Two people can walk into the exact same sales conversation and need two completely different pitches. That's not a metaphor. It's a specific practice I used to run at my old agency, and it worked well enough that we built it into how we handled every single lead.

The distinction was simple: intuitive or sensor. Two of the sixteen personality-type letters, and the two that predict, more than almost anything else, how someone wants information delivered.

What changes when you know which one you're talking to

An intuitive lead wants the big idea first. Vision, direction, where this could go. They don't want the five-step process up front, and if you lead with it, you lose them before you get to the part that would have excited them. Budget and process come later, once they're bought into the direction.

A sensor lead wants the opposite in the opposite order. They want the steps. They want to know what happens week one, what it costs, what the deliverable looks like. Open with vision and you sound vague, maybe even like you don't have a plan, even when you do.

Most leads don't know which one they are, and they definitely don't announce it. You have to listen for it in the first two minutes, usually in the shape of their first question. Do they ask what's possible, or do they ask what it costs and how long it takes. That's usually the whole answer.

Get the type wrong and you're not just less persuasive. You're speaking a dialect the other person has to translate in real time, and most people won't bother.