This blog was updated on June 19th, 2018.
Because You Know It’s All About that Tone
Coming from a retail job as a cashier, I was used to interacting with customers face-to-face. This meant that I could read their body language and facial expressions. For example, if they approached and looked annoyed, then I could smile at them to cheer them up. However, when I went into sales and began cold calling, all of the physical connections that I had once relied upon were hidden behind a phone.
When cold calling, a prospect is unable to see your facial expressions and therefore is unable to make the standard first impressions. Your first impression is solely through the tone of your voice. I’ve been told that a good strategy is to match the tone and cadence of a prospect when on a call. This means that if someone speaks quickly than you should also increase your pace, as that’s probably what they’re used to. This varies person to person and region to region, so paying close attention so what prospects say — as well as how they say it — is critical.
It’s important to note that matching tone does not apply to angry or annoyed prospects. Despite the many rejections that come with cold calling, your tone needs to stay positive. As soon as your tone becomes bored or annoyed a prospect will believe that you don’t believe in the product or service that you’re offering. Consequently, this means that they will lose interest as well. People judge based on tone more than words, so the tone you use in a pitch often matters more than what you are actually saying.
When 3 o’clock comes, calls become harder. Keeping an upbeat tone to a faceless prospect becomes a struggle, and often times the frustrated emotions that you can feel begin to seep into your cold calls. A trick to overcome this is to pull up a picture of the prospect on LinkedIn. Looking at the picture gives a face to the faceless voice, making cold calls more of a “face-to-face” conversation. Smiling while talking also helps to keep your tone more upbeat, no matter how you actually feel at the time.
People buy from people that they trust. Finding a connection that will create trust is challenging when cold calling. Creating a tone that is friendly, curious, and matches the tone of the prospect will help to begin to build that trust and ultimately close the sale.
