation they prefer. When deciding which way to lean on this personality-trait scale, it needs to match up to your organization and offers first. Then you will know which side of the scale to target as far as your unique purchasers.
Exercise 2.7: Personality Traits and a Unique Purchaser Focus
Course Manual 8: Interactive or Self-Reliant
A quick reminder: While personality traits help us as a form of psychographic information, there will be overlap between some preferences for unique purchasers on different scales (though they are usually based on different underlying reasons). In addition, not every generalization will match each unique purchaser.
The point of learning and implementing the different personality-trait scales is to help your organization communicate more effectively with your unique purchasers, not to communicate perfectly. Because of the complex nature of humans, perfect communication simply does not exist.
Personality Traits
The 5 academically recognized personality traits include geniality, interactivity, diligence, amiability, and nervousness. They can be remembered using the acronym GIDAN.
In this particular manual we will be going over the interactive to self-reliant scale.
Let’s start off by describing what a unique purchaser looks like on both sides of this personality-trait scale.
What does interactive mean?
In the context of personality traits, interactive means that people are willing and even excited to learn about differing perspectives, cultural experiences that are outside of their own culture, methods that are not traditional (and even currently exist in testing phases), and creative expressions and styles of outreach.
They are willing to interact with the outside world in a way that allows them to take in new information. And they are often quite flexible when it comes to obtaining or implementing this new information.
One example of a public figure who demonstrates these personality traits is Mila Kunis, an actor who is known for taking risks, engaging with the opinion and advice of others, and loves to be with people.
How does interactive differ from genial?
While preferring to be interactive might be seen as also being friendly and wanting what is best for the group, the underlying motivations of a unique purchaser with interactive personality traits are different than someone who is genial.
An interactive person is driven by exploration and a need for innovation. This isn’t the same as being motivated by group needs. And while someone who is interactive will seek out approaches and cultures that differ from their own, it is often in an effort to make themselves better or to collect more and more data, instead of wanting what is best for them and their team.
How does a person who is more toward the interactive side of this scale act?
They are actively seeking new ways of thinking and making an effort to become more well-rounded as a human. While interacting with others is at the heart of that, they will often choose unconventional offers just to see what happens. This makes them more prone to risk-taking and contrarian approaches.
While the value community because of the advantages of having a large pool of cultural experiences to pool data from, they are usually more focused on how they can apply new information as a path to implement further success than they are using new information to make the world a better place.
What happens to their purchasing behavior when they lean toward interactive and away from self-reliant?
Unique purchasers with interactive personality traits are often the same individuals who become early adopters of new products or services. They are actively searching for new ways to do what they do even better and are often life-long learners. In many cases, they believe that the sharing of differing perspectives is how innovation happens.
While they shouldn’t be described as disloyal, they are usually willing to pivot often, and can get distracted by shiny new objects. Helping them see how to work through using a new method to completion by using gamification is usually particularly helpful for someone with this personality trait.
• Which messaging tones do they respond to?
Their strong need for continued learning often causes them to respond to adventurous campaigns that emphasize the use of new methods. Energetic, hopeful, and even contrarian tones inspire and engage their interactive traits and cause them to take action.
While their pursuits are usually academic in nature—as they seek to acquire new methods of performing tasks that are more efficient—they are not often swayed by messaging that is academic in nature.
• Which processes do they prefer?
Because of their interactive nature, they will want to engage in a personalized way. Courses and books do not hold the same value for them as seminars, coaching, or personal walk-throughs.
When they engage in social media, they often prefer interview style content because of the natural interactive approaches that type of content creates.
Communication with them will be much more effective if there is an interactive element. For example, they might not prefer email, but would love to receive a video via a service like Loom that they can watch and respond to. Having access to tone of voice and facial expressions is valuable to them.
• What types of visual marketing are they most interested in?
They are more likely to respond to sparse color that is bright in appearance and often prefer sans serif fonts since they are less likely to respond to academic-feeling content. The images and phrases used in marketing would serve them best by invoking excitement and innovation.
• How involved do they want to be in the process that creates the end result they’re looking for?
Unique purchasers who have interactive personality traits are usually excited when they can be as involved in the action-driving parts of an offer as possible. While they are often pleased to be given a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on in the background to make your offers work, they might not prefer to be part of the more administrative tasks associated with your process.
• How many pieces of content do they want to digest before making a decision?
Because of the nature of being interactive, unique purchasers with this personality trait are often action-driven in their decision making. While they do not often need to process multiple pieces of content before deciding to make a purchase, they will want to know that the reputation of the organization they are making a decision about has is solid and that your company has delivered in the past.
The best type of content to put before someone on the interactive side of the scale is made out of testimonials, case studies, and informational pieces that describe the unique approaches an organization takes in broad terms.
Case Study: Apple Aligns With Interactive Purchasers
Apple Inc. has worked hard to position their organization as a brand for imaginative and creative unique purchasers. This means they intentionally marketed to purchasers with interactive personality traits. With a focus on outreach targeting purchasers who are open to new experiences, they have built a devoted following of purchasers with these traits.
Because of this, they have been able to maintain sales and purchasers even though their products come with a significant risk in that they are cutting-edge products that are built on new and improving technology.
Someone who veers to the other end of this particular personality-trait scale will be put off by the fact that Apple embraces methods and products that are not traditional. So, they’ve focused their marketing efforts and content creation on attracting those with interactive personality traits because they will be excited about the particular types of products and services that Apple offers while purchasers with other personality-trait leanings will not.
What does self-reliant mean?
When a unique purchaser has personality traits that lean toward the self-reliant side of this scale, they prefer to look inward for more traditional answers they have been raised with. They are often not as interested in finding new cultural experiences and innovative information that helps them grow their base of understanding.
While many organizations might consider someone who is self-reliant to be a less-than-ideal unique purchaser for their organization, there are many companies that would benefit from creating content and marketing that center on the personality traits related to being self-reliant.
One of the biggest priorities for those on this side of the scale is to have simple, clear, easy-to-access information that will help them make a decision to purchase.
They are often not interested in companies that are innovating new technology because they prefer dependability to the advantages born of emerging technology or methods.
An example of a public figure who demonstrates these traits in a positive way is actor Lucy Liu, who is confident in her decisions, makes those decisions quickly, and is self-assured in her choices.
How does self-reliant differ from introspective?
While those who are more introspective tend to be more independent, just like those who are self-reliant, those in the latter category are not prone to spending as much time in solitary thought.
Those who display self-reliant personality traits don’t want to have to reflect on information with the same intensity as those who are introspective. It is valuable to them to be able to look at a few pieces of content that confirm their assumptions and feelings about more traditional methods so they can take action. Introspective audiences tend to want to mull over information and understand it fully by doing deep work, which doesn’t appeal to those with self-reliant characteristics.
How does a person who leans to the self-reliant side of this scale act?
Traditional values are often extremely important to them. They will want to know that someone in the organization they choose understands their values and shares them. For example, they might respond well to being pitched by someone on your team that shares the same culture or religion as they have.
With unique purchasers who tend toward this side of the scale, they want to confirm what they already believe instead of being shown new information. Because of this, any innovative techniques your organization has can be explained to a self-reliant purchaser through the lens of information they already know to be true.
What happens to their purchasing behavior when they lean toward self-reliant and away from interactive?
The way they learn and process information that helps them make purchasing decisions is all about successfully building on the foundation of knowledge they already have. For more traditional markets, this tends to be a beneficial unique purchaser because of the self-reliant person’s tendency to embrace well-tested, long-lasting methods over creative and innovative solutions.
Unique purchasers with this personality-trait are also more likely to accept information that comes from peers with a similar background, but in general, they are usually open to connection as long as some form of commonality is found between them and the person giving them the information related to your services.
• Which messaging tones do they respond to?
It is valuable to unique purchasers with this personality trait to experience messaging that feels straight-forward, honest, sincere, and approachable. One way to sum up the feel of the messaging they appreciate is “down to Earth.”
They want to know that while the offers of an organization feel like they can apply to every person, there is also an element of personal relatability in the tone of the communication of that company that suits them.
A wonderful way to incorporate messaging that appeals to a self-reliant purchaser is to mirror the emotions they experience through testimonials and case studies so that they can see the evidence of the traditional methods at work.
They are often late to realize how their pain is related to the solution your company can solve for them, so messaging that hits on this pain and the relief that is experienced with your clients after your process or products helps them will go a long way with those who are self-reliant.
• Which processes do they prefer?
They often appreciate personalized interactions that show you understand their feelings, situations, and problems.
While their traditional approaches usually mean that you can create methods that are based within the cultural expectations of the geographic location you’re serving, they will not want to be involved in a lot of the approaches to your solutions.
They prefer to know that behind the scenes, your organization is taking care of everything they need without them having to give you explicit directions or instructions.
In general, a done-for-you service is a better fit for a unique purchaser with this personality trait.
Before they decide to purchase, it is a priority for them to feel like you can create a path for the end results they want without having to have much input from them.
When it comes to purchasing products, they want to feel that they will be able to use whatever your company sells with ease based on easy-to-understand instructions and friendly support.
• What types of visual marketing are they most interested in?
One of the main priorities they have for visual marketing is for it to feel familiar. This is why self-reliant purchasers are often excited to purchase from heritage brands they grew up using. If it was good enough for their parents, they feel it is more than good enough for them.
Because of this, more traditional color palettes with warm selections like yellows, browns, and maroons tend to be more engaging for Western purchasers. Whatever colors are considered traditional in your geographic location can be used to engage with this specific type of purchaser.
They will also often prefer more traditional fonts, usually leaning toward serif fonts that feel less academic but more wholesome. For example, in North America, they might prefer a serif font set in bold for the headlines because the chunkier text seems more welcoming and down to Earth.
• How involved do they want to be in the process that creates the end result they’re looking for?
They are often not interested in being super involved once they feel that someone who thinks similar to the way they do will be completing the task they’ve entrusted to your organization.
For products, they want to know that they can execute the operation of the item they purchase from you with little to no skill.
While it might seem counter-intuitive to think that someone who is identified as self-reliant would want your organization to do a majority of the work, they are self-reliant mainly when it comes to their decision making.
They trust themselves to find the person who can make their desired end result happen, but don’t feel the need to engage with creating that end result on their own.
It is also valuable to them if they receive regular updates that reinforce their confidence in selecting your organization as your team makes progress along the way. Or, if your company is offering a product, they want a clear timeline that helps them understand when they’re achieving benchmarks along the way and how long they can expect to use your product before seeing measurable results.
While with other personality traits, you would expect more flexibility, these types of purchasers expect to see results when you say they will, so make sure that what you’re communicating with them has been adequately tested and any bumps that have been prone to arising in your process are communicated to the unique purchaser in detail before they actually come up in their purchaser experiences.
• How many pieces of content do they want to digest before making a decision?
While their group varies when it comes to how quickly they take action, they want to be assured that any information or content they digest is clear and simple. Jargon makes them feel like the organization’s material is unapproachable for them, and will often cause them to decide against purchasing with that company.
They are also the type of purchaser who will often have friends or family look at your content to reinforce their idea that your company can help them. While the result of what their family or friend ultimately says doesn’t matter as much to them as actually being able to share the content (since they are self-reliant when it comes to making decisions), you should still create an easy system for them to be able to share the content you put out.
What generalizations can we make about purchasers based on where they fall on this specific scale?
The way that purchasers with personality traits on this scale behave will heavily impact the way you implement your products or offers with them. This is often the most important scale to consider when you’re looking at whether your approaches as an organization are more innovative or more traditional. If you try to market to an interactive purchaser with a more traditional approach, you are likely to cause confusion, and vice versa. Confused people do not purchase, so make sure you understand who on this scale best fits the offers and methods your unique organization has.
Exercise 2.8: Brainwriting and Personality Traits
Course Manual 9: Diligent or Disorganized
A quick reminder: While personality traits help us as a form of psychographic information, there will be overlap between some preferences for unique purchasers on different scales (though they are usually based on different underlying reasons). In addition, not every generalization will match each unique purchaser.
The point of learning and implementing the different personality trait scales is to help your organization communicate more effectively with your unique purchasers, not to communicate perfectly. Because of the complex nature of humans, perfect communication simply does not exist.
Personality Traits
The 5 academically recognized personality traits include geniality, interactivity, diligence, amiability, and nervousness. They can be remembered using the acronym GIDAN.
In this particular manual we will be going over the diligent to disorganized scale.
Let’s start off by describing what a unique purchaser looks like on both sides of this personality-trait scale.
What does diligent mean?
When thinking about the diligent side of this personality-trait scale, we can describe someone who possesses this trait as being tenacious, thoughtful, obedient, disciplined, persistent, and confident.
They know that if they don’t have an opinion about an option before them, they can find the information they need to create a confident position within themselves. They love standard operating procedures (SOPs), and are often interested in the “how” as much as the “why.”
While they prefer to achieve amazing things, they are also initially quite cautious about embracing new ideas or technology. Goal-setting is common with this personality trait. They don’t automatically rule out updated approaches to their problems, but the research phase cannot be skipped if they are expected to become a purchaser.
They are extremely focused on fulfilling any commitments they make, and have intense follow-through. If they say they will email you by the end of the week, you can expect that email to show up on time. Alternatively, they expect you to follow-through on what you say you will do within the timeline you give them for as long as you work together.
An example of a public figure who tends towards diligence is Alicia Keys, who prefers to listen to gather information, knows what goals she desires to set for herself, and has extreme self-discipline when going after those goals. While she prefers to be alone or in smaller groups, her self-efficacy in large groups is apparent.
How does a person who is more toward the diligent side of this scale act?
They often prefer more structured activity and like to have all of their expectations known ahead of time when deciding whether to make a purchase.
The way that information is organized is of extreme importance to them, and they expect those they work with to display the same self-discipline that helps them address and achieve the goals they set for their personal and professional lives.
A strong sense of duty encourages them to follow-through with every promise and process, and if they are unable to, this will often cause them distress.
In general, purchasers on this side of the personality-trait scale are motivated to perform better, with more intention, than their peers. One example is that a person who has diligent personality traits might be the first person in their family to pursue a college degree.
What happens to their purchasing behavior when they lean toward diligent and away from disorganized?
Some marketing agencies want you to believe that a purchaser with diligent personality traits will be a hard sell. That isn’t true, though. Instead of approaching them as being difficult to communicate with, you can approach them knowing that they will want to see well-organized content that helps them sort through their options.
It makes sense to think about the high-performance aspect of their goals so that your team can create information that displays evidence-based data that you can help them accomplish what they want to achieve.
While business professionals may tell you that the best way to win unique purchasers with a leaning toward diligence is to describe your “how” in detail, that will often backfire. Why? Because even when someone wants a lot of information, if you give them so much that they think they can self-execute without your experience or industry-knowledge, you are setting them up to fail.
Case Study: The Visionary Leader and Your Team
Because we can associate those on the disorganized side of this personality-trait scale with visionary leadership, it is important to understand how a visionary might interact with your team.
According to a Harvard Business Review article from 2019 titled, “Why Visionary Leadership Fails,” when visionaries worked with teams who didn’t have the same visions for direction, entire projects suffered.
It is vital to remember that when someone enlists the help of your organization, that if your team cannot find a way to share their vision, that there is probably an organization out there that is a better fit.
The article also stated that there were various reasons that a middle manager might have for being out of alignment with their visionary leader’s approaches, including being focused on their own team or smaller picture problems.
When you meet with a purchaser who is disorganized or has visionary tendencies and you aren’t sure whether your team will be able to share their vision, turn back to your touchstone principles and lead a discussion around whether that potential purchaser’s visions fit within those principles. This will help motivate your team to succeed if this purchaser is indeed a good organizational fit.
• Which messaging tones do they respond to?
They usually prefer real-world examples, content that emphasizes the organization’s loyalty to their purchasers, and well-thought-out concepts and strategies.
It helps if the tone is informational while being easy-to-understand. Just because they prefer the tone to assist them in getting the data they need to make a cautious decision doesn’t mean they will appreciate jargon or other technical speak.
They place importance on hopeful, aspirational, and honest communication. If they feel, though, that the tone is too aspirational and is not realistic, they tend to pull back and search for other answers.
• Which processes do they prefer?
They want details that prove to them that your process is well-organized and thoroughly tested. If the methods your organization is using haven’t helped a variety of people in various circumstances, or if you don’t present the fact that your products or services have done this, then a purchaser on the diligent side of the personality-trait scale is unlikely to take action to move forward with your company.
While they don’t often want to know every detail of how your process works, it is vital to them that they understand you do have a process and that you have a clear plan for how you will follow-up with them after their purchase is complete.
The way you behave and show up after you have served them is almost as important to them as the fact that you gave them a deliverable. They want to know that they can count on you to support the services or products you provided with consistency and discipline.
• What types of visual marketing are they most interested in?
Since they emphasize achievements and goals, the visuals should be aspirational in nature. As far as color selection, they don’t naturally connect with pastels or neon colors, and prefer more traditional color-pairings. When it comes to font preferences, they tend toward simple academic-styles that are serif, but not dramatic ones. Simple serifs go a long way with these specific unique purchasers.
• How involved do they want to be in the process that creates the end result they’re looking for?
Often, it is important to them to have some form of involvement. However, they are usually not looking for a process where they need to be active during each phase of the system. While they might not shy away from done-for-you offers, they are more likely to engage in done-with-you offers.
Understanding parts of the process they are engaging in is valuable to them, as is the learning process associated with your method.
Whatever approach you take, whether through service or product, be sure to follow-through on each stage when you say you will, or you will have lost their trust, which is not easy to regain.
• How many pieces of content do they want to digest before making a decision?
The amount of content they prefer to engage with is usually high. They will go through at least 20 pieces of content if you have that many available. If you have fewer than 20 pieces of content, they will usually go through all of the content you currently have.
It is important that whatever they engage with is well-organized, refers to other sources, and contains testimonials from people who have worked with your organization spanning varied situations to show how robust your company is.
What does disorganized mean?
While the word “disorganized” can automatically evoke negative thoughts, it is not necessarily a bad personality trait to have. In many ways, it mirrors the interactive list of personality-traits. Unique purchasers who fit into this category are often open to new ideas, are creative by default, and are less concerned about the process than they are about the end result of working with you.
A well-known actor that possesses these traits is SNL alum Andy Samberg, whose laid-back approach to life and willingness to try new things has compounded into an impressive career that goes past traditional acting.
How does a person who leans to the disorganized side of this scale act?
A common misconception about unique purchasers on the disorganized side of this scale is that they must be sloppy. As with the rest of the types of personality traits, we want to look at where the disorganization shows up in this brand of unique purchaser and not assume that everything about them is actually disorganized.
Often, people in this category will have wild and wonderful lists floating through their heads instead of written down on paper, but still manage to make informed decisions that are usually benefit focused.
They tend to be self-aware and self-accepting. However, like other types of unique purchasers, they can be convinced to act if they are guided to an understanding of their pain.
What happens to their purchasing behavior when they lean toward disorganized and away from diligent?
Purchasers with disorganized leanings are often more open and creative, and prefer to see information and materials that reflect that same feeling. While they tend to admire the details of processes less, they still want to know that someone has a plan that can be implemented on their behalf.
Self-aware disorganized purchasers understand that they have a more visionary leadership style and tend to surround themselves with others who can create and use the systems they need in order to reach their goals.
This means that if your organization can help them understand that you can take an idea they have and find the best way to evaluate it, describe its benefits (or downfalls), and—when needed—implement the strategies to make the idea come alive, this purchaser will be thankful for your team.
A purchaser who wants less hands-on approaches but is innovative in nature is often extremely loyal because they value the steps their team takes on their behalf. If it makes sense for your offers for your team to pursue this sort of unique purchaser, they will often be a repeat client or customer for years to come if they have a good experience with your organization.
• Which messaging tones do they respond to?
Often, they prefer lively tones that appeal to their creative and adventurous natures. At the same time, they want to feel that your organization is dependable, so they prefer to know that you have helped other innovators and visionaries take ideas and turn them into services or physical products.
Whatever your organization is good at, for a purchaser with disorganized personality traits, it is important for them to understand that while your company knows what it does well and can create repeatable results, that it is flexible.
Having a tone that accurately displays a tone of adjustability will often cause this type of unique purchaser to choose your organization over a competitor who has a more rigid tone in their communications.
The combination of tones that reflect openness, stability, and flexibility will often create an extremely positive perception when it comes to this type of purchaser.
• Which processes do they prefer?
While those who are on the disorganized side of this personality scale want to have options within your processes, they do not want to have to sit down and give you all of the details over and over again so that you can make their professional dreams into reality.
It is always beneficial to point to the pain they are in, but with this purchaser, the options for solving that pain need to be the primary responsibility of your team.
Many times, your team can tell when you are interacting with this type of purchaser because they will make comments about how much of a time investment they’ve had to make with other companies. By helping them understand that they will need to have a minimal part in the process of you being able to get them the results they need based on the pain they have that your team is addressing, you will also be winning them over to your organization.
Purchasers of this type want to be able to entrust your team with as much leg work as possible, whatever the processes required are.
• What types of visual marketing are they most interested in?
Bright colors often appeal to them, but not necessarily neon ones. They want to see lively, smiling faces in your visuals. Data that is in large chunks doesn’t appeal to them as much as text that is frequently broken up with visual elements.
For font selection, they tend to prefer more experimental fonts. A sans serif is probably a safe selection, but they also admire fonts that display some type of personality.
Usually, they are also excited to find visual elements that reinforce the data in the text. Visual elements are more important to them than endless paragraphs of text or lists.
• How involved do they want to be in the process that creates the end result they’re looking for?
They often do not want to be overly involved in any process since they seem to be focused on idea generation. The self-aware purchasers on this side of this particular scale want to know that your organization can work independently from them to create benefits.
In addition to that, they want to know that you have people on your team with different personality traits who take care of the different pieces of what you do for them.
Often, those on the disorganized side of this scale are assured to know that you have experts for each different step in the system you utilize because they want to feel like you will organize their ideas on their behalf without much instruction from them.
• How many pieces of content do they want to digest before making a decision?
While they tend to be on the side that prefers fewer pieces of content, they will often want some kind of video or audio content they can view or listen to while they’re performing other tasks.
Since they tend to be disorganized as far as gathering and writing down information (though they are often great at storing and sorting it mentally), they appreciate forms of media that engage audiences differently than just making them read.
What generalizations can we make about purchasers based on where they fall on this specific scale?
One of the commonalities that purchasers on both sides of this scale have is that they care quite a bit. Each diligent and disorganized purchaser wants to know that your organization has the experience and expertise to be able to execute on their behalf.
It is important to think about which side of this scale they fall on when it comes to their direct involvement with the project they work on with your company based on what your team prefers. For example, if your offer doesn’t work well when you don’t have a lot of purchaser involvement, then you might want to target those on the diligence side of this personality-trait scale.
Exercise 2.9: Our Favorite Purchasers
Course Manual 10: Amiable or Self-Concerned
A quick reminder: While personality traits help us as a form of psychographic information, there will be overlap between some preferences for unique purchasers on different scales (though they are usually based on different underlying reasons). In addition, not every generalization will match each unique purchaser.
The point of learning and implementing the different personality trait scales is to help your organization communicate more effectively with your unique purchasers, not to communicate perfectly. Because of the complex nature of humans, perfect communication simply does not exist.
Personality Traits
The 5 academically recognized personality traits include geniality, interactivity, diligence, amiability, and nervousness. They can be remembered using the acronym GIDAN.
In this particular manual we will be going over the amiable to self-concerned scale.
Let’s start off by describing what a unique purchaser looks like on both sides of this personality-trait scale.
What does amiable mean?
A unique purchaser who has amiable personality traits can often be described as wanting what is best for others, cooperative, humble, possessing strong morals, empathetic, and trusting of others.
While this often sounds like a preferred unique purchaser, there are difficulties that come from serving someone on the amiable side of this personality-trait scale. Someone who has such a strong moral compass may be inflexible. Plus, a person who is humble in nature may find it difficult to explain what their strengths and preferences are. And, when one is too cooperative, they will never actually tell you what they want, which can create a situation where the results you get for them were never actually the results they hoped to see.
With all of that in mind, the best purchaser on the amiable side of the scale has good self-awareness and excellent boundaries. This not only helps your team serve them well, but also means that they are more likely to get better results after having trusted your team for expert help.
A popular figure who has a high degree of amiable personality traits is supermodel Cindy Crawford, who has a reputation for being easy to work with as both a model and business owner and leader.
How does a person who is more toward the amiable side of this scale act?
They are often more concerned with societal outcomes for groups of people than they are for results that only benefit them as individuals. This is the type of purchaser who will be excited to engage with an organization that has a partnership with a nonprofit that shares similar touchstone principles and gives part of their proceeds to this nonprofit partner.
A purchaser with an amiable personality tends to prefer choosing an organization that has the skills and systems to address their issues, but also cares about doing collective good for a particular group of people.
So, for example, while they love working with manufacturers who create quality results, they’re more likely to work with one that also captures carbon as it leaves the plant so it can be used in a way that benefits humanity instead of increasing the amount of carbon in the air.
Their choices are based more on what they feel is right than the actual benefits they personally expect to see as a result of working with your organization.
What happens to their purchasing behavior when they lean toward amiable and away from self-concerned?
The main focus of their research phase (before the purchase) is usually invested in whether they can build a relationship with someone in your organization. Since one of their main motivators is trust, they want to know that there is at least one individual they can call or email personally if they have any questions.
For example, even if they aren’t in direct contact with someone inside your organization, they want a voice or someone on video that they feel connected to before they reach out. Having several team members write or create content that targets them will be less effective than if you have one person create content so that they can form know, like, and trust with that specific person—even though they haven’t met them directly.
• Which messaging tones do they respond to?
Warm, friendly, and reliable tones will encourage buyers on the amiable side of this particular scale to engage with more of your content and reach out for an informational meeting. When it comes to products, these tones will cause them to prefer your organization over your competitors—especially if there is some aspect of your organization that is collectively focused on helping a specific community.
• Which processes do they prefer?
Because of the deep nature of their trust and wanting to feel right about the person they’re interacting with who is on your team, they prefer to have updates by the person they have a relationship with.
The details of how you get them results is not as important as why that motivates you to
do so. However, because of their strong moral compass, they also want to feel like you are using integrity-based approaches.
For example, if you produce grapeseed oil, they will want to know that you are employing a cold-pressing technique as the chemical techniques have been linked with potential health damage.
In a world that seems to be embracing more AI and machine-propelled methods, they also still want to know that there is a human they can talk to about your potential work together. In general, people who exhibit amiable personality traits are less likely to hire a team that emphasizes the use of AI. The ability to form and maintain human relationships is usually important to them.
• What types of visual marketing are they most interested in?
They also prefer warm visuals where people are helping each other along with colors that are warm in nature like yellow, orange, burgundy, and cream. But they are interested in any colors they feel are friendly, which also includes cool options like sky blue, lilac, and sage.
As far as font selection, they often prefer a subtle serif, but are also okay with more design-neutral san serif fonts.
The main type of visual content they connect with should feel happy, wholesome, and generous in nature.
• How involved do they want to be in the process that creates the end result they’re looking for?
While there may be purchasers with amiable personality traits who want to feel involved in the processes or systems your organization uses to serve them, often they will find taking a more removed role satisfactory as long as they feel they have a secure relationship with at least one person on your team. When they have a connection with someone who can represent their interests, they will usually feel okay with a done-for-you type of offer. And for products, they will usually trust the person they have a relationship with to understand what make and model will serve their interests best.
• How many pieces of content do they want to digest before making a decision?
The number of touch points is less dependent on content than it is on actual interactions with the same person from your team. While the number of interactions can be as few as 3, it can also be as many as 30.
You want to make sure that they have a direct way to contact the person they’re working with on your team, such as a work email address or an extension number. This doesn’t mean they expect your team to be available all the time, as they are often happy to leave a message and wait for a timely reply.
What does self-concerned mean?
While self-concerned has often been associated with the idea of someone who is selfish (meaning that they put their own needs and preferences above those of everyone else), self-concerned has more to do with the purchaser making sure that they have the information and engagements that feel valuable to them before taking action.
Someone who is self-concerned is often okay being seen as contrary or different from their peers, cautious of others, determined, self-aware, and proud of the good decisions they have made in the past.
While there may be those who are more selfish than self-concerned, most organizations that have offers or products that help those on the self-concerned side of this personality-trait scale are able to distinguish their content in a way that detracts selfish people from interacting with them often.
Selfish purchasers tend to be stubborn, uncompromising, untrusting, and overly confident. This distinction is important because there are self-concerned purchasers who are wonderful to work with. However, selfish purchasers are often extremely difficult to interact with for teams in every industry.
The well-known singer and songwriter Barry Manilow is a great example of someone with self-concerned personality traits and how they can contribute to success. While Manilow is known for being extraverted and communicating well with others, he has also been said to be a bit critical. As an extremely expressive individual, he knows what he wants and works hard to achieve those outcomes.
How does a person who leans to the self-concerned side of this scale act?
While they tend to be more careful when it comes to making decisions, they will still act
if your organization is able to pinpoint their pain and give them a solution that makes sense based on their situations and preferences.
It’s not so much about making sure that they’re being taken care of in the way they want. While customized offers do appeal to purchasers with the self-concerned personality traits, they want to be sure that the offer or product will actually address their particular set of concerns in a way that works.
They are more detail oriented and want to see content that shows that someone in their situation has used your solution to eliminate the pain caused by those particular circumstances.
It is also true that once a unique purchaser with these traits sees results from your work, they will be more likely to share the results with others because they are proud of the great choice they made in selecting your organization.
Case Study: Zappos Serves Self-Concerned Customers
Even though it is well known for selling shoes, clothes, and accessories, in the world of professional marketing, Zappos also has the reputation of knowing how to market to their customers by emphasizing the self-concerned nature of many.
Their main focuses are on both customer pleasure and service. In order to promote this, they identify openly as a service firm that also happens to sell fashion-based products.
To start, they make a big deal out of how good their support is. They understand that finding the ideal fit for each individual is crucial to having a positive support experience, just like clothes cannot be prescribed in a generalized way. Because of this, they offer excellent, round-the-clock help provided by friendly employees who are qualified to handle issues on their own.
They also offer free shipping and a 365-day return window to clients, however they are very lenient when it comes to reimbursements. Additionally, Zappos will take all the time required to ensure that customers have the best possible experience. This even led to a service call that ended up lasting just under eleven hours between the customer and a very friendly representative.
Zappos encourages their agents to establish a close, personal rapport with clients by getting to know them. For instance, a salesperson might send a free little blanket with the clothing shipment if they hear a baby crying in the background of a conversation. These kind and unanticipated gestures raise the bar for Zappos’ customer support.
What happens to their purchasing behavior when they lean toward self-concerned and away from amiable?
These purchasers want to understand how choosing your organization will benefit them. Whether they’re on their own or choosing services or products based on a team, they really emphasize benefit-focused reasons more than purchasers without this personality trait.
Much like those who are interactive, they are fine with unconventional methods as they feel they will see the results they need from those methods. Instead of prioritizing relationships like purchasers on the opposite side of this scale, they want to know about proof. Case studies and testimonials are more important to these purchasers than anything else.
• Which messaging tones do they respond to?
They want fact-based information with a straightforward tone that proves that the organization they’re researching understands exactly why they’re having trouble (even if they aren’t super problem aware yet themselves).
While they don’t mind a friendly tone, if they feel there is any fluff in the tone or messaging, they will become disinterested quickly.
Knowing that they have the data they need to make a decision they can be proud of later is of supreme importance to them, and because of this, they often prefer that the tone be decisive and certain instead of flexible and experimental.
• Which processes do they prefer?
In general, those with a selfish personality tend more toward done-with-you offers because they might want to micromanage your team. This is one of the ways you can distinguish between a selfish type and a self-concerned type, because usually the latter is more interested in the results and is happy to entrust your team with execution (or recommendations for products) once they feel they have enough information about how your solution will work with their specific problem.
The types of processes aren’t as important, since their main interest is in choosing an organization that is a good fit. As long as you have a proven method for delivering high-quality results, they usually prefer to be hands off.
• What types of visual marketing are they most interested in?
They will often prefer images and other visual marketing that emphasizes end results, and they may be looking for a visual representation of themselves in your marketing to better identify that they are a good fit for working with your organization.
In general, they may be drawn to darker, more muted colors like hunter green and royal blue, and may also identify with metal tones like silver and gold.
While some may prefer more scholastic looking marketing, meaning the use of a serif font with a traditional appearance works well, they are also open to more modern looking visuals that might include simple or more space-age sans serif fonts.
• How involved do they want to be in the process that creates the end result they’re looking for?
They value feeling like their role as the decision-maker in the process was vital, but don’t usually want to be super involved in the systems and processes that are used to get them the result they want.
It is also often important for them to feel like any outcomes that result from their work with your organization are credited not just to you, but also them for choosing to work with you in the first place.
• How many pieces of content do they want to digest before making a decision?
This could range from as few as 5 to as many as 60 depending on each unique purchaser and the level of caution they take in making decisions. While they often enjoy interacting with written content, they will also respond well to video case studies, written and video testimonials, and media featuring your organization as a spotlight for the types of results you’ve been able to achieve.
What generalizations can we make about purchasers based on where they fall on this specific scale?
While many organizations assume that they will be able to get better results with purchasers who have personality traits on the amiable side of this particular scale, they might underestimate how much time it takes for their team members to build trust-based relationships with these types of purchasers.
It is generally true that on the self-concerned side of this scale, there are usually fewer touchpoints involved. At the same time, it is valuable to consider that those on the genial side not only create referral situations (which is also true for self-concerned purchasers), but they are also usually extremely loyal and tend to be repeat clients or customers.
Ultimately, it is up to your team to think about how to incorporate this scale into your messaging and selling, but it’s also worth mentioning that your offers will probably naturally be more compatible with purchasers who lean toward one side of this particular scale.
If You Feel Stuck
If at any point during your personality-scale evaluations you find it difficult to assess which side of the scale works better for your organization, you can turn to your main touchstone principle. Here are a few questions that you can think through with your team:
• How would our touchstone principles connect with people on both sides of each
scale?
• What results does your main touchstone principle say you will get for clients or customers?
• How likely is it that you will be able to get those results for those based on their preferences and behaviors based on what the personality-trait scales teach us?
The answers you find in response should help you make a decision that will allow your team to move forward.
Exercise 2.10: Asking Helpful Questions
Course Manual 11: Nervous or Even-Tempered
A quick reminder: While personality traits help us as a form of psychographic information, there will be overlap between some preferences for unique purchasers on different scales (though they are usually based on different underlying reasons). In addition, not every generalization will match each unique purchaser.
The point of learning and implementing the different personality trait scales is to help your organization communicate more effectively with your unique purchasers, not to communicate perfectly. Because of the complex nature of humans, perfect communication simply does not exist.
Personality Traits
The 5 academically recognized personality traits include geniality, interactivity, diligence, amiability, and nervousness. They can be remembered using the acronym GIDAN.
In this particular manual we will be going over the nervous to even-tempered scale.
Let’s start off by describing what a unique purchaser looks like on both sides of this personality-trait scale.
What does nervous mean?
In general, a unique purchaser who is on the nervous side of this personality-trait scale will think about potential problems that can pop up. They are often stress sensitive, concerned about potential outcomes, want assurance that everything has or will be taken care of thoroughly, and do not want to make themselves more vulnerable from an operational standpoint.
While this side of this particular personality-trait scale is looked at as negative, many of the ways we communicate about offers and sales wouldn’t exist today without purchasers identifying with some of these traits at least a little. In fact, the entire insurance industry wouldn’t exist at all if it wasn’t for people seeking assurance that they will be able to control end results from destructive events in our lives like illness, injury, or property damage.
One of the world’s premier fashion designers, Vera Wang, has a high degree of nervous personality traits, and they have served her well as a woman known for her discerning tastes. Because her nervous traits are focused around sensitivity, she can be extremely creative while also naturally filtering out what won’t work. This has definitely contributed to her reputation as someone who understands visual sophistication.
How does a person who is more toward the nervous side of this scale act?
They will want content that centers on the ways your organization is able to make adjustments and assurances. While they are usually not verbally demanding, they do want to know that if they trust your company, that you will deliver what you say you can deliver. Because they are more sensitive to stress, they want these assurances delivered before they need to ask for them.
Taking a more proactive approach with these types of purchasers will help significantly when working to build know, like, and trust with them. It is extremely valuable to them to know that you have already thought about all of the potential complications that could arise.
In the copywriting world, when someone is calling out potential problems and then addressing them in a way that sets the readers’ minds at ease, industry experts often use the phrase “objection busting” to signify that they are using words to bust apart the possible objections that might keep a purchaser from acting.
When it comes to those with nervous personality traits, objection busting is a vital area of focus for any and all content that goes in front of them.
What happens to their purchasing behavior when they lean toward nervous and away from even-tempered?
The list of information they need to see before making a purchaser is often much more comprehensive. Because they don’t like to feel vulnerable, they don’t often act on faith that’s been built up through growing relationships. Instead, they need to see content like case studies or testimonials that help them understand that your organization has already thought of everything that could potentially go wrong.
In many cases, it’s not that they want to completely remove risk, but knowing that your company has ways to pivot when problems arise and that you have informed them of expected or likely problems beforehand will both go a long way to endear them toward your organization and team.
• Which messaging tones do they respond to?
They are seeking security. This often means that they want certainty and comfort as tones in communication they feel more likely to respond to. It is also valuable for them to know that the organization is experienced, knowledgeable, and has a good reputation.
While more traditional tones will appeal to them, they may also go for more contrary messaging as long as they feel the potential risks and problems have been discussed in a straightforward tone.
• Which processes do they prefer?
Since they are more interested in staying safe and minimizing stress, done-for-you offers allow them to take risks without assuming all of the personal, emotional responsibility they would need to assume if they were taking action on their own.
However, even though they prefer to have organizations do the work for them, they want to know there is a strong point of contact with one individual who can be reached directly when they have questions about how the processes are going.
In general, for purchasers with nervous personality traits, it is extremely valuable to assign a performance liaison who will communicate with that specific purchaser for the entirety of your time interaction with that purchaser.
Unprompted communication is also extremely welcome from purchasers with these personality traits, because they don’t feel that “no news is good news,” as they tend to worry if they aren’t given regular updates.
When it comes to products, they want to know that there will be a robust support system to assist them in set up or use, since they sometimes feel less confident in their own abilities to execute whatever instructions your company has sent. They want to be able to access one consistent person on your team instead of having to explain an ongoing problem over and over again.
If you find that a purchaser with nervous personality traits has contacted your support team several times, it would be helpful for that purchaser and everyone on your support team if you assign an individual to help them in the future via an email address or direct extension to use when calling.
• What types of visual marketing are they most interested in?
They usually prefer images that show what the emotional results will be: calm, confidence, and certainty. For color selection, simple is better. Blocks for colors might be preferred to gradients and background elements. While a serif font appeals to their information-seeking nature, they are just as likely to react to a sans serif font.
However, because of their sensitivity to stress, consistency is extremely valuable to them. So, whatever decisions your team makes on the visual aspects of your content and promotions, make sure it looks like your company each and every time.
• How involved do they want to be in the process that creates the end result they’re looking for?
Most often, they will prefer to hand the project off to someone they believe is capable of taking care of all related aspects. Once you have gained their trust, they are usually happy to leave implementation and risk taking to your organization.
Unfortunately, there will be some purchasers with nervous personality traits who think that micromanaging your team will assure them positive outcomes. If you encounter one of these people, you should set firm boundaries as soon as possible so that they understand they only have a specific role in the project and that your team will seek them out when they are needed.
If a micromanaging purchaser insists on having their way and disregarding your organization’s boundaries, we recommend they be given a full refund and a recommendation for an organization you know prefers more hands-on purchasers. This will be best in the long run for them, and especially you and your team.
• How many pieces of content do they want to digest before making a decision?
It might be that they digest as few as 10 pieces, but they want all of this content to be focused on reputation, busted objections, and real results that your organization has gotten for purchasers who have similar problems to what they’re facing.
Generally though, they will want to digest much more content to assure themselves that working with your organization doesn’t mean increased stress or worry for them or their organizations.
Case Study: Patagonia Leverages the Concerns of Nervous Purchasers
As a brand, Patagonia has always had a clear stance on environmental sustainability and preservation. But in recent years, they have worked hard to make sure that this is more evident in their marketing and content across various platforms. Why?
They realized that young adults are more interested now than ever before in sustainability, and many will choose brands they feel work to preserve a healthy state for our global environment based on their fears about the future.
Across all industries, we have seen a shift as far as approaches when it comes to younger audiences who tend to care more about values, but want to see action instead of brands bragging about how much they care. To address this, Patagonia implemented a way to create transparency for purchasers through a Supplier Code of Conduct that lists the mills and factories where their clothes are made publicly.
To take things a step further, they also promote the reuse of older clothing instead of purchasing new items—a key strategy that is encouraged by sustainability experts—going as far as providing repair manuals that show purchasers how to repair and patch things when they rip or break.
In an effort to make younger people aware of these sustainability initiatives, Patagonia created a “Work Wear College Tour” where they visited college campuses, had education material, and mended any clothing that students brought to them. This marketing technique proved to younger purchasers that Patagonia was more interested in sustainability than increasing profits.
What does even-tempered mean?
Even-tempered means that there isn’t much you or anyone in your organization can do to disrupt the confidence, manners, and self-control of this purchaser. They are often calm under pressure and are self-assured based on who they are as opposed to what they do.
As a purchaser, they are often thorough in their initial round of research, but tend to be fast at making a decision to buy once they feel they have gathered enough information. When your team works with them, they are not usually quick to give a lot of praise or criticism because of their even-keeled nature.
By default, they tend to be curious and ask a lot of questions, which your team of curiosity experts (we’re sure they are by now) should have no problems answering.
Actor Josh Duhamel is about as far toward even-tempered on this personality-trait scale as a person can be. He is well known for his charisma and relaxed personality. This contributes to his intense likability from fans of his work and other actors and experts in his industry alike.
How does a person who leans to the even-tempered side of this scale act?
Purchasers on the even-tempered side of this personality-trait scale tend to make extremely loyal, helpful clients or customers. While they prioritize both consistency and reputation, the most important aspect of what your organization can do to convince them to select you has to do with word-of-mouth promotion.
Because of their easy-going tendencies, they often have many good relationships and tend to turn to friends and family for referrals before diving into the research phase of making their decision.
They want information, but not to be bombarded by it. And they usually prioritize simplicity and will want the content you give them to be clear and concise.
What happens to their purchasing behavior when they lean toward even-tempered and away from nervous?
Once they feel that they have made a clear decision, it is difficult to change their minds. This is partly to do with the research and recommendations they have gotten about your organization. When you reach out to them initially, it is definitely a great idea to give them testimonials and case studies that highlight the way your team would help them in their unique situations.
The fact that they don’t change their minds easily might feel good when they choose to work with you, but it can feel equally awful when your team works to swing them away from working with another brand or making an attempt to do what you do on their own.
In order to keep the opportunity your company has when this type of purchaser is referred to you, respond with laser-focused information about how you can solve their problems as soon as possible.
• Which messaging tones do they respond to?
They are looking for a dependable, warm, and professional tone that validates what the person who recommended you to them has said.
Knowledgeable and trustworthy are also great tones to use in your messaging to attract purchasers that lean toward even-tempered.
While they want to know that you have a great reputation, it also helps if they know you are relational and community focused. Because their personality traits include confidence and contentment, they also love to know that the organizations they work with are focused on creating confidence and contentment in the people they impact, including those they share a community with.
• Which processes do they prefer?
In most cases, they are secure in their zones of geniuses are and prefer to trust industry experts to fill in the rest. This means they are most interested in done-for-you offers and quick-start guides that they can pass on to an assistant or other qualified person when it comes to products.
And when it comes to brand recommendations and options, they will often allow the person at the brand they choose to help them pick what product or service is the best fit for them based on that person’s experience.
• What types of visual marketing are they most interested in?
Often, they prefer friendly, smiling faces and warm colors like orange and yellow. Good options based on their even-tempered tendencies are also neutrals like cream and gray and relaxing colors like sage and gray-blue.
A mixture of both serif and san serif fonts is acceptable for them. However, since they value consistency, make sure to use fonts that are in line with the expected visuals of your organization’s brand.
It is also helpful to keep your images clean and simple, without gradients or too much background design. In this case, the purchasers often take your visuals and add them into the reputation category when they think about your company. Since they usually prefer straightforward communication, flashy branding might turn them away from your organization.
• How involved do they want to be in the process that creates the end result they’re looking for?
Those on the even-tempered side of this personality-trait scale are usually okay with whatever involvement makes sense according to your process, as long as you have worked to build trust on top of the borrowed trust that came from the person who referred them to you.
The great thing about their flexibility when it comes to involvement is that this will allow your company to shine by giving your team the space to work to get results without having the purchaser want to be overly-involved. At the same time, the purchaser is usually glad to give you some of their time if your team needs it to get better results.
• How many pieces of content do they want to digest before making a decision?
They usually want to see at least five pieces of content written by people outside of your organization. For example, they will often look through reviews on third-party sites and read every single testimonial on your website.
While they are looking for ways to verify what the person who referred them to you has said about your services, they will also often try to find the lowest ratings to determine if the things that other purchasers have complained about would be deal breakers for them.
What generalizations can we make about purchasers based on where they fall on this specific scale?
Out of all five personality-trait scales, the two sides of this particular scale actually have the most similarities between them, which most people don’t guess will be the case. The reason is that even though purchasers on both sides are motivated by differing foundational goals, the execution of both types of goals often looks similar.
As we’ve discussed before in this section of the workshop, it is extremely valuable to think about which side of this scale makes the most sense to target from an offer standpoint.
While many organizations will think about the personalities of those on their teams and try to find compatible personality traits that way, this won’t be as effective as looking at the five scales from an organizational standpoint.
It is helpful to remember that there are entire industries built around those on the nervous side of this scale: insurance, finance, and health. It’s also useful to be open to choosing which personality trait makes sense in a holistic way and working from there. Purchasers who might be considered traditionally difficult (like those on the nervous side of the scale) are much easier to help when we understand their underlying motivations.
Exercise 2.11: Imagine Initiatives
Course Manual 12: Purchaser Type
The OCEAN in the Room
Before we dive into the three different types of purchasers, we need to talk about the OCEAN in the room. If you already learned about the five main personality types in school, you might be wondering why we shifted from using OCEAN (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) to using GIDAN (genial, interactive, diligent, amiable, and nervous).
Well, the way that OCEAN is set up, each personality trait that is the opposite of the one listed in the acronym (because each letter symbolizes a scale) is set up to be negative. In addition, neuroticism has negative connotations as well. But the truth is, there are unique purchasers that are great fits for organizations on both sides of each of the five scales, and we wanted to create language to reflect that. Hence the use of GIDAN.
We wanted to you to know about this because we are going to continue to talk about how assuming one type of purchaser or person on a particular side of a personality-trait scale is automatically the wrong person to reach out to is destructive for your organization. Yes, boundaries are important for your team and your organization. But assumptions aren’t the same as boundaries, and assumptions can damage your organization by killing curiosity.
Engage Curiosity
Now, as we move into the three main purchaser types, keep in mind that while we do want to avoid purchasers who take a lot of our time without wanting to pay us what we deserve monetarily, there will be purchasing types that are better fits for some organizations than others.
It is valuable to engage curiosity each time we think about personality traits and purchasing types because if we assume that one group is essentially bad instead of “not the right fit,” we are going to miss out on opportunities to show up in front of underserved audiences. So, as we now learn and go through the following types of purchasers, get curious and wonder about which group or groups your organization can really engage with and impact.
For some companies, they will find great matches in purchasers who fall into all three types. Once you understand which purchaser types best fit your offers and company culture, your team members need to detect which language and tactics to use for each type of purchaser. That way, they can address the concerns of the purchasers in each separate group to communicate in ways that resonate with them. For other companies, they may want to target one specific purchaser type and focus all of their communication energy on engaging that group.
Let’s find out what the types are, how the people in each one communicate, and what your offers look like in the eyes of each of the three purchaser groups.
The Three Types of Purchasers
When we get curious about the types of purchasers, we need to think about the way they interact mentally and emotionally when it comes to buying behavior. We should not assume, however, that just because a person has a specific buying behavior that this tells us everything about them. For example, as we will see with the emotional purchaser type, the title we give them in relation to their buying personality doesn’t mean that everything they do in life revolves solely around their emotions.
Remember to engage deep curiosity and to use the power of that curiosity to leave judgment aside. This will help us as we discover the purchaser types and how we can better serve your organization with a deeper understanding of each group.
The three types of purchasers are:
• Intuitive
• Logical
• Emotional
Since there are only three different types of purchasers, they are easy to remember. And if you know all three, in most cases, your team can actually craft asset descriptions that hit all types in one or two sentences. This is a copywriting superpower that even most professional copywriters don’t have. Imagine how powerful it can be if everyone on your team understands how this concept works. Let’s break down each type to learn which communication approaches they prefer.
Type 1—The Intuitive Purchaser
This type of purchaser will know that they want to purchase something the instant they learn what the benefit of it is. They don’t care about logic or emotion. They just want a simple, short description of what the asset or service is and does. It doesn’t matter much which style you use to write for them because they purchase solely based on their intuition at the moment they are brought to a purchasing choice. It is also usually difficult to change their mind about their first intuition later on whether that was a “yes” or a “no” response.
It is important to note that some intuitive purchasers buy based on the connection or intuition they feel to the person selling them the item or service. While this is still intuition-based, it is important to know because there is a subtle relational aspect to consider.
Type 2—The Logical Purchaser
While the motivation behind the way this purchaser type analyzes your company’s offers or products stays the same, there are two main approaches they might take. If you had all of the logical purchasers together in a group, you could draw a line down the middle and divide them into two groups based on their preferred type of logical information. On one side, they prefer information to be broken down into facts. Data drives them. On the other side, they want to know about the systems & strategies your organizations use. Even if you don’t give them the details of how your “how” works, they want to know that you have a proven method.
Usually, this type of purchaser will not want detailed information that covers both the facts and the strategies. It will benefit your organization to have separate content written for each of these logical purchaser sub groups so that your team can assess which the purchaser is and give them the corresponding information.
The main attraction for this purchaser is a logical explanation of why they need your asset. What will it do for them? What actual result will it give them? And what will you help them avoid doing that they want to avoid? If you can answer these questions for them quickly—through the lens of either data or strategies/systems—and they have problem-, solution-, and you-awareness, they will purchase.
Type 3—The Emotional Purchaser
Don’t be deceived by the description of this purchaser. They are not actually deciding to buy based on their emotions at the time. And they also aren’t only driven by their emotions when it comes to decision making.
Most often, they decide whether to purchase based on how they imagine they will feel once they have the solution that your service or asset provides. This means you need to answer the question “What will the outcome be and how will they feel about it?” in order to get them to click “Buy now” or to say “Yes.”
Now that you know the three different types of purchasers, how can we harness this unique knowledge for good? We’re going to look at a few questions you can use when thinking about your asset and turn them into a description that will address all three purchaser types. This makes sure that no matter who is looking at your copy, it will speak to their specific purchasing style.
Note: While you can write to all three purchaser types in a small piece of copy (and should try to if it’s possible), do not try to appeal to all of the different sides of the personality-trait scales when it comes to your copy. That cannot work because of how many personality-trait scales there are and how much the different sides of each scale vary.
Case Study: Delivering the Data
In the 1990s, Applied Industrial Technologies realized there was an opportunity to give themselves a value-based reputation by helping their unique purchasers—maintenance, repair, and operating organizations in mining, production, and processing industries—see that they were doing more than their competitors by bringing in data.
Their approach was to look at the products they were selling them and instead of just shipping off whatever the company asked for, they used strategic information to use products that would help their customers save money on inventory, energy use, or maintenance. Any area that could actually be measured.
Then, they documented and published data surrounding the savings they were able to get for their clients. Today, they still use this technique and call it “documented value-added savings.” Now, part of their standard operating procedures is to train all of their team members to actively search for ways to make the operations of their purchasers better.
Imagine what it would look like for your organization to collect and share data based on the different purchasing types that come to your company for help.
Question Prompts by Purchaser Style
These questions will help your team understand and address the main information that matters to each distinct purchaser type so that you can explore better ways to communicate with people in each of the three groups.
For the Intuitive Purchaser
• What will this help your unique purchaser do?
For the Logical Purchaser
• What will the results of them being able to do this be? What benefit will they gain? (Think about how this will change their future… If they can do this thing, it means that they will finally see progress with what?)
For the Emotional Purchaser
• How will they feel and how will their life change once they get the results from this asset or service?
How Can We Bring the Three Together?
Now that you understand the type of purchaser behind each question prompt, you can write an epic asset or service description that speaks to all three types by plugging your answers into the formula below.
This [type of asset or service] will help you [thing it helps with] without you having to worry about [thing that annoys them] by giving you a [simple description of asset or service] that will work to get you the results you’ve wanted. And you can finally have [thing they want that means something to them] so that you feel more [adjective], [adjective], and [adjective].
Because you have the how, point out what has been annoying them, and describe what the help looks like and how having it will feel, you’ve addressed all three purchaser types—almost.
If you know that you have a logical purchaser who leans more toward data, you can put in a statistic somewhere as well. Or, you might replace the second part of the first sentence so that the description looks like this:
This [type of asset or service] will help you [thing it helps with] without you having to worry about [thing that annoys them], which we can prove because [percentage or some other measure] of those who used [product or service name] said it changed their [related topic] problem. Now, you can finally have [thing they want that means something to them] so that you feel more [adjective], [adjective], and [adjective].
How Understanding Purchaser Types Encourages Repeatable Results
When team members have a thorough understanding of how each purchaser type thinks, they will usually be able to identify each individual’s type is fairly quickly. We have seen those who spend a lot of time with unique purchasers be able to notice the purchaser type of the person they’re talking to or chatting with in as little as a few minutes.
While that sounds like an amazing feat, everyone on your team is capable of learning how to ascertain someone else’s style quickly, as long as they have opportunities to practice. And the reason why this is an important skill to cultivate is that when your team knows how to identify a purchaser type fast, they will be able to establish patterns that work well to create repeatable results.
So, how can you encourage your team to build this important and rarely cultivated skill? Well, as he teaches in his bestselling book, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, Adam Grant gives us an interesting framework by promoting a concept he describes as deliberate play.
How Can Team Members Learn to Determine Purchaser Styles in Minutes?
Deliberate play is a way to learn a new skill that involves an aspect of play that targets certain behaviors, skills, or movements. In the business world, we probably know this phrase better as gamification.
Because many humans are already set up to enjoy working toward a goal that seems interactive and entertaining, we can employ those desires to learn important skills.
You can use the following game as a way to start or close meetings or group interactions so that your team members get into the habit of thinking about which purchaser type another person is. And have fun doing it. We call this the “What Did You Buy Game.”
Here is an example script. Team member 1 (TM1) asks team member 2 (TM2) questions and tries to guess their purchaser type.
TM1: What was the last thing you bought?
TM2: A set of dishes.
TM1: That’s great. What made you want to buy new plates?
TM2: My old ones were chipped.
TM1: Then you really needed new ones. How did you decide which ones to buy?
This is where the game really begins.
Based on how TM2 answers, you can usually tell which purchaser type they are.
For example, if TM2 says they bought hand-thrown plates because of the artistry, they are telling you about the process. This means they might be a logical purchaser.
If they tell you that they thought about what it would be like to use the plates and how cool they would look at their next family dinner, they are more likely to be an emotional purchaser.
If they say, “I don’t know,” or “Because I liked them,” then they are more likely to be an intuitive purchaser.
You might be thinking that this sounds fine for meetings at your organization, but are wondering how your team members could play this game with unique purchasers.
Playing the Game Outside of Your Organization
If someone on your team goes up to a stranger or unique purchaser and says, “What did you buy last?” then they are probably going to get a strange look in response. However, if they introduce a favorite product or recent purchaser of their own into the conversation and then ask if the other person has recently purchased something they enjoyed or were excited about, that seems like a much more natural question.
You can also look at something they’re wearing (shoes, watches, bags, and jewelry are usually appropriate) and compliment them on that. Then you can follow up by saying something like, “Once you get to know me, you’ll realize I’m a curious person. What about that watch let you know that it was the one for you?”
Hint: If they say something was a gift, you can ask them what they like or appreciate about it.
Helping another person give you the information you really need about them is based in sales psychology. And while some people might think going into conversations with specific goals seems overly salesy, if your main goal is to help a purchaser by selling them a product or a service they need, and you can save them time when it comes to making a decision, usually they are grateful.
Once you know what type of purchaser someone is, you can give them the information they need to make a decision based on what they really want to hear.
In copy, we can address all three purchaser types quickly. This makes sense to do because we won’t be able to ask that person questions. They’re reading our content and we aren’t physically with them to speak to their specific purchaser type or concerns. And we want to be able to speak to all three purchasers in that case at the same time, since we know that this doesn’t cause fatigue or confusion like it would if we were trying to speak to purchasers on different sides of the same personality-trait scale at the same time.
However, in conversation, people are generally thankful any time we can tailor our communication so that we share information that they find useful. Plus, when we do this, we’re using concision.
As we discussed in the first course manual, the use of concision not only proves our mastery of the material we share, it also proves to the person we’re communicating with that we value their time. This often earns both their trust and respect.
Whether you thought about this when you got into your industry, every professional is in the business of people. If you put in the effort to find out how a person thinks and acts and makes the decisions they do, you’re going to be able to help them better faster. Shouldn’t that be the goal of every organization?
Exercise 2.12: Deliberate Play in Action
Project Studies
Project Study (Part 1) — General Management
The Head of this Department should provide a detailed report of how they were able to implement the information and exercises with each key stakeholder of their team based on the course manuals and each strategy and task outlined in the MOST section of this workshop. Address the question, “How were you able to transform thinking, develop new ideas and plans, implement those ideas and plans, and create a consistent guide for growth in that area that is accessible to all present and future team members?” to assess your team’s growth in each of the following 12 areas:
1. Engaging Curiosity
2. Outreach & Response
3. Purchaser Journey
4. Why No?
5. Problem Solving
6. Your Person
7. Genial or Introspective
8. Interactive or Self-Reliant
9. Diligent or Disorganized
10. Amiable or Self-Concerned
11. Nervous or Even-Tempered
12. Purchaser Types
Please include the results of this assessment.
Project Study (Part 2) — Human Resources
The Head of this Department should provide a detailed report of how they were able to implement the information and exercises with each key stakeholder of their team based on the course manuals and each strategy and task outlined in the MOST section of this workshop. Address the question, “How were you able to transform thinking, develop new ideas and plans, implement those ideas and plans, and create a consistent guide for growth in that area that is accessible to all present and future team members?” to assess your team’s growth in each of the following 12 areas:
1. Engaging Curiosity
2. Outreach & Response
3. Purchaser Journey
4. Why No?
5. Problem Solving
6. Your Person
7. Genial or Introspective
8. Interactive or Self-Reliant
9. Diligent or Disorganized
10. Amiable or Self-Concerned
11. Nervous or Even-Tempered
12. Purchaser Types
Please include the results of this assessment.
Project Study (Part 3) — Product/Project Management
The Head of this Department should provide a detailed report of how they were able to implement the information and exercises with each key stakeholder of their team based on the course manuals and each strategy and task outlined in the MOST section of this workshop. Address the question, “How were you able to transform thinking, develop new ideas and plans, implement those ideas and plans, and create a consistent guide for growth in that area that is accessible to all present and future team members?” to assess your team’s growth in each of the following 12 areas:
1. Engaging Curiosity
2. Outreach & Response
3. Purchaser Journey
4. Why No?
5. Problem Solving
6. Your Person
7. Genial or Introspective
8. Interactive or Self-Reliant
9. Diligent or Disorganized
10. Amiable or Self-Concerned
11. Nervous or Even-Tempered
12. Purchaser Types
Please include the results of this assessment.
Project Study (Part 4) — Information Technology
The Head of this Department should provide a detailed report of how they were able to implement the information and exercises with each key stakeholder of their team based on the course manuals and each strategy and task outlined in the MOST section of this workshop. Address the question, “How were you able to transform thinking, develop new ideas and plans, implement those ideas and plans, and create a consistent guide for growth in that area that is accessible to all present and future team members?” to assess your team’s growth in each of the following 12 areas:
1. Engaging Curiosity
2. Outreach & Response
3. Purchaser Journey
4. Why No?
5. Problem Solving
6. Your Person
7. Genial or Introspective
8. Interactive or Self-Reliant
9. Diligent or Disorganized
10. Amiable or Self-Concerned
11. Nervous or Even-Tempered
12. Purchaser Types
Please include the results of this assessment.
Project Study (Part 5) — Sales
The Head of this Department should provide a detailed report of how they were able to implement the information and exercises with each key stakeholder of their team based on the course manuals and each strategy and task outlined in the MOST section of this workshop. Address the question, “How were you able to transform thinking, develop new ideas and plans, implement those ideas and plans, and create a consistent guide for growth in that area that is accessible to all present and future team members?” to assess your team’s growth in each of the following 12 areas:
1. Engaging Curiosity
2. Outreach & Response
3. Purchaser Journey
4. Why No?
5. Problem Solving
6. Your Person
7. Genial or Introspective
8. Interactive or Self-Reliant
9. Diligent or Disorganized
10. Amiable or Self-Concerned
11. Nervous or Even-Tempered
12. Purchaser Types
Please include the results of this assessment.
Project Study (Part 6) — Marketing
The Head of this Department should provide a detailed report of how they were able to implement the information and exercises with each key stakeholder of their team based on the course manuals and each strategy and task outlined in the MOST section of this workshop. Address the question, “How were you able to transform thinking, develop new ideas and plans, implement those ideas and plans, and create a consistent guide for growth in that area that is accessible to all present and future team members?” to assess your team’s growth in each of the following 12 areas:
1. Engaging Curiosity
2. Outreach & Response
3. Purchaser Journey
4. Why No?
5. Problem Solving
6. Your Person
7. Genial or Introspective
8. Interactive or Self-Reliant
9. Diligent or Disorganized
10. Amiable or Self-Concerned
11. Nervous or Even-Tempered
12. Purchaser Types
Please include the results of this assessment.
Project Study (Part 7) — Operations
The Head of this Department should provide a detailed report of how they were able to implement the information and exercises with each key stakeholder of their team based on the course manuals and each strategy and task outlined in the MOST section of this workshop. Address the question, “How were you able to transform thinking, develop new ideas and plans, implement those ideas and plans, and create a consistent guide for growth in that area that is accessible to all present and future team members?” to assess your team’s growth in each of the following 12 areas:
1. Engaging Curiosity
2. Outreach & Response
3. Purchaser Journey
4. Why No?
5. Problem Solving
6. Your Person
7. Genial or Introspective
8. Interactive or Self-Reliant
9. Diligent or Disorganized
10. Amiable or Self-Concerned
11. Nervous or Even-Tempered
12. Purchaser Types
Please include the results of this assessment.
Project Study (Part 8) — Finance
The Head of this Department should provide a detailed report of how they were able to implement the information and exercises with each key stakeholder of their team based on the course manuals and each strategy and task outlined in the MOST section of this workshop. Address the question, “How were you able to transform thinking, develop new ideas and plans, implement those ideas and plans, and create a consistent guide for growth in that area that is accessible to all present and future team members?” to assess your team’s growth in each of the following 12 areas:
1. Engaging Curiosity
2. Outreach & Response
3. Purchaser Journey
4. Why No?
5. Problem Solving
6. Your Person
7. Genial or Introspective
8. Interactive or Self-Reliant
9. Diligent or Disorganized
10. Amiable or Self-Concerned
11. Nervous or Even-Tempered
12. Purchaser Types
Please include the results of this assessment.
Project Study (Part 9) — Corporate Communications
The Head of this Department should provide a detailed report of how they were able to implement the information and exercises with each key stakeholder of their team based on the course manuals and each strategy and task outlined in the MOST section of this workshop. Address the question, “How were you able to transform thinking, develop new ideas and plans, implement those ideas and plans, and create a consistent guide for growth in that area that is accessible to all present and future team members?” to assess your team’s growth in each of the following 12 areas:
1. Engaging Curiosity
2. Outreach & Response
3. Purchaser Journey
4. Why No?
5. Problem Solving
6. Your Person
7. Genial or Introspective
8. Interactive or Self-Reliant
9. Diligent or Disorganized
10. Amiable or Self-Concerned
11. Nervous or Even-Tempered
12. Purchaser Types
Please include the results of this assessment.
Project Study (Part 10) — E-Business
The Head of this Department should provide a detailed report of how they were able to implement the information and exercises with each key stakeholder of their team based on the course manuals and each strategy and task outlined in the MOST section of this workshop. Address the question, “How were you able to transform thinking, develop new ideas and plans, implement those ideas and plans, and create a consistent guide for growth in that area that is accessible to all present and future team members?” to assess your team’s growth in each of the following 12 areas:
1. Engaging Curiosity
2. Outreach & Response
3. Purchaser Journey
4. Why No?
5. Problem Solving
6. Your Person
7. Genial or Introspective
8. Interactive or Self-Reliant
9. Diligent or Disorganized
10. Amiable or Self-Concerned
11. Nervous or Even-Tempered
12. Purchaser Types
Please include the results of this assessment.
Project Study (Part 11) — Business Development
The Head of this Department should provide a detailed report of how they were able to implement the information and exercises with each key stakeholder of their team based on the course manuals and each strategy and task outlined in the MOST section of this workshop. Address the question, “How were you able to transform thinking, develop new ideas and plans, implement those ideas and plans, and create a consistent guide for growth in that area that is accessible to all present and future team members?” to assess your team’s growth in each of the following 12 areas:
1. Engaging Curiosity
2. Outreach & Response
3. Purchaser Journey
4. Why No?
5. Problem Solving
6. Your Person
7. Genial or Introspective
8. Interactive or Self-Reliant
9. Diligent or Disorganized
10. Amiable or Self-Concerned
11. Nervous or Even-Tempered
12. Purchaser Types
Please include the results of this assessment.
Project Study (Part 12) — Customer Service
The Head of this Department should provide a detailed report of how they were able to implement the information and exercises with each key stakeholder of their team based on the course manuals and each strategy and task outlined in the MOST section of this workshop. Address the question, “How were you able to transform thinking, develop new ideas and plans, implement those ideas and plans, and create a consistent guide for growth in that area that is accessible to all present and future team members?” to assess your team’s growth in each of the following 12 areas:
1. Engaging Curiosity
2. Outreach & Response
3. Purchaser Journey
4. Why No?
5. Problem Solving
6. Your Person
7. Genial or Introspective
8. Interactive or Self-Reliant
9. Diligent or Disorganized
10. Amiable or Self-Concerned
11. Nervous or Even-Tempered
12. Purchaser Types
Please include the results of this assessment.
Program Benefits
Management
- Solution Inquiry
- Inclusivity
- Clarity
- Confidence
- Interior Resources
- Mission
- Organisational Reset
- Resilience
- Futurecasting
- Mindset
Marketing
- Communication
- Targets
- Sales Psychology
- Emotional Connect
- Rapid Progress
- Creative Focus
- Concision
- Identify Obstacles
- Psychographics
- Refined Offers
Human Resources
- Alignment
- Correctness
- Communication
- Recognition
- Reach
- Modern Shift
- Valued Skills
- Diversity
- Creativity
- Attention Strategy
Client Telephone Conference (CTC)
If you have any questions or if you would like to arrange a Client Telephone Conference (CTC) to discuss this particular Unique Consulting Service Proposition (UCSP) in more detail, please CLICK HERE.