Penn State GEW 2014
Tim Kerchinski - PennTAP
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Entrepreneurs Manage a LOT of
Relationships
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Entrepreneurs Are Salespeople!
(actually, we ALL sell ourselves and ideas everyday)
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Adaptive Selling and Success
• Adaptive selling emphasizes the importance
of satisfying customer needs.
• Being adaptable increases trust and
commitment and results in higher level
relationships.
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Knowing your Style and How to Adapt
It to Others
• Adaptive behavior means people should alter
the content and form of their presentation so
others will be able to absorb the information
easily and find it relevant to their situation
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The Social Style Matrix
• Popular training program that companies use
to help sales people adapt their
communication styles
• Adjust your behavior to mirror or match your
customer’s social style
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Dimensions of Social Styles
• Responsiveness
– Based on how emotional people tend to get in
social situations
– Readily express joy, anger, and sorrow
– Concerned with others
– Informal and casual in social situations
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Dimensions of Social Styles
• Less responsive people
– Devote more effort to control emotions
– Cautious, intellectual, serious, formal and
businesslike
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Indicators of Responsiveness
Exhibit 5.3
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Dimensions of Social Styles
• Assertiveness
– The degree to which people have opinions about
issues and make their positions clear to others
– Speak out
– Make strong statements
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Dimensions of Social Styles
• Unassertive people
– Rarely dominate a social situation
– Often keep their opinions to themselves
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Indicators of Assertiveness
Exhibit 5.2
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Indicators of Assertiveness
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Social Style Matrix
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5-14
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Social Style Matrix
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Interacting with Various Social Styles
• Drivers
• Expressives
– swift, efficient decision
makers.
– focus on the present and
appear to have little
concern with the past or
future
– focus on the future,
directing their time and
effort toward achieving
their vision.
– have little concern for
practical details in
present situations
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Interacting with Various Social Styles
• Amiables
• Analyticals
– achieve their objectives
by working with people,
developing an
atmosphere of mutual
respect
– like facts, principles, and
logic
– suspicious of power and
personal relationships
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Identifying Other’s Social Styles
• Concentrate on their behavior and disregard
how you feel about the behavior
• Avoid assuming that specific jobs or functions
are associated with a social style
• Test your assessments
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Cues for Recognizing Social Styles
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Social Styles and Presentations
• There is no one best social style for a
salesperson or presenter.
• Presenters must recognize the customer’s
needs and expectations.
• The presenter’s personal social style tends to
determine the way he or she typically
presents ideas and concepts.
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Adjusting Social Styles
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Customer Expectations Based on
Social Styles
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Versatility
• Versatility
– The effort people make to increase the
productivity of a relationship by adjusting to the
needs of the other party
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Systems for Developing Adaptive
Selling Skills
• It is imperative that people adjust to their
audience
• Training methods such as the social style
matrix are simply a first step in developing
knowledge for practicing adaptive selling
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Google Social Styles for More Info
and Practice!
• Slides of today’s presentation will be on the
GEW website www.gewpennstate.org
• THANK YOU for attending GEW !
• Tim Kerchinski – Pennsylvania Technical
Assistance Program (PennTAP)
• txk128@psu.edu 814-865-4388
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5-25
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