How to Convey your Personality over the Phone?

What is it about the phone that makes people so nervous? The inability to see how the other person reacts? Feeling "out of touch" with your listener? Having to think off your feet?

Some of the most personable and confident people I know sound like stumbling idiots over the phone. This generation has grown up with phones. So you would think that we would be great on the phone and have complete confidence in our ability...FALSE!

Our generation is so used to and comfortable with communicating via texting, messaging, instagraming, snapchating, and tweeting with our phones. Not many of us use our phones for what they were originally designed for...Receiving and Making Calls!! And if we do call people over the phone, it's usually to our friends or family. Not complete strangers or clients we are desperate to impress.

When the time comes to land a job where you'll be making calls to potential clients everyday we are not adequately prepared. In school we learn how to write professionally, present with confidence, work in groups; However, we aren't taught one of the most used communication skills in business...Talking over the Phone!

To anyone that has mastered this critical communication skill:

What are techniques that you use to become a better communicator over the phone?

How do you portray your charisma over the phone?

 
Best Response

There's only one thing that conveys your personality through the phone: the tone/inflections/phrasing of your voice/words (okay maybe 3).

Speak in an enthusiastic tone, vary the highs and lows of your voice, and avoid sounding monotone at all costs.

Don't speak too fast, nor too slowly. Enunciate your words; don't mumble.

Most importantly: be confident in what you are saying.

Just imagine that it's an ice breaker and you're meeting a stranger for the first time. If you want them to like you, show that you like them through your voice.

 

Yup! Just keep practicing. Whenever you talk to strangers face to face, either thanking them for something or whatever, speak enthusiastically and mean what you say. Same goes for when you talk to anyone on the phone (if you rarely do that, start doing that more often instead of texting). It'll help in the long run.

 

It's a great and unfathomable question. We were to hire this guy whom the entire team took turns interviewing him over the phone, then we flew him in a week later, and he turned out to be a complete smug son of a bitch. He sounded so nice and humble over the phone. It remains a myth to me.

Invest first, investigate later.
 

10 strategies I've learned from some great salesmen.

  1. STAND UP when you are on the phone. Sitting down hunched over puts you in a weak position and thus comes off in your convo.

2.LEAN WAY BACK in your chair, even throw your feet up. This is a comfortable and confident position and will come off in your voice.

  1. USE HEAD SET or blue tooth or speaker phone, again, holding phone to your ear puts you in a physically weak position, and it comes off in your voice.

  2. PAUSES ARE OK, do not jump to fill pauses, if anything, let them fill the pauses, they will reveal information to you.

  3. FIGURE OUT HOW TO END CONVERSATIONS, don't blow a great convo by sounding like a p*ssy with a million "ba byes" at the end. It only needs to be said once. And if you've just met them, don't end a great convo with "great to meet you"...you guys are old friends now, don't remind them that you just met. "Talk to you soon" is much better.

  4. USE SOME HUMOR, phones have something beautiful that email and IM don't...they are not recorded (usually), you can be riskier, and it comes off as being sincere. Here is an easy one. Monday. Prospect, "Hi, how how are you?" You, "Well, to be honest, I drank too much over the weekend so I'm a little tired, but ready to take the week on, how about you" or "I fell really hard cycling on Sunday so I'm still pissed off about that but besides that all is well, how about you?" Not necessarily the best examples, but you get the point. Give them a chance to connect with you by revealing a QUICK fact or two about yourself.

  5. DON'T BE AFRAID TO ASK THEM ABOUT THEMSELVES. It may seem intrusive at first, but trust me, everytime you talk to them afterwards, they won't give a shit and will like you more for it.

  6. MIRROR THEIR STYLE. They cuss you cuss. They are quiet you are quiet. They talk fast, you talk fast. Here is where to deviate, they like to talk...LET THEM TALK. The more they talk the less you talk, the better.

  7. DON'T PANIC. Don't panic and make shit up, or think too quickly and say things you don't mean. This is shooting yourself in the foot. It's ok to say, "can you repeat that" "one moment I need to think about that" "I don't know off the top of my head, let me get back to you". This gains much more respect.

  8. PUT STICKIES / NOTES OF PRE SCRIPTED RESPONSES. Some sh*t is hard to remember. If it is something you answer quite commonly, have the answer written down somewhere easily accessible.

 

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