As we drill down a bit farther in regard to how we are communicating on the telephone, let’s examine a few skills we need to master.
The first, and most obvious, is the volume of our voice. When we are excited, stressed or passionate, our voices tend to get louder. In some situations, this is a good thing. Conversation on the telephone with a customer, is not one of those situations. Voice volume going up is also a common experience when speaking to someone who does not speak our language well. It seems that by our nature, we speak louder as if that will help them understand the language better!
To be great in phone conversation, it is important to learn how to control our volume. Customers don’t want to feel that they are being shouted at. Speaking loudly can be interpreted by the hearer as coming from someone who is upset or angry. They can also perceive that we are using a loud voice to control the conversation and the outcome and “force” them to do or buy. Interestingly, loud voice volume may also indicate the we do not know what we are talking about, or we don’t believe what we are saying. Our voice goes up as a mask to cover up our lack of confidence.
Along with more volume, we tend to speak faster. Louder and faster is not a good combination for telephone conversation. Many things happen when we speak too fast. For most people, we possibly will get our words mixed up. We could say the wrong words (maybe because our own brain can’t keep up with our mouth!). We may mumble. We might not enunciate clearly. We can put the words in the wrong order. We will talk and talk and talk… never giving the customer an opportunity to join in the conversation.
On the other end of the line, our customer may be having a hard time keeping up with the conversation when we are talking too quickly. They might be annoyed by our loud volume. When people are annoyed, generally they don’t think as clearly as they are distracted by the annoyance. This could cloud their understanding of what we are explaining. Another distinct possibility is that our customer will have difficulty processing the information we are giving them if we talk to fast. Although we are familiar with the cars and the terminology, our customer may not be as familiar.
As they work to understand what we are explaining, they may fall behind in the conversation which will only add to the challenge in following with our line of explanation. If we happen to get our words jumbled or choose the wrong words to use, the frustration for the customer can become higher as they realize something we said isn’t right. Then the customer gets distracted by sorting out what we were really meaning to say.
All this leads to the customer feeling that we are not being honest and respectful toward them. They can easily feel they are dealing with another “fast talking salesman”.
To be a great communicator, we want to develop the skills necessary to enable those to whom we are speaking to fully understand the message we are trying to tell them. This is not necessarily easy, but it is well worth the effort.