I’m always looking for lightning-fast ways to type people into their correct personality temperament category. The reason is that once you have their personality temperament, you can simply look up their values in a table. Their \”values\” are the important part, because a prospect will only buy if what you are selling aligns with their values.
Finding their values is the easy part, because the values table has already been created (get to here). The only task you need to do with each prospect is to type them. Therefore, the faster I can categorize them, the quicker I can get into my sales and persuasion presentation. Typing someone quickly pays huge dividends.
Today’s Customer Secret reveals an instant way to type one specific personality type. The secret is this:
When you hear upspeak, the person’s personality temperament is almost always that of the “Warrior” classification.
Tim Van Milligan – Personality Expert
Upspeak or High Rise Terminal (HRT) as it is also called, is a were the prospect is talking and you notice their vocal inflection rises to a higher pitch at the end of a phrase or sentence.
For most people, vocal inflection only rises when a question is asked. Right? That was an example of a rising pitch.
But a small group of people have their vocal pitch rise at the end of a “statement.” That is upspeak or uptalk. In the past, it was known as Valley Girl talk.
Here are a couple of examples of upspeak in both male and female speakers.
Female: youtube.com/watch?v=Tj4EIGje4dA
Male: youtu.be/kKQvvDVGyfM?t=261
As mentioned, the “secret” that no one knows, is that when you hear it from someone, their personality type is almost always that of the warrior. Now you’ve instantly typed them, and you can move on to looking up their values in the chart of personality temperaments!
The Warrior is one of the four personality temperaments. And I know you are probably not familiar with the temperament descriptions that I personally use. But if you are familiar with the D.I.S.C. system, the Warriors would be called the “I’s” for influencers. In the Myers Briggs system, they are those that have the preferences for Sensing and Perceiving (SP).
I want to point out that not all Warriors use upspeak. Most don’t. It is fairly rare. But if you hear it, the person is almost always a Warrior.
You might be asking the question, why do they do it? I don’t have a specific answer for you. But I know that one of their values is that of “energy.” They believe that having more energy is a key success principle.
For example, how many athlete commercials have you seen for flavored water, where the key benefit of the water is to keep your energy up? Or those super high caffeine drinks that also keep your energy up? These are commercials made by people with the Warrior personality temperament, for other Warriors. Having energy appeals to them.
Upspeak is a way of conveying to others that you do have energy. It takes energy to do it… I’ve tried.
Another example of vocal displays of energy is of singers that love to sing at a higher pitch. Where mere mortals (like me) limit ourselves to a single octave range, there are singers that like to go up and down octaves and in particular, they like the high notes. Think of people like the king-of-pop: Michael Jackson. Again, by personality temperament, these people that belt out the high notes are likely to be of the Warrior personality temperament. That’s another bonus customer secret for you… When you hear a singer jumping from a low octave to a really high one, they are likely to be in the Warrior temperament category.
One last piece of information for you, that you may find useful in typing others. In the Myers Briggs classification system, we’ve already said that these people that use upspeak have the preferences for Sensing and Perceiving:
Upspeak is also an indicator of the Feeling preference.
Tim Van Milligan
Therefore, you know three of the four letters of their personality code — SFP. The only letter you don’t know is the first one, either extrovert or introvert. They could be an ESFP or an ISFP.
Anyway, that is going a bit deep for this blog. The important take-away is that when you hear upspeak, you can immediately assume they have the Warrior personality temperament.
About the author:
Tim Van Milligan is an expert in using personality theory in persuasion and sales. He’s written several books including: “Selling By Personality Type: The Values Fears and Anger Triggers that Cause People to Buy”, “Emotional Copywriting Revealed,” and “Selling Yourself: Advanced Strategies for Landing Your Dream Job.” He makes his living as a rocket scientist and entrepreneur, and on the side teaches other sales people a step-by-step approach on how to change the way they persuade by really understanding customers with the principles of personality.