Gary Le Mon asked:
News Flash: Your prospects are more interested in the messenger than the message. It’s you they want to get to know more than anything.
The product you’re pitching is far less interesting than who you are, how you think, the understanding you bring to the table, and the personality you offer the relationship.
Experts agree that 90% of communication is non-verbal. It’s your body language, your gestures, eye movements, tone of voice, vocal variety, humor, accents and pauses that punch up and resonate the words you say. It’s not what you say but how you say it that connects the dots between humans.
If you find yourself missing sales and walking away empty handed after an otherwise perfect product presentation, you need to redirect your attention from the spoken to the unspoken. The one element that bonds all non-verbal communication into a coherent force is a thing I like to call “Your Essential Energy.â€
Inside you is a power beyond your own comfort level. Your essential energy is lying in wait like a primal scream. Unsuccessful people deliver mere words, while successful people electrify their words with essential energy. It’s not about shouting. It’s about bringing your words up from the diaphragm, the gut, and transferring them directly into your prospect’s psyche. You can tap into this irresistible power right now.
Here’s a way to supercharge your next sales interview with words that energize and trigger your prospect’s right brain to action.
Schedule an hour with just yourself, a recorder, and a note pad. First, in your usual tone of voice, record the three most important sections of your sales presentation – the introduction (warm up), the high point (that place in the middle when it all comes together) and the wrap up.
Play it back and ask yourself whether the voice you’re hearing energizes, excites and inspires, or sounds like the formation of a stalactite.
Next, write out the three sections of your presentation, word for word. Replace weak and passive words with words that bump and grind. Use words that turn heads, drop jaws and bring sentences to life. Try a little onomatopoeia. Tell a story. Underline all words that need queuing for vocal variety.
Record your script and let your essential energy flow. Let the power of your diaphragm, not your throat, propel your words. Burn a CD so you can listen to your new voice in your car and around the house. Load the MP3 onto your iPod so you can really get to know this dynamic new you.
At your next sales presentation, forget everything you learned in this exercise. Your voice will automatically “remember†the energy points, the words to punch up, the pauses, cliffhangers, expressions, word pictures and money lines. This is real communication.
You will find yourself becoming more alive, more interesting, more powerful. Your sales will come to life as well because effective communication, like outrageous success, is all about letting your essential energy flow.