Four client types and how to sell to each
You speak to somebody in plain words, they ought to understand — and they do not. It is not that anybody is stupid: one person needs figures and deadlines, another emotion and scale, a third to hear that things get easier for their family. Below are four types, the signs of each right there in the text of the listing, what to say, and where to find them.
You speak to somebody in plain words, they ought to understand — and they do not. It is not that anybody is stupid: one person needs figures and deadlines, another emotion and scale, a third to hear that things get easier for their family. Below are four types, the signs of each right there in the text of the listing, what to say, and where to find them.
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"I'm speaking plainly and he isn't hearing me"
A familiar feeling. You explain your offer clearly, to the point, no padding. He nods and does not buy.
All my life people have told me: "Seryoga, you're like a psychologist, you find the key to everyone." For a long time I did not understand what they meant — I am no magician. Then I started working it out: how I spoke to this person, how to that one, why differently.
It turned out there was no magic in it. I always understand exactly who I am talking to.
Over years in sales I identified four main types. They are not psychology from books — they are about what a person responds to and what goes past them.
The example that explains everything. You come to an investor with an idea for a flying car. You show the blueprints. He is an investor, not an engineer — he does not read them. He will not understand you not because he is stupid but because you are speaking a language he has no use for.
He needs something else: why this idea matters to the world and what he gets for putting money in.
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Type 1. Driver
Who they are. Leaders, influencers, ambitious people. Energy, travel, team, goals.
How to spot them. They talk fast, loudly, crisply. They dress boldly. In the text of a listing: exclamation marks, words like "brilliant", "powerful", "we're launching", "breakthrough", a description of scale instead of details.
How to speak. On emotion. A compliment — glad to hear from you, glad you wrote. Lean on adjectives: a powerful project, a striking result, a charged story. A couple of jokes are fine to lift the mood.
What does not work. Specifics. Details do not interest them much — they look at the colour of the thing.
Where to find them. Influencers, Instagram, travel chats, media chats, communities around high-energy interests: diving, motorsport, music video production.
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Type 2. Controller
Who they are. Directors, investors, business owners. People in leadership positions.
How to spot them. In the listing: deadlines, volumes, requirements as a list, the price question in the very first message. No emotion.
How to speak. Correctly, precisely, to the point. No frills and no striking phrases. Say hello, ask how the business is going. Then figures, achievements, facts. What specifically they get.
And the thing that works best with them: propose a meeting in person. People like this prefer discussing business face to face. The wording: it matters to me to meet and show you this in person, and I am confident that hour will be valuable to you.
What does not work. Emotion and elevated language. They read it as an attempt to sell air.
Where to find them. Entrepreneur chats, job boards, clubs. And above all business conferences and forums: the concentration of such people there is enormous and they exchange contacts readily. The subject of the conference barely matters.
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Type 3. Supporter
Who they are. People connected to volunteering, children, animals, nature. Often in a steady job. They live for others.
How to spot them. In the text: care, "it matters to us", "our clients", mentions of a team or a family. No aggression in the phrasing.
How to speak. On warm energy. Ask how the people close to them are.
A technique that works almost without fail. Ask not "how are you" but how the thing they cherish is doing. My mother will answer "fine" to "how are you". Ask how her flowers are doing and you have won her over: she grows them, tends them, each one has its own character.
The emphasis in your offer goes on the benefit to family and those close to them. Not "you will earn" but "this will give your children, your family, these possibilities".
Where to find them. Volunteering chats, charitable foundations, communities built around care.
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Type 4. Analyser
Who they are. IT, the exact sciences, engineers. They decide slowly and deliberately.
How to spot them. Clarifying questions about the technical side. They ask for detail before any talk of money.
How to speak. Facts, figures, a comparison of options. And — without fail — give them time to think. Pressure works against you here.
What is critical. Keep your word. If you said Wednesday, send it on Wednesday. An Analyser tests reliability on small things.
Where to find them. IT communities, technical forums, academic conferences.
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The critical fork: a client type is not a segment
The mistake that costs more deals than any other, and I see it constantly.
These are two independent axes and you cannot derive one from the other.
The segment is why the person came. What hurts, which problem they are solving. The segment determines the offer: what you propose to them.
The type is how to talk to them. How they make decisions, what reassures them, what irritates them. The type determines the tone.
Why they get confused
It seems logical: the person arrived afraid, so they must be anxious, so speak softly and reassure them.
And that is a mistake. Somebody fearful by segment very often turns out to be a Controller by type. They do not need "don't worry about it" — they need a plan: what exactly will happen, in what order, how long it takes and what is required from them.
Soft reassuring phrases do not calm a person like that, they put them on guard: what they hear is an evasion of specifics.
What this looks like in practice
One and the same segment — people afraid of choosing the wrong contractor:
Driver — reassured by speed and confidence. "We'll do it in a week, here are three pieces of the same type."
Controller — reassured by a plan. "Three stages, here is what's ready by which date, here is what's needed from you."
Supporter — reassured by what happens to the people. "Your team won't have to retrain, here is how it gets introduced."
Analyser — reassured by comparison. "Here are two options, here is how they differ, take a look at the weekend."
One offer — remove the risk. Four tones.
The rule
Determine both axes separately and do not derive one from the other. The segment reads from what the person writes about. The type reads from how they write it.
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Compatibility: why some people are hard going
A useful observation that saves your nerves.
A Driver gets on easily with a Controller and a Supporter, and finds an Analyser hard going: too slow for them.
A Controller gets on with a Driver and an Analyser, and worse with a Supporter: too soft for them.
A Supporter gets on with a Driver and an Analyser.
What to do when a conversation is not flowing. Do not push harder. Try approaching with another type's script: you may simply have read them wrong.
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How to identify a type without seeing the person
The main practical question: in a job feed you see only text.
Look at four things.
Length and rhythm. Short clipped sentences, a list of requirements — Controller. An expansive emotional text — Driver.
What comes first. Price and deadlines — Controller. A description of the project and how great it is — Driver. Concern for customers or the team — Supporter. Technical detail — Analyser.
Whether there are numbers. Their presence almost always points to a Controller or an Analyser.
What the person is worried about. A Controller fears overpaying and getting nothing. A Driver fears it being dull and slow. A Supporter fears letting their people down. An Analyser fears you have not understood the task.
The rule that always works: answer in the same register the listing is written in. Somebody who writes drily expects a dry answer.
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One structure, different contents
A common mistake is thinking each type needs its own script.
The order of the conversation is the same for everybody: understand the situation → name the problem → show the consequences → propose a solution → close on a concrete next step.
What changes is what you fill each point with.
For a Driver you show the result in broad strokes. For a Controller, dates, stages and figures. For a Supporter, whose life gets easier. For an Analyser, a comparison of options and time to decide.
One structure, four fillings. Trying to write four different scripts is a way of writing none.
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What to do today
One action, fifteen minutes.
Open the five most recent listings in your category and identify each type by the four signs above. Not to apply — as practice.
Usually three out of five are recognised immediately and two leave you unsure. That is normal: accuracy comes after a dozen, not on the first attempt.
And the second thing: take your last application that went unanswered and look at the register it is written in. Often it turns out you wrote emotionally to a Controller, or drily to a Driver.
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What this looks like in practice
Identifying types by hand for every listing is an evening's work. The catalogue has an AI sales assistant built on transcripts of Sergey Molokov's lectures: it combines psychological diagnosis — Reiss's sixteen desires, the enneagram, the Rogerian approach — with the applied methods of Rackham's SPIN and Cialdini's influence.
What makes it different from an ordinary chat. It takes not only text but screenshots of client threads and call transcripts. So it works on your actual deal rather than an invented situation.
What people run through it
The job feed. Denis used it to select jobs from chats: you show it the text of a listing and get the client's type, what they fear, what tone to answer in, and a finished cover letter for that type. That is how the client who ended up buying a $1 900 system was found.
The quote and the proposal. The same assistant builds the brief for a deck for a particular type: structure, emphases, number of slides, and separately the list of phrases to avoid.
Breaking down a recorded conversation. You upload the transcript and get a portrait of the decision-maker: hidden fears, true motivators, pains. And separately, where you underperformed.
Preparing for an interview. It works both ways: the same type analysis applies when you are the one being interviewed.
The modes almost nobody knows about
After answering, it assesses its own work against a rubric — completeness, clarity, accessibility, use of sources, expert perspective — with scores and reasoning. And it offers nine refinement modes: harsh assessment, focus group, expert review, a fresh approach, a change of format, "take it to the maximum".
The practical point: you do not rewrite your request ten times. You get the first answer, run the harsh assessment, then the focus group — and out comes a document that has been through three rounds of checking.
The negotiation simulator
The same assistant plays a client of a particular type: a Driver decides on the fly and does not read to the end, a Controller demands deadlines, a Supporter goes quiet under pressure, an Analyser takes time out.
The same conversation gets run four times, and it becomes visible where you were pushed over in each case. A mistake on the simulator costs nothing; a mistake with a live client costs the deal.
What else is in the sales module
Ten lessons from Sergey Molokov: the top ten niches and how to talk to them, motivation, burnout, rejections, shaping an offer around demand, a personal brand without case studies, the premium product, four client types, and a real sales call taken apart.
Included in the Basic plan.
Registration is free and opens three days of full Basic access — the sales module, all 140+ assistants and six foundational express courses.
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What to read next
[Reading the client type from the job posting](/en/blog/client-type-from-posting) — a real listing taken apart step by step, with the type identified and a finished letter.
[A cover letter with no portfolio](/en/blog/cover-letter-without-portfolio) — how to apply the type in a first message.
["How much does it cost" — what to say](/en/blog/what-to-answer-about-price) — three techniques for the price question in the cold.
[The fifteen-minute client call](/en/blog/fifteen-minute-sales-call) — five stages of the conversation and what to change per type.
[AI API pricing in 2026](/en/blog/llm-api-pricing) — what a request costs and how to work out your own costs.