how to have a million dollar voice - speak to influence · 2018-11-21 · how to have a million...

How to Have a

Million Dollar

Voice:

5 Secrets Most People Will Never Know

About Effective Communication Skills

and Public Speaking

By Susan Berkley

2 | H o w t o H a v e a M i l l i o n D o l l a r V o i c e | w w w . S p e a k T o I n f l u e n c e . c o m

Copyright 2014 The Great Voice Company All Rights Reserved

How to Have a

Million Dollar

Voice:

5 Secrets Most People Will Never Know

About Effective Communication Skills

and Public Speaking

There’s no easier way to increase the effectiveness of all your presentations than to optimize your speaking voice.

Why is your voice your most effective secret weapon for influence and persuasion?

• Feeds directly into the subconscious of your listener

• Creates trust

• Boosts credibility

• Enhances the perception of intelligence

• Elevates authority

• Energizes your audience

• Increases personal magnetism

• Optimizes every phone call you make

• Turbocharges sales

• Can be easily improved (at any age)

• No cost- you already own it!

As a broadcaster and professional voice over artist, I’ve perfected the secrets of voice mastery to sell millions of dollars worth of products and services for my clients.

I used to take my voice mastery skills for granted (and you probably take your voice for granted too). Then one day, a single sixty second commercial I voiced generated over $50 million dollars in sales for one of my clients! Unfortunately I only saw a fraction of that money but my voice made my client filthy rich

A friend begged me to teach him how I did it, so I developed the VoiceShaping ® method of vocal influence, the core curriculum of my Persuasive Voice Academy™.

Here are a few of the key principles and how to apply them to your business:



1. Your customers have ESVP (Extra Sensory Voice

Perception): are you sending the right message?

An infomercial producer I know was running a blockbuster campaign for a kitchen gadget. It was making millions. One day, the voice actor he was using said he had a conflict and could no longer voice the commercials but he had a friend in the business who sounded just like him who could. The producer gave the new voice a try. To his shock and chagrin, sales began to plummet! The client panicked and the producer scurried to to get the original voice actor back on the show—he had to write a very big check to do so! As soon as the original commercials were put back on the air, sales climbed again – the only difference was the voice! That actor had no idea about the value of his voice. And you know what? You probably don't either. But you shouldn't take your voice for granted.

In my book Speak To Influence: How To

Unlock The Hidden Power of Your Voice, I cite several studies, including one from Harvard researchers, showing that voice is a surprisingly accurate indicator of first impressions. Research subjects were asked to rate a professor after briefly hearing his voice and viewing a video of him teaching a class. Although they only saw his image for a few seconds, their ratings of his competency and likeability were consistent with students who had studied with the teacher for an entire semester. Not only are first impressions quick. They’re surprisingly accurate as well. In another study, researchers collected voice samples of surgeons speaking to their patients. They filtered the speech so the words couldn't be understood but the doctors’ tone of voice was clear. The subjects were then asked to rate the surgeons’ voices. Surprisingly, the voices rated as most dominant belonged to the surgeons who were most likely to be sued for malpractice! My point is that every time we speak, our voice sends subliminal messages about our competence, our credibility, our likeability and our trustworthiness. Whether these messages are accurate or not is another matter. But for better or worse, an impression is made that contributes to your success or failure.



2. Your voice is your brand - what does it say about you?

A brand can be defined many ways, but I really like this definition from consultant, speaker and author Alan Weiss. Weiss says a brand is a “credibility accelerator that excites passion and justifies higher fees.” When people develop their brand they think visually- logos, color, design. They spend tens of thousands of dollars on custom branding packages and tens of thousands (for personal branding on finely tailored clothing and cosmetic dentistry. In fact over a lifetime, the average woman spends as

much as $450,000 on beauty products and other image enhancers. But brand has a spoken component that’s often dangerously ignored. Ever call a business and been turned off by the way a company answered the phone? Most people have.

I recently purchased an expensive necklace at a high end department store. When the piece broke I called customer service and was stunned by the disconnect between the drawling, disinterested and bored-sounding call center operator and the elegant, upscale service I received in the store.

True to their disappointing spoken image, it took weeks and numerous phone calls to resolve the problem. My impression of that company took a nose dive, and so did my interest in ever buying anything from them again. Smart companies with automated call centers think about voice branding a lot and spend big bucks trying to get it right. This is a wise investment because people automatically form a 3-D image in their mind whenever they hear a voice of a person they’ve never met, even if that voice is recorded. This invisible spoken image is called a persona. A persona rarely has anything to do with how a person or a company actually looks, but the right persona creates a strong and irresistible emotion which compels the listener to respond.

As the branded telephone voice of Citibank, the bank used these adjectives for my spoken persona: dynamic, efficient, expressive, honest and knowledgeable.

Research shows that the right voice persona helps the customer feel the automated system can be trusted so they will stick with the automated system rather than defaulting to an expensive live operator. The stakes are high: because I know how to manipulate my pitch, tone and inflection to help the customer feel that the bank can be trusted, customers stay in the automated system, and the bank saves tens of millions of dollars a year!



3. Enhance your personal voice brand by deploying your

unique vocal influence type ™ I’ve determined that there are 4 Vocal Influence Types that directly affect how people feel about you and your brand. Each type has positive qualities and pitfalls to avoid. Identifying your unique Vocal Influence Type and learning how to make the most of it in selling is the foundation of my work with clients and sales teams.

The Charm Voice Type

The Charm voice type is a storyteller with a wonderful, disarming sense of humor. That’s their strength. However when charm isn’t tempered by authority or trust the speaker can come across as too chatty and unprofessional.

The Trust Voice Type

The Trust voice type is warm, reassuring, comforting and down to earth. But they sometimes need to be livened up a bit or they can be perceived as dull and boring.

The Authority Voice Type

The authority voice type has a take charge, self-assured persona. It's the classic voice of a leader. But when the speaker doesn't give their voice some warmth, they can be seen as overbearing and off-putting.

The Enthusiasm Voice Type

The enthusiasm voice type is energetic, exciting, urgent and magnetic. It's a voice that makes you sit up and take notice. However, too much enthusiasm can exhaust the listener and speakers need to tone it down and draw people closer with a dose of trust.

Need help with your voice brand?

Call The Great Voice Company at 800-333-8108 or [email protected]



4. Your voice transmits secret messages: The static in your

voice brand that gets in the way

Now that I’ve introduced you to your voice brand, you might be cringing a little when you speak, catching yourself in excessive um’s and uh’s, hearing static in your voice brand you never noticed before that you now wish wasn't there. This is perfectly normal and it's the first step to developing a better spoken image. For example, consider non-words, or verbal viruses as I like to call them.

Excessive verbal viruses telegraph signals about your intelligence, your state of mind and your thinking style. Law enforcement officers are trained to recognize excessive um’s as a potential sign of guilt! But sanitizing your speech to remove all “um’s” is nearly impossible and not our goal.

Excessive verbal viruses are often unconscious but they give us valuable, yet hidden, information about ourselves. The key is to record your presentations, listen for excessive um’s and consider them to be a flag, a warning-sign that course correction is needed. . I’ve noticed that the speaker who lapses into too many um’s and ah’s has lost touch with the audience. They’re parsing their words, listening to some parallel dialogue inside their head instead of reaching out to and focusing on the listener. Typically the speaker is unconsciously concerned with appearing flawless and error free and this perfectionism is making them anxious and impairing their ability to connect with the audience. The good news is that excessive ums are habitual and the problem can be easily correctly, once the speaker is made aware of this disconnect.



5. Enhance your voice brand with this 7-point static check

Many people mistakenly think they are stuck with their speaking voice and like height or eye color, it can’t be changed. The good news is you can enhance your speaking voice and the results can be magnificent. When British Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher, first entered politics, the sound of her voice worried party officials. She had a schoolmarmish, bossy, hectoring voice that her publicity advisor Gordon Reese described as “dangerous to passing sparrows.” Ouch! Nevertheless, Thatcher took the advice to heart, worked on her spoken image and was able to enhance her public persona and rise to prominence. To have an effective voice brand, here are 7 key areas to check for distracting static:

1. Pitch

2. Tone

3. Inflection

4. Tempo

5. Placement

6. Diction

7. Accent

Pitch: According to Psychology Today, speakers with higher-pitched voices are judged to be less truthful, less emphatic, less potent, and more nervous than speakers with lower pitched voices. Everyone has an optimal speaking pitch and even voices that are perceived as high and squeaky can be improved.

Tone: Tone is the overriding emotion you convey when you speak is it consistent with

your brand or do you or members of your team inadvertently sound tired, bored or even angry? When team members are trained in voice mastery techniques they learn to control their tone of voice so it resonates perfectly with the image your company wants to convey

Inflection: In English we derive meaning from the speaker’s inflection. Habitual upward inflection can make the speaker sound uncertain and immature. Too much downward inflection makes the voice sound heavy and lifeless.

Tempo: While you’ll risk annoying the listener if you speak too quickly, slower-talking speakers were judged to be less truthful, less persuasive, and more passive than people who spoke faster.

Placement: Some voices have a harsh, unpleasant sound. This is usually a placement issue. Everyone sounds better when their voice is placed in the facial mask. It's the vocal sweet-spot where your voice sounds rich and resonant.

Diction: People assume that if you mumble and don't speak clearly that you are careless, immature and poorly educated. Consonants help people understand what we are saying so make sure you articulate them clearly, without overdoing it of course.

Accent: a regional or foreign accent can be charming and distinctive but many non-native speakers complain that people judge them unfairly because of their speech. An accent can be minimized by identifying and minimizing certain vowel and consonant sounds that are not typical of Standard American speech.



Susan Berkley

wants to stamp out dreary, lifeless speaking and replace it with compelling storytelling that boosts sales, careers and self-confidence. She has coached executives and sales professionals on their presentation and speaking skills for more than 15 years based on her hatred of bad Powerpoint ® and love of vivid imagery. By drawing on everyone's inherent capacity for natural, relaxed conversation, Susan helps clients advance their personal or corporate brands. Those clients include executives and sales organizations from a cross-section of American business that includes Shaw Carpet, Smart Design and The American Federation of Government Employees. A top voiceover artist who is the voice of Citibank, Susan has been featured on MSNBC, CNBC, ABC and in the New York Times. She is the author of "Speak To Influence: How To Unlock The Hidden Power Of Your Voice." For bonus resources visit www.speaktoinfluence.com. Contact The Great Voice Company at 800-333-8108 or [email protected]

110 Charlotte Place | Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632

p: 800-333-8108 | f: 201-541-8608 www.speaktoinfluence.com

how to have a million dollar voice - speak to influence · 2018-11-21 · how to have a million...

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