A friend mentioned the other day that I don’t talk to her the way that she has heard me talk to customers by phone. 99% of my work is phone based and occasionally I “bring my work home with me” when it’s more convenient to call from the house (rather than drive all the way to the office for one phone call). I thought about what she said and it’s definitely true. When I’m asking a customer (a retail store employee) to do something, I’m trying to be as persuasive as possible. The dynamic range of my voice becomes wider, I stay in the higher part of the range, I’m enthusiastically upbeat…..
Is that me in my day-to-day? Certainly not. If I started talking that way around the house, or even out at the burlesque shows, it would sound phony. I’m sure it sounds somewhat phony when I call the stores too – but once they’re in that conversation, I use mah werds to reel them in and make them work for me. Does it always work? No way, I’m not THAT good. I’ve taken some difficult situations and talked people “off the ledge” and got some work out of them. I gauge their interest in helping me and change strategies if needed. In some ways, I guess I’m kind of a “closer”. When all else fails, they send me in to assess the situation, clean up the damage and make everybody happy. Watch the video below, when they’re talking about degrees of intensity, it’s a great example of changing your approach. Also, Don LaFontaine is a funny dude. Apparently he’ll record answering machine messages. *HERO*