When you speak in public, you want to make sure that you are communicating with your audience. How do you do this? You do it by speaking their language. In this second installment of this 3-part series, you will learn how to reach different personalities in the room more effectively.
Let’s look at the acronym BANK.
B stands for Blueprint
This is a blueprint personality. This is a person who likes things neatly in a box. The way to speak to a Blueprint is to use a word like “systems”. When I talk about my “proven speaker system” that really joys the heart of the Blueprint personality. You might find that you are all four of these personalities, at different degrees. As you go through life, you’ll find they may alter and grow. It’s not written in stone.
I have a Blueprint personality because I love systems. I was a systems consultant. I love it. If you talk to me and talk about a step-by-step system, I’m all ears. I’m listening.
In your audience you are going to have Blueprint personalities. Some of the Blueprint careers are CPAs, engineers, policemen, architects, attorneys, military, and anybody who loves order and precision. We can tell a Blueprint because a debit is a debit and a credit is a credit. It never changes. They’re not artistic who like variables. They like things concrete.
For example, when you’re dealing with a Blueprint, especially in a seminar type situation, they expect you to be on time. If you start five minutes late, to them it’s like a half hour. It makes them angry and they won’t listen. If you like to sell to a Blueprint, and your product and service is attractive to a Blueprint, such as an accounting book, you have to study the Blueprint personality.
Know that it is really important when you’re on stage dealing with these different personality types that you could lose a potential client if you don’t speak their language. If you’ve started the whole seminar ten minutes late, you’ve lost a fourth of your audience. They turned up and tuned out.
After one of my events, a Blueprint wrote me an angry email about not starting on time. She came early at 8 o’clock. In the email she thought it started at 8, and Blueprints like to be early. The event actually started at 9. I wrote her back and apologized, but I let her know that we did start on time. Unfortunately, she brooded the whole day because she thought I didn’t start on time. She not only didn’t buy my services, but she didn’t get any of the knowledge I shared. It’s so important to pay attention to each of these personalities.
Blueprints love words like stability, structure, systems, planning, processes, predictability, responsibilities, duties, rules, and credentials. Speaking of credentials, if you’re talking to a group of Blueprints, you’ve got to bring out your credentials. If you graduated somewhere you have to share your degrees. They’re also into titles. Make sure you mention you’re the founder of your company or owner. Make sure you mention if you’ve been in the industry 30 years. That’s important to this group of people and you need to know this.
Next week I will continue the acronym BANK, so that you wll learn how to reach the different personalities in your audience.