OTW #02: 2 Human-Sounding Speech Tips to Sound Less Like A Robot.

Hello there 👋 I’m Joel.

This is the 2nd issue of my newsletter, Office Talk Weekly.

Each Friday morning, I send out 1 tip on how to develop good communicative habits in business.

This issue can be read in about 90 seconds.

Today’s tip: Frequent Consistency > Infrequent Quality.

Or to put it simply…

It doesn’t matter how good you sound, as long as it’s consistent.

One mistake I see from customer-facing businesses is the constant shoot-from-the-hip mentality.

They have the occasional great interaction, and never realize the lack of a strong, habitual routine is what’s actually holding them back.

An attentive, mental script will consistently provide quality results.

Scripting has left a bad taste in most people’s mouth.

It’s been done so incorrectly and so amateurly.

I’ll tell you a secret:

The best pros in your industry have a high-performance mental script for all types of interactions they may run into.

This, in essence, is developing automation for yourself.

Interested? Here’s some actionable tips to get you started.

Spend the bulk of your energy on actively listening, save your energy when it’s your time to speak.

Start with a basic script for all of your usual types of customer contact in your work day.

• Friendly opening phrases to ask how their day is
• Empathic responses to their issues
• Attentive check-ins for when your work away from the customer at hand is taking too long

The point here is to keep yourself from thinking so much about specifically what to say.

Write down phrases you’ve used that receive a positive response.

These are your go-to phrases that never fail to elicit positivity during any kind of pushback.

This should stand apart from your scripting, and be used to build trust.

Here’s some examples to get your ideas flowing:

• “It does me no good to lie to you, and it certainly doesn’t do you any good either.”
• “Mr/Mrs ___, my sole job here is to provide you with a resolution.”
• “I wouldn’t suggest doing X if I believed it wouldn’t work for you/your business”

Scripting is not supposed to make you sound robotic.

It’s supposed to make you sound like an expert.

That’s all for today. 1 high impact tip on developing good communicative habits.

If you liked this newsletter, the best complement you could pay me would be to share it with one person who you think would benefit from it.

See you next Friday.

Best,

Joel