Good communication skills are clearly very important to have when you work with people.
How a message is communicated to people is actually quite interesting. Most of us believe our words are how we communicate. When in fact…….
It is said that our words account for only 7% of the message, our tonality accounts for 38% or our message and the other 55% of our communication is relayed with our body language.
The obvious question Telemarketers may ask is…. How then can I get my message across clearly, if I can’t use body language?
We have to accept that we are at a disadvantage. But the good news is that we can easily make that disadvantage and have good communication skills by using our voice.
Before we talk about how to utilize our voice for good communication skills, let me remind you of something you may have already read on other pages at this site.
Now that we know that our words account for only 7% of the message we are relaying to our customers, we have a real insight into why a script or call guidelines are so important.
By having our message pre-organized and having total clarity over what words we will be using, we leave ourselves free to concentrate on our voice and our delivery.
Too often on the phone our minds are so busy working out what to say next that we are not really listening to our customer or paying attention to our tone. This loses telemarketers sales! Many of them!!
So do what the great Telemarketers do and pre-plan your words so you can put your energy on listening to your client and the delivery of your pitch. Now that shows Good Communication Skills!!
Over the phone we have to communicate 93% of our message with our voice, so how we say what we say has suddenly become that much more important. As a telemarketer we need to think about voice tone, pace and volume. On top of that things we would normally show visually, like friendliness or enthusiasm also need to be communicated through the voice.
This means that the tools we do have, need to be well-utilized and often exaggerated.
The Secret to Good Communication Skills on the phone.
Voice Tone
Your tone of voice will vary greatly throughout your call. In fact it should frequently oscillate up and down and never be monotone. A monotone voice is hard to listen to in person and even harder over the telephone. For your customer who can’t see your lips move or your facial expression, it is difficult for them to pick up on the meaning of your words if you don’t massively use your voice tonality to emphasize your meaning.
My best advice is to match your customers voice initially. This will give you instant rapport with your client. So, if your customer has a friendly sing song quality to their voice, so will you….if they speak in short sentences with a frustrated tone, so will you.
I know you have probably heard that you should sound enthusiastic and bubbly and this is true… if when your client answers the phone they sound enthusiastic and bubbly.
Throughout the call when you have spent some time matching the clients tone and built rapport, you will then begin to change the tone to your desired state and, because you have rapport with your client, they will follow.
Speed or Tempo
Initially we are building rapport with our client. So as with our tone, we will match our speed and tempo to the client’s speed and tempo.
As the call progresses and you and your client are in rapport, you then vary your speed. For instance, you might slow down when explaining anything detailed, or speed up to show your excitement or enthusiasm about your offer.
Pacing yourseelf to your client says to them that you are quite literally, at their speed. If you speak too slowly then your client may subconsciously feel that they are in for a long call with you, and therefore cut you off. Speaking too quickly is confusing to your customer as they often don’t have time to digest or process what you are saying.
The right tempo will cement your good communication skills over the telephone.
Volume
I bet you know what I am going to say here…. That’s right, your voice volume also needs to match that of your client’s initially. Then as the call progresses, you can lead and they will follow.
Our volume during the call will tell our customer how confident we are and also will make sure our words are being communicated clearly.
Speaking too softly over the phone can have the effect of making you sound mousey, or like you are lacking confidence. If you are speaking to a very confident client, they will easily take lead of the conversation, which makes it impossible for you to work your agenda.
If you speak too loudly and strongly to a quietly spoken customer, it tells them you are bossy and controlling, which they won’t warm to. So again, the secret is to match their volume until you have rapport and then you can change as you need to and they will happily change with you. In essence, good communication skills over the phone have an easy formula;
- Match and pace the clients Tone, Speed and Volume until you are in rapport with them.
- Then use your Tone, Speed and Volume to show emphasis, to explain details, to indicate whether you are asking a question or making a statement and to display your emotions and feeling.
The enemy of Good Communication Skills is monotone. Monotone is boring and noone really wants to be bored! The only time it is okay to use a monotone voice is at the beginning of your call if you are matching a client who uses a monotone voice. No Exceptions!!
You can see here how important rapport is to a good call……click here to learn more about gaining rapport.
The enemy of Good Communication Skills is monotone. Monotone is boring and noone really wants to be bored! The only time it is okay to use a monotone voice is at the beginning of your call if you are matching a client who uses a monotone voice. No Exceptions!!
Questioning Techniques and Good Communication Skills
It is important that any question you ask is asked in a way that will give you the desired answer. There are two types of questions. The first, open questions, request information. The second, closed questions, offer options.
Open Questions
Open questions are any question that asks your client for more information. Questions like, “What do you think about the current economic climate?” or “What has been your experience with your current supplier?” are open questions.
Their wording encourages the other person to open up and tell us their opinion, their experiences and their thoughts.
These type of questions are normally used during the first half of your call when you are gathering information so that you know how you can best fill this clients need.
Closed Questions
A closed question asks for the client to choose an option or to answer simply “yes” or “no”.
As you can imagine, if you are seeking information and you ask a closed question you are doing yourself a disservice. If we reword the open question we asked above to “Have you been happy with your current supplier?” you can see we would get a “Yes” or “no” answer. This is not what we want for this part of our call.
However, when we are closing or trying to guide our call, closed questions are imperative.
Example, “I have a consultant in your area on Wednesday, would 6pm or 7pm suit you best?” In this option, we are encouraging the client to give one of two answers, both of which we will be happy with.
It is important to get into the habit of always offering two options for this type of closed question.
When asking a closed question you need to always be expecting the answer you want. As an example, when a client has said that tomorrow will not suit for an appointment, we could ask: “So there’s no way we could come out to see you tomorrow?”. To which we are encouraging the answer to be no.
A much better option is to accept that tomorrow is not okay and go on to ask, “No problems, we do have someone in your area again on Thursday or Friday, which day would suit you best?”
Remember also to be assertive and assumptive. Sometimes what should be a statement is instead put forward as a question. Worse still, sometimes we ask a question for no good reason. This will not help you to achieve your goal of booking an appointment or making a sale.
An example of this is “So did you want them to come out next week?” This question, firstly, can have a “No” answer, which doesn’t serve us and secondly, is just not necessary. Simply offer times for next week.
