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Right now, many are talking about Growth Hacking to help their companies overcome the current...
Imagine a situation where, within a few minutes of meeting a prospect or client, or when you are creating some new targeting for your ads. You could read their personality preference and predict how they are likely to respond to you, and then adapt your messaging to match their answers and thus create powerful and deep rapport and trust.
Think of the benefits.
You could choose exactly how to respond to them, match their communication style, know how to feed them information in the exact way in which they process them, and know exactly how is their decision cycle works or what makes them comfortable when communicating.
For centuries, philosophers have identified four broad types of personality. Over 2,500 years ago the Greek philosopher and medical pioneer Hippocrates was the first to be credited with typing human behavior and providing the first color system which we still draw from today.
The eminent psychotherapist Doctor Carl Jung further developed this idea in the 20th century and added his own concepts on how we focus our energies, make decisions, and whether we are big-picture (global) thinkers or specific thinkers.
The full range of psychological types can be depicted (as per Hippocrates) as a circle with four key color quadrants -
Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue.
All of us have one of these as a “dominant color preference” which gives us a preferred style of thinking, working, and interacting with others. Each color preference or personality type has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, depending on the situation and the perspective of others.
These personality traits come down to how the colors on the quadrant interact with each other - some being closely aligned and others being polar opposites.
However, the real secret is in recognizing that the traits are not opposite but complement each other and a successful communicator can recognize this and use it to his advantage to create a close, compelling and open relationship with his audience/clients.
Now let’s look at the four key colors or personality types and the traits that we can associate with them.
Reds tend to be direct and up-front, quick to make decisions and very focused.
They come across as the most seemingly confident of the colours, having a high degree of ‘inner certainty’ which means that once they are happy with an idea they seldom look to others for affirmation that it’s the right thing to do. They just do it.
They are very determined and love to face a challenge. Being action-oriented they tend to ‘reflex rather than reflect’ - which works for them but can be quite a challenge for other colours. For their opposite colour, however - Green - they can often appear as aggressive or arrogant, not waiting for feedback and pushing others too hard.
Being ‘Visual’ communicators they ‘see’ things and, as a picture paints a thousand words, they feel that they have to describe in detail what they are seeing. The values, or buying motivators, of a red tend to be power, status, ambition and control.
They are:
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Extroverted and tend to speak at a fast pace.
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Task (not people) focused, interested in logic, data, and accomplishing the mission.
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Global or “Big picture” thinkers.
Yellows are highly sociable and love the concept of fun, recognition and variety.
Having fun and interacting with others are key parts of their personality, and they tend to be happy to spend lots of time socializing. They can be demonstrative, enthusiastic and very expressive, often finding their way into creative and media industries.
Like Reds, they are extroverted and articulate but they are less well organised or focused.
In fact, meeting with Yellows will tend to last longer than other colours as they love to chat about everything and anything, but need to be gently brought back time and again to the point of the conversation!
Yellows process information through sound and as a result are not great readers. They prefer to communicate through conversation rather than writing. They are global thinkers, great with the origination of an idea, often highly creative but they tend not to be very good completer/ finishers of projects.
Blues tend to see Yellows as excitable, frantic and even indiscreet and can be challenged when dealing with their upbeat and outgoing natures. On the opposite side, Yellows might found Blues cold and reserved, unwilling to engage and become part of a group, preferring their own company.
They are:
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Extroverted, as they display strong extroverted behaviour and speak in medium to fast pace.
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People-focused (unlike the Reds who are Task-focused).
- Global or “Big Picture” thinkers.
Greens are tremendous listeners and highly supportive of others.
Being of service to others is important to them, and they can be patient, polite and pleasant to all that they meet. They are caring and encouraging others, somewhat reserved, patient and relaxed.
They process information through how they ‘feel’ about things, and such a modality means that they can often take longer to make decisions as they need time to reflect on their physical feeling about an idea or a proposal.
Greens can be slower to respond to a question or a suggestion as they process the information kinaesthetically (through feeling), wanting to be comfortable with any response before they give it.
This can often frustrate a Red or even a Yellow, who are used to making quick decisions and want things to move along quickly to suits their preferred communication style. The way a Green feels about things is very important indeed.
Before a meeting with a Green, where a decision might be required, that all relevant and written documentation be sent to them ahead of any meeting to allow them to review, get a feel for it, and prepare for the face-to-face meeting. for Greens, their key values, around which they would base their buying decisions, would be loyalty, trust, transparency, security and comfort.
They are:
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Introverted, as they display relatively introverted behaviours. They tend to speak at a slower and reflective pace, seeming a little reserved towards others in early interactions.
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People focused, interested in how others feel and figure in the scheme of things.
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Specific thinkers focused on small details.
Blues are highly-analytical, reflective, thoughtful people who like to make an effective decision based on a sound understanding of the situation or data. They are the kind of person who prefers to reflect and seek to understand even the smallest of details before committing to any decisions.
Of course, once the decision is made they are absolutely committed to it and become very unlikely to change their mind in the near future, so they often make great long-term clients. They love the information in writing, preferring to analyse information, and one cannot provide them with enough data.
Their values are order, organisation, stability, systems and planning, and are very comfortable with numbers, often making excellent administrators, accountants, engineers, technical people, actuaries and so forth.
They are:
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Introverted as they display relatively introverted behaviours. They tend to speak at a slower and reflective pace, seeming quite reserved towards others in early interactions - even more so than a Green.
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Task-focused, interested in logic, data, rationale and the task or measurable objective.
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Specific thinker very focused on the small details and the specifics.
When you understand the principles of this colour model you can move from a world of ‘black and white’ (I like you or I don't like you) to one ‘glowing rainbows of colour’ thus quickly becoming able to recognise, adapt and built high-level trust with clients or stakeholders.
Success in today’s marketing and sales world is about a different set of values than. before. Now key values in business are collaboration, co-creation, connection and community, and all of this begins with your ability to act with greater awareness or consciousness when we meet others.
It’s important to align your products, your communication and your audience. For example, if your products or services are more likely to be consumed by Reds or Yellows, you may look more appealing to them using Video ads or strong visuals,... Ebooks and downloadable content will be your keys to the heart of Blues and Green for example.
Success in today’s marketing and sales world is about a different set of values than. before. Now key values in business are collaboration, co-creation, connection and community, and all of this begins with your ability to act with greater awareness or consciousness when we meet others.
It’s important to align your products, your communication and your audience. For example, if your products or services are more likely to be consumed by Reds or Yellows, you may look more appealing to them using Video ads or strong visuals,... Ebooks and downloadable content will be your keys to the heart of Blues and Green for example.
Building strong persona and have the best understanding of your audience will save you a lot of time and help you build the trust needed to be successful.
Not sure how to apply this to your audiences? Request a free consultation with me now.
