Sit in on enough sales conversations and four patterns appear: the order taker, the presenter, the relationship builder and the adviser. They are not personality types and they are not fixed. They are habits, and each one produces a predictable result — a predictable win rate, a predictable average order value and a predictable amount of discount given away.
This matters to an owner because most businesses manage all four the same way, pay all four the same way, and then cannot work out why the same training lands brilliantly with one person and bounces off the next. Worse, most owners promote the wrong one, because one of these four is by far the easiest to like.
What are the four?
The order taker
Responds to what comes in. Quotes what was asked for, to the specification given, and waits. Never causes a problem, never uncovers one either. Where the customer genuinely knows what they want, this is adequate and cheap. Anywhere else it means competing purely on price against whoever else was asked.
The presenter
Knows the product properly and cannot wait to tell you. Talks for most of the meeting, treats objections as things to be overcome rather than as information, and is genuinely convinced that if the customer understood the specification they would buy. Strong on knowledge, weak on fit, and exhausting to be sold to.
The relationship builder
Everybody likes them. They remember names, birthdays and how your son’s exams went, and they give generously of their time. They are also the person most likely to knock money off to avoid an awkward moment, to accept “let me think about it” without asking what about, and to leave a meeting without ever finding out who else has to sign.
The adviser
Talks about the customer’s business rather than their own product. Turns up having done work, and tells the buyer something about their own situation they did not already know. Comfortable with a little tension: will disagree, will name the elephant, will say that what has been asked for is not what is needed. Takes control of process and price rather than negotiating against themselves.
Which game are you actually in?
Be honest about the sale you run, because the model does not say three of the four are useless. A simple sale has one decision-maker, a short cycle, low perceived risk and a buyer who already knows what they want. Order takers and relationship builders do perfectly well there, and a challenging adviser can be an irritation.
A complex sale has several people involved, at least one of whom you never meet. It has a long cycle, a meaningful consequence if it goes wrong, and a buyer who is not certain what they actually need. That last one is the key. When the buyer is unsure, the seller who helps them work it out has an advantage nobody can quote against.
Why the likeable one loses the big deals
This is the uncomfortable part, and it usually describes somebody the owner is fond of. Being liked and being valued are different things. The relationship builder trades tension for warmth, and every conversation that moves a complex deal forward contains some tension: asking about budget, asking who else has to agree, saying the timescale is unrealistic, telling a customer the problem they have described is not their real problem, holding a price when the buyer pauses.
Avoid all of those and you get a pleasant relationship and a stalled pipeline full of deals that are “looking positive”. You also get the discount, because when the only tool for keeping a customer happy is price, price is what moves.
A worked example
Illustrative arithmetic, not real people. Two salespeople, same product, same territory, same year. Alan is the relationship builder: 40 quotes, 22 won, average order value £6,800, so around £149,600. His average discount was 9 per cent. Customers ring the office to say how good he is. Sam is the adviser: 28 quotes, 14 won, average order value £11,400, so around £159,600. Her average discount was 2 per cent. Two customers have found her hard work.
On revenue they are close. On margin they are not. Alan gave away roughly £14,800 in discount over the year, Sam roughly £3,200. That difference comes straight off the bottom line, because a discount carries no cost with it — every pound of it was profit. Alan also produced 40 quotes to Sam’s 28, which is a great deal of estimating and follow-up for the extra volume.
Then look at where the deals came from. Sam’s higher average order value is not luck. She asks better questions earlier, so she finds the whole problem instead of the piece the customer had already scoped. Alan quotes what he is asked for, beautifully, and knocks a bit off. Now the punchline: guess which of the two the owner is planning to promote to sales manager, and whose habits the rest of the team will then be trained in.
How to use it this week
- Place everyone who sells on the grid, including yourself. Be honest rather than kind. Most owner-managed businesses discover the only adviser in the building is the owner, which is precisely why sales do not scale.
- Pull the discount data. Average discount by salesperson for the last twelve months. It is the fastest tell there is, and it is usually never looked at.
- Write down the one insight your people can teach. Something true about your customers’ businesses they will not have worked out. Without it, “be an adviser” is just an instruction to sound clever.
- Agree three questions that must be asked in every first meeting. Why now. Who else is involved. What happens if nothing changes. Then check they were asked rather than hoping.
- Change what you inspect in the pipeline review. Stop asking how it is going. Ask what you taught them, who else you met, and what you both agreed as the next step and date. Vague answers are the diagnosis.
- Stop rewarding likeability on its own. Being popular with customers is an asset, not a result. Look at margin retained, average order value and win rate on the deals that matter.
These are behaviours, not personalities. You cannot make a quiet person loud, but you can absolutely teach a relationship builder to ask who else is involved, and an order taker to ask why now. Three habits do most of the work: teach something the customer did not know, tailor it to the person in front of you, and take control of the process, the next step and the price.
Questions to ask yourself
- Out of 10, how much of your sales result depends on you personally being in the room?
- Which of the four best describes the people selling for you, and what have you been rewarding?
- What could your team teach a customer that the customer could not find out for themselves?
- When did somebody in your business last tell a customer they were asking for the wrong thing?
Where this fits in coaching
Sales habits sit inside our business coaching, because most owners try to fix sales with more leads or a better brochure when the constraint is the shape of the conversation being had after the lead arrives. Read it with The Golden Circle, which is how you stop the conversation becoming a price comparison in the first place, and 5 Star Coaching, which is the same discipline of asking before telling, applied inside your own team.
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Frequently asked questions
Should I only hire advisers?
No — hire for the sale you actually run. If your sale has one decision-maker, a short cycle and a buyer who knows what they want, an order taker or a relationship builder is efficient and cheaper, and a challenging adviser can irritate people who simply wanted a price. The adviser habit earns its keep where several people are involved, the cycle is long and the buyer is unsure what they need. Most businesses have both kinds of sale running side by side, so the practical move is to match the person to the deal rather than to standardise everyone onto one style.
How do I develop an adviser out of the people I already have?
Give them something to teach and something to ask. The insight comes from you: one true thing about your customers’ businesses that they would not work out for themselves, written down and rehearsed. The questions come from the process: why now, who else is involved, and what happens if nothing changes, asked in every first meeting and checked afterwards. Then change what you inspect in pipeline reviews, from how it is going to what was taught, who else was met and what was agreed. Behaviour follows inspection far more reliably than it follows training.
Is discounting really the best signal to look at?
It is the fastest, because it needs no new data and nobody can argue with it. Pull average discount by salesperson for the last twelve months and the pattern usually appears immediately. Discount matters more than it looks, because it carries no cost with it — every pound conceded comes straight off profit, where a pound of revenue does not. Pair it with average order value and win rate on the deals that matter, and you can see the habit rather than the personality: high discount with high likeability is the relationship builder, and it is the combination owners most often promote.