MoneyWatch

To Sell More, Listen to Your Voice.

By Geoffrey James

Updated on: September 19, 2007 / 9:29 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

Building quick rapport on the telephone requires the ability to subtly reflect the prospect's voice qualities (tonality, accent, word usage, rhythm, etc.) To do this, you need three skills:

The ability to hear and quickly assess the prospect's voice qualities. During the greeting phase, don't just listen to what the prospect is saying, but to how the prospect is saying it. Do the words come quickly or slowly? Is there a regional accent? What's the level of intensity? Does the prospect frequently use a certain word or phrase? TIP: Call the prospect's voice mail the night before the call and listen to voice tonalities in the outgoing message.
The ability to morph your voice ever so slightly to match. As you speak, gradually take on the least obvious elements of the prospects voice qualities. The key here is to make it subtle, not obvious, lest the changes fall flat or, worse, seem like mocking. For example, if you're talking with somebody with a Mississippi accent, you'll want to ever-so-slightly draw out your vowels, not cram an awkward "You-All" into your normal patter.
The ability to listen to a conversation while you're actually in it. This sounds simple, but it's actually a specialized skill that's the key to making this technique work, so it requires some additional explanation.

Most people, when they're in a conversation, barely hear what the other person is saying; instead, they're thinking about what they're going to say next. Similarly, when they're speaking, most people are thinking about what they're saying, rather than how they're saying it. This is why so many people have verbal tics, like sticking "uh..." in the middle of every thought and slapping a "you know..." at the end of every sentence. To build rapport, you need to be aware, not just of the content of the conversation but of the way that the conversation sounds, so that you can bring your voice into alignment with the prospect's voice.

To do this, you segment out a portion of your consciousness so that you can "listen in" to the conversation as if it were a radio show, even when you're speaking. This sounds difficult, but it's actually quite easy.

Step 1: When the customer speaking, listen carefully to what's being said, but use about ten percent of your consciousness to listen to how it's being said.
Step 2: When you're about to speak, pause a little longer than usually do, and formulate in greater detail than usual what you're going to say. When you start speaking, your brain will remember what you planned to say, even if you're not entirely paying attention to your words.
Step 3: While you're speaking, use about ten percent of your conscious mind to listen to how you sound and match it, ever so slightly, to how the prospect sounded.

The key element is that extra pause in step 2, which gives you the "breathing space" you need to do step 3 correctly. It seems a bit awkward at first, but after a little practice, the technique quickly becomes automatic. When mastered, the ability to listen to the qualities of a conversation (as well as the content) allows you to constantly assess and adjust your voice qualities to subtly match the prospect's, thereby creating the foundation for rapport.

By the way, mastering this skill is extremely useful in business situations other than rapport building:

It immediately eliminates any annoying verbal tics or habits that you may have accumulated over the years, making you sound more educated and articulate.
You can modulate your voice to to sound more authoritative when talking to receptionists, so that they'll put you through to an executive decision-maker.
If you end up talking to the broadcast media, you'll be much more aware of how you sound, and consequently be better able to control the interview.

Incidentally, overall technique of "reflectioning" is based upon "mirroring" skills that I learned at Tony Robbins seminar fifteen years ago, modified by my personal experience. The technique of listening to a conversation while speaking I learned from Kevin Straley, currently a Vice President at XM Radio, who was kind enough to coach me when I did a three year stint as a weekend talk radio host.

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