Article 2 in The 7 Client Personality Types series
This article is part of a series on The 7 Client Personality Types: an Ethical Sales framework to help you transform every sales conversation with potential clients into a clear, kind, and meaningful connection.
This article highlights the first Client Personality Type: The Dreamer.
Not every sales conversation begins with clarity or confusion. Some begin with wonder, imagination, and a swirl of possibilities. Enter: The Dreamer Client Personality Type.
These extraordinary individuals are like shooting stars, guided by whimsy, enchantment, and infinite inspiration. They possess the incredible ability to envision a world of possibilities and sometimes struggle to transform their dreams into reality.
Imagine you’re a holistic wellness practitioner, and you’ve connected with a Dreamer named Sarah. As you explore her goals, Sarah shares her heartfelt belief: “I can see it so clearly—I’m destined to lead a life of vibrant health. I dream of feeling energized, balanced, and radiantly alive. I just need that final push to make it a reality.”
What’s Great About the Dreamer (The High Side):
Dreamers are brilliant and enthusiastic visionaries who can conceptualize every possibility imaginable. As the salesperson guiding the Dreamer, the two of you can delight in painting a vivid picture of what’s possible.
What’s more exciting is the experience of successfully guiding a Dreamer into action and watching their incredible vision become a reality. As visionaries, Dreamers often conjure the most incredible ideas that, when manifested, can potentially change the world!
For Sarah, this could mean igniting your collective imagination for her wellness journey. During the sales conversation, you can excel at conveying the benefits and potential outcomes of her envisioned success, leaving Sarah feeling inspired and excited, knowing that her dreams can become a reality.
The Challenge of Guiding the Dreamer (The Low Side):
Managing a Dreamer’s expectations can be challenging. Whimsy, fantasy, inspiration, and enthusiasm guide the Dreamer, which can lead to self-deception and lack of results or drive to take action.
As a salesperson, if you aren’t careful, you can be deceived by a Dreamer’s enthusiasm, mistaking it for commitment.
What can be most challenging about guiding Dreamers is that they often struggle to take aligned action to bring their vision into reality. The Dreamer may even resist your attempts to bring them back to “reality” because the “dream realm” feels safe, while “reality” feels threatening. This can result in a “pulling teeth” scenario where you become the “bad guy,” leading to a lack of meaningful forward action after the sales conversation (or even during the fulfillment of a contract).
In Sarah’s case, she may struggle to take concrete actions, which could delay her progress. You might spend more time than anticipated working through Sarah’s pushback, providing extensive guidance, answering numerous questions, and going above and beyond to support the Dreamer in Sarah.
Moving From Low to High (Uncovering The Sincere Lead Within):
The key with Dreamers is guiding them to share their challenges. Your focus as the salesperson is creating the safety they need to share comfortably. If the Dreamer feels safe, they will share their challenges as readily as they share their enthusiasm.
Once you understand their challenges, you can anchor the Dreamer into reality through action (what action they have or have not taken, and where they just don’t know what to do). If they demonstrate the readiness to take those actions, they can become a Sincere Lead.
Consider playing with the following suggestions:
- Inquire about action: If you choose to work with a Dreamer like Sarah, you will need to guide her toward practical steps to transform the vision into reality. A fantastic way to test Sarah’s resilience and receptivity during an initial sales conversation is to inquire about tangible action, “I love this big dream, so tell me, what action steps have you already taken to move this forward?”
- Ask a potent challenging question (with consent): Another fantastic and uplifting way to bring awareness to the Dreamer’s challenge is to ask a potent, challenging question, such as, “May I ask you a challenging question?” And if “yes,” follow with, “Why hasn’t your dream manifested yet? What’s stopping it from becoming a reality?”
- Demonstrate structured support: During a sales conversation, discover their ability to process and turn information into action by creating a mutually agreed upon assignment between now and the follow-up conversation. This reveals the truth about their ability to take action.
Remember, Ethical Sales conversations are all about creating clarity and testing to see if the client personality type you’re speaking with has the potential to become a Sincere Lead and, eventually, an Ideal Client.
When you create the safety for a Dreamer like Sarah to share her challenges, and she demonstrates a willingness to work through those challenges by taking aligned action, you are on the path toward creating an ideal professional relationship!
Dreamers remind us that vision alone is rarely enough — it’s action that grounds the transformation. When guided with care, these clients can become powerful success stories.
An important reminder: Every potential client holds all 7 Client Personality Types within them (and so do we!). What you first encounter may shift into another as the conversation unfolds — and that’s part of the beauty. Stay curious, ask thoughtful questions, and let each type reveal itself in time as you guide the conversation. Whether they evolve into a Sincere Lead or not, your goal is always the same: co-create clarity with care and consent.
Explore other articles in the 7 Client Personality Types series:
- The Secret to Making Sales Conversations Fun and Effective
- How to Ground the Dreamer Client and Make the Sale
- Turning Window-Shoppers Into Referral Sources
- The Vampire Client: How to Give Without Getting Drained
- Why Some of the Best Clients Are Also Salespeople
- Build Trust, Not Pressure: The Secret to Selling to Skeptics
- Turn Intuitive Clients Into Reliable, Aligned Buyers
- The Nesting Doll Secret to Spotting Dream Clients
Marla Mattenson
With a 25+ year career, Mattenson is a trailblazer in transforming sales paradigms from transactional to relational for professionals who prioritize the integrity & fulfillment of their services. She is a champion of consent-based sales.
www.instagram.com/marla.mattenson
