5 Steps to Closing a Sale (part 3)

Thursday, November 2, 2006 at 12:52pm by Justin Brooke in Presentation

Voice Inflection

Beyond any reasonable doubt if you’re going to build your sales career to the fullest, you have to do something that 95% of all sales professionals never do; deliberate voice training. – Zig Ziglar

If you sell a product or service for a living or if your new start-up depends on your sales ability, I highly suggest you start reading Zig Ziglar’s work.

Voice inflection is a natural part of human communication, which lets us vary the meanings of single words or sentences. The funny thing about voice inflection is that it is used almost perfectly in day to day conversation, but when a novice enters into a sales situation there voice inflection goes right out the window. They turn into a vocal robot pungent with fear and weakness.

This is why you need, if you’re serious about closing more sales, to go out and get a voice recording device. You will be surprised to find out what you sound like to others, because the voice we here is not the exact same voice others here coming from out of our mouth. This is because we are hearing our voice carried through our body tissue and bone vibrations which is much crisper. When we speak to others they hear our voice carried by air, think DVD quality vs. VHS quality.

You have to learn how you sound to others and adapt as necessary. After all when you give a sales presentation they are not necessarily buying the product they are buying your created view of the product. If that view of the product comes across as a monotonous tone, no matter what visual adjectives and emphasis on benefits you use, you will still sound like the product bores you. Would you want to buy a product from someone who is bored of that product?

Ok enough about why you need to be listening to your own voice on a recording device, let’s talk about how to use your new tool. Take the script you are using and record how you feel you would normally pitch to a client. Now listen to your recording, how did you sound? Most likely since you are untrained with voice inflection it sounded like a read through. Now let’s add some proper voice techniques into your pitch and see how it sounds, but first here are some great examples of using voice inflection to paint different pictures in the mind of a client.

Zig Ziglars 8 Ways to Say the Same Sentence

1. I did not say he stole the money.

Normal factual statement

2. I did not say he stole the money.

Implies that it was said, but by someone else.

3. I did not say he stole the money.

A vehement testament of denial.

4. I did not sayyy he stole the money.

Insists that you might have implied this but did not actually say this.

5. I did not say he stole the money.

Implies that someone other then the person accused stole the money.

6. I did not say he stole the money.

Implies that you meant he might have borrowed the money

7. I did not say he stole the money.

Implies that he might have stolen some money but not the money in reference.

8. I did not say he stole the money.

Implies that he might have stole something but definitely not the money.

So you see by adding voice emphasis to certain words you can change the whole meaning of a sentence. Using this correctly you can paint pictures in the client’s mind that would have taken paragraphs to explain. I am positive if you look through your script again with this in mind there are parts you can take out or emphasize for greater power.

Lessening the words you have to say lessens the time it takes to deliver your message, which increases customer retention.

Adding these emphatic words will not only shorten your pitch to keep 100% attention and make it more visual in the clients mind, but also break up your tone, show that you are passionate, and create a sense of excitement with the client.

Customers buy or not buy depending on emotions toward a product. The easiest way to create emotion in a client is to speak with proper voice inflection. For example here are two versions of a very simple script I use; one with voice inflection and one without.

Italics = speed up
Bold = slightly raise tone
Larger Size = strong emphasis

Version 1

ME: Hi John, this is Justin Brooke from Mpyre Marketing. Does your business have a website?

JOHN: No we haven’t really felt it necessary. We do pretty well for ourselves.

ME: Well John, This is what I am going to do for you. I will give you a free, no-cost, no obligation website demo. This way you can see what I can do for you, then if you like it you can buy it, if you don’t then I go back to where I came from. No pressure and no hard feelings. It takes my guys about a week, should I call back on Tuesday or Wednesday?

Version 2

ME: Hi John, this is Justin Brooke from Mpyre Marketing. Does your business have a website yet?

JOHN: No we haven’t really felt it necessary. We do pretty well for ourselves.

ME: Well John, This is what I am going to do for you. I will give you a free, no-cost, no obligation website demo. This way you can see what I can do for you, then if you like it you can buy it, if you don’t then I go back to where I came from. No pressure and no hard feelings. It takes my guys about a week, should I call back on Tuesday or Wednesday?

In the second version,to the client it will sound like I have said much less then I have, because I broke up the information and emphasized what both of us really wanted to hear. In reality only 50% of your pitch ever gets remembered anyways (and that’s for good pitches) so this helps the words you want to stick out…stick out!

To take your voice training even higher, record a live pitch. This way you can hear how you sound when rebutting objections and being thrown off guard.

So far we have learned to be assuming the sale from the beginning for confidence, controlling the conversation with questions that fuel our rebuttal arsenal, and now we have added voice inflection to create excitement and retention. Already sounds like we have a pretty slick sales presentation underway. Now we just need to cover the wrapping up parts of asking for the money and handling objections.

5 Steps to Closing a Sale:

1. Assuming the Sale
2. Control the Conversation
3. Voice Inflection
4. Ask for the Money
5. No Does not Mean No

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