Have you ever taken the DiSC, CSS or other similar communication style/personality assessment? Many of us took the CSS last week, and while the assessment uncovered some interesting insights about our own personalities, it also got us thinking about how we communicate with our clients’ target customers.
The CSS (Communication Style Survey) classifies respondents into four primary styles: thinkers, feelers, sensors and intuitors. While the test is meant to help us understand our personal styles, it also gives us a great deal of information about how to best communicate with people who are in other categories than our own. For example, in taking the test, we learned that most thinkers can never get enough facts and details, while sensors prefer to receive just topline information that gets straight to the point.
While the CSS says that only those who take the test themselves can truly identify their communication style, it’s often pretty easy to categorize people we know into one of the four groups based on the descriptions. It’s also common to find people with certain communication styles working in particular professions. For example, CEOs of major companies are likely to be intuitors, while small business owners are likely to be sensors and nurses are likely to be feelers. This could be incredibly useful from a B2B marketing perspective. It means that, as long as we truly understand our target customer, we should be able to make a pretty good guess about the communication style they prefer, and then tailor our communications accordingly. If we’re dealing with a group of thinkers, we may choose to present information in detailed charts and graphs, while we might choose to use creative visualizations of information for intuitors. What do you think? Could making an educated guess about the communication styles of our target customers have a positive impact on marketing?
Image via First Capital Internet Marketing Consultants.
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