|
Published in the August 2003 SalesSense Inside
View Newsletter.
|
According to many scientists, between fifty thousand and one hundred
thousand years ago, people began to acquire modern speech. Whether you
consider it a gift of God, or an ability nurtured into existence by our
ancient ancestors, no other human development has had such impact on our
success. Cresting ever-higher peaks in understanding and knowledge rests
entirely on the emergence of a sophisticated, versatile, and adaptable
language. Without it, we couldn’t even think the thoughts that have led to a
seemingly endless list of accomplishments, yet we so easily take words for
granted.
While other skills, such as observing and interpreting unspoken signals,
projecting the right body language, asking effective questions and,
listening attentively underpin persuasion, we depend on the power of words
to communicate an idea or justify an action. Use of words and our expression
of them are indispensable skills in a sales person’s tool bag.
You don’t have to be a master of all the skills of communication to achieve
good results in sales. On the other hand, if you want to achieve outstanding
results, being excellent with words will go a long way.
‘Speak only when your words will be better than your silence would have
been’. This was the advice offered on the first sales training course I
attended. It is hard maxim to follow unless you are naturally quiet, which
is an unusual characteristic for sales people. If all the words that you
utter ring like church bells on a Sunday morning, people will get into the
habit of listening when you speak. Sir Winston Churchill, recently voted our
greatest Britton, understood this well. His reputation as a great orator
rested on the preparation that went into his speeches. When he spoke in
public, people listened.
A simple step to improve your spoken impact is to eliminate any filler words
that you use in normal conversation. Examples that I have heard recently
include frequent repetitions of ‘err’ and ‘you know’. Less common, but no
less irritating, are ‘like’ and the classically parodied ‘alright’. Others
that spring to mind are ‘OK’ and actually. I could go on but the stones are
rattling off my own windowpanes. It is true that we are usually blissfully
unaware of the filler words that we use. In running presentation skills
courses, I have the delicate task of drawing attention to them. As you might
imagine, first I had to eliminate my own.
Secretly record your own conversation. Borrow or buy a Dictaphone for the
purpose. Perhaps you already have one that you never use! If you have pet
filler words, they will stand out when you listen to the playback. Some
people manage to cease using them the moment they realise how much they have
been using them, and how they weaken the effectiveness of their speech.
Don’t change how you sound. Take advantage of it. Learn to use words well.
Keep your accent, providing that it isn’t so broad as to make you difficult
to understand outside the region of you birth. If you enunciate poorly, or
if your pronunciation could do with improving, try this simple exercise.
Hold the blunt end of a pen gently between your teeth, as if it were a pipe.
Then read aloud some text for about five minutes. It will sound awful so try
to carry out this exercise in private. It will be difficult to say the words
properly. Ignore this and persevere. After about a week of daily practise,
you will notice a marked improvement in the clarity of your speech. Keep up
the exercise as long as you find the continuing improvement worthwhile.
Think of better ways to say things. I read somewhere that, on average,
people speak over a hundred unique sentences every day. To do this you must
have an innate creative talent. Try this experiment. Think of an important
message that you often need to communicate. Write down twenty ways to say
it. Pick your best three then rearrange them until you have what you want.
To be sure that it will sound as you want it too, practise with a tape
recorder.
Be prepared to wait. Timing is important. If you have invested a lot in
preparing a powerful phrase, you will want to use it. Restrain yourself and
wait for the right moment. If the opportunity doesn’t occur right away save
your words for a better time.
Avoid using clichés. Using phrases that have become popular with others
simply makes you sound like one of the crowd. Instead, quote famous deceased
people. Famous live people always have their share of dissenters.
Build up your store of expressive sentences. If you invest in developing
powerful phrases to get a message across, you will begin to collect more and
more of them. As you do so, you will find it easier to come up with them.
Eventually you will start inventing them as you speak. People will begin
expecting you to have something interesting to say, whenever you open your
mouth.
Sophisticated language began emerging three thousand generations ago. Now it
seems to have its own life. Dictionary publishers would soon go out of
business if they didn’t have a torrent of new words to catalogue each year.
The most articulate communication gets a message across in the most
memorable way, with the greatest clarity, and to the widest audience. Words
move hearts and when hearts move, action follows.
Article by Clive Miller
Questions and comments to
clive@salessense.co.uk
|
Article by
Clive Miller
|
