The Buyer’s Quadrant

As a person who speaks with and handles people in your career, understanding your customers, clients or employees is by far the most important skill you can have. You can have all the techniques and theories and methods you want, but without knowing how people think it’s all a waste.

Knowing how people think can be difficult, we admit that. But with practice and good observational skills, you can learn to recognize and address all kinds of people in a way that will speak to them on the level they relate to best. One of these good practices is mastering the Buyer’s Quadrant.

The Buyer’s Quadrant refers to the way a buyer makes purchasing decisions. Every customer is unique in their thinking, but everyone falls into some of the same categories that you can use to make their experience much better.

This is how the Buyer’s Quadrant looks. The axes are speed of the sale running horizontally and priority running vertically.

As you can see, every person is prone to buying at a certain speed, either quickly or slowly. That speed is paired with their priority. Priorities range from the task or goal at hand and the relationship to the people or decision at hand.

If you tend to make buying decisions quickly you might be on the left side of the graph. Then add in what your priorities are, like achieving the goal or task. The intersection between the two lines is what quadrant you are as a buyer. Some people may not prefer the task over the relationship, therefore their quadrant might include both, but that still tells you a lot about their needs.

Need More People Advice?

Understanding the Buyer’s Quadrant reveals people’s thinking strategy and personality, key components to catering to a person’s true needs. Here at Service Excellence we teach the Buyer’s Quadrant to every sales, tech, CSR and managers PRESS PLAY class. It is an integral part of our training, and we build on those principles in our other lessons. If you’re ready to hear more about mastering people and their needs, contact our team!