Promoter
«Let me tell you something.»
Buys a story they look good in, and lights up at what's new. A technical document slides off them; the name of a customer they admire sticks. Watch the flip side: they get excited before they decide, and excitement isn't a signature.
How you recognise them
- They describe the company through anecdotes and people, not numbers.
- They bring up competitors and customers they admire unprompted.
- They talk about collective projects in the first person: «we did that», «I'm the one who brought it in».
- The meeting runs over because it went well, not because it was complicated.
How to open
«We're working with three sales directors who have exactly your problem. Shall I tell you what they did differently?»
«There's something your CRM doesn't record that decides half your deals. Nobody is looking at it yet: let me show you.»
The proof they weigh most
Social proof with a name on it: who is already doing this, and why it worked for them. A case told as a story beats a case in a table. The risk is symmetrical: without a name, the story sounds like a brochure to them.
The vocabulary
- «you're among the first to…»
- «a company like yours has…»
- «you can take this to your CEO as…»
- «we'll show you the before and the after»
- «it's the kind of thing people outside notice»
- comparison tables as the main argument
- openings that start from technical detail
- «it's complex», «it takes time», «you'll need patience»
- puncturing their enthusiasm with a correction
- long documents sent before the meeting
The classic trap
Taking excitement for a commitment and not asking for the next step. With a Promoter the best conversation of your week can produce nothing at all. Before you leave the room you need one small, concrete thing: a date, a name to bring in, a document they send to someone.
If you're one too
Two Promoters get along and don't close: the meeting turns into an exchange of visions and neither of them ever gets to the ask. If that's your pair, your job isn't to add energy — there's already too much of it — but to be the one who writes the summary and sends it.
And then there are the Regulators
The archetype sets the course, not the volume. Two people of the same archetype with opposite Security prepare differently: one wants guarantees and ways out, the other tolerates uncertainty when the opportunity is good. The same goes for Openness and Method. They're the three sliders that turn four categories into a prescription for one person.
How the TANDEM method worksThe other three archetypes
- Pilot
«Let's get to the point.»
- Architect
«Could you send me the documentation?»
- Builder
«How would my team experience this?»
An archetype is a hypothesis about communication style, not a judgement on the person and not a diagnosis. It exists for someone who has to prepare a conversation, and it should be dropped the moment the conversation says it was wrong.