Is Your Voice on the Phone Killing Your Sales?
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More and more our debt settlement and mortgage sales are dependent upon our performance on the telephone. That means that your voice and tone are critical to closing the deal. Is it helping or hurting you?
Let’s run through a simple checklist.
Tone
Let’s start with your tone. What are you conveying to the customer? Confidence, strength, and competence or are you telling the customer you are unsure, timid, or confusing?
You need to position your mind to be sure of the sale. This and a little preparation will make you come across as the right person to help them. And if they aren’t looking for help they may open their mind to your value proposition.
Inflection
Your key points are critical to conveying value. Are you pointing to this unique value propositions with your voice? That is what inflection does for you.
Put the emphasis on the key point of your pitch. This takes thought and practice. Rambling through a script is unlikely to deliver.
Delivery
Like I just mentioned in talking about inflection, a good delivery takes practice. A smooth delivery brings confidence and competence to the sales pitch. Your customer will feel like you know what you are talking about. It makes them confident you can guide them through a complex transaction or solution, like a mortgage or debt settlement.
Sound
Listen to your voice. Record your sales pitch while you are practicing. This will sound weird at first, but understanding your nuances or distracting features in your voice can bring big improvement.
A good conversationalist does not necessarily make the best sales voice. Record, listen, and practice. Get your voice to sound more appealing. It works. This is what all the actors, singers, and politicians do. If you want to earn a living with your voice too–practice and perfect it.
Energy
You ever wonder why the great sales people don’t do sales calls laying down or even sitting? It is because those body positions are energy killers.
Do you want more proof? Think about rock stars. They stand, run, and gyrate around the stage for their big, high-energy hits. And then they sit down for their slow ballads.
Stand-up and move around. This is what gives your voice energy and confidence. No customer wants to buy from someone that sounds like they are awaking from a slumber.
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November 9, 2009 by twilson · 4 Comments
Troy Wilson brings an extensive knowledge base in Internet Lead Generation to the Top of Mind Blog As the owner of Next Wave Marketing Strategies, Troy works with lending professionals on integrating "aged leads" into their customer acquisition model. He currently resides in Austin TX with his wife Kelly and is the proud father of 2 boys.
Great post Troy… some of these were big challenges for me. I know there is an old saying about having a face for radio (which I also have) but I dont think there is anything about having a voice fit for blogging; but that is me. I have found that recording demo videos for our site has helped me tremendously, it allows me to hear how I sound without kind of feeling silly by just recording myself for the sake of recording myself. I also love the idea of standing up during a sales call. Mark Green and I just fell in love with a really cool tool that we saw one of our clients using – http://www.buy.com/prod/plantronics-voyager-510s-bluetooth-earset-system-over-the-ear-silver/q/loc/111/201854374.html. This should facilitate walking around and talking pretty well. Once we have a chance to demo these I am sure Mark or I will do a blog review.
Troy, killer article. I don’t consider myself the world’s greatest “salesperson”. But people usually can tell that I’m passionate about what I do for a living – and that’s something I can only communicate through my voice. I have my down days, or days where I just don’t feel like being on the phone, just like everyone else. But articles like yours remind us that it’s not necessarily *what* people hear on the other end of the line that makes the lasting impression… often, it’s how that message is delivered. Awesome post – thanks man.
@David, I love the idea of recording videos to improve your delivery. It is so easy these days with most laptops having an embedded camera. You then have the added benefit of using the good ones as marketing material and traffic generator by posting them on YouTube.
@Mark, Yes, we all go through energy cycles. I think that is why it is important to remember delivery is perhaps as (maybe more) critical than the message and stay off the phone when the energy or passion isn’t there. I’m glad you enjoyed the article!
Troy, great article. I was just listening to myself speaking on a recorded webinar that we did and I could definitely tell that I’ve got a bunch of work to do on sound, tone and energy.