Stuff 4 World Weblog

The telephone may be one of the most powerful, efficient and cost-effective business tools you have at your disposal to market yourself in the otherwise trite job market. If things start out badly on the phone, they may never progress beyond the first call. Whether you use the phone for telephonic interview, teleconferencing, customer service or for sales calls as part of your telemarketing job, the telephone manners and etiquette you display are the critical components of your professional image.

Your Voice :: Your Personality on the Phone

In order to market yourself on the higher side it is wise to first evaluate your telephone voice as your voice is your personality over the telephone. It makes an immediate impression upon your listener as to whether you are affable or appalling, confident or coward, spontaneous or stereotyped, relaxed or nervous. So, how do you come across over the phone?

Evaluate yourself through the following vocal attributes:

Pitch - Evaluate whether your voice too shrill or strained? Do you speak in a monotone? Does your pitch vary in normal speech? These variations are known as inflection. The more inflection you use, the more interesting and emphasizing your tone of voice becomes. Keep in mind that when you are under emotional stress, the pitch of your voice will tend to rise and become shrill or strained. Control it! The pitch of your voice is an index of your confidence and poise.

Volume - Check the volume or loudness of your voice. Find out whether it is too soft or too loudOften when people are tired or upset their voices tend to fade, and they will be asked to speak up. Make sure that you speak loud enough to be heard, but not so loud that you sound to be thrusting your forced speech into someone’s ear!

Pace - Find out whether you maintain balanced pace while speaking .For if you speak too slowly your speech is likely to lose the attention of the listener. Conversely, your listener won’t be able to follow you if you speak too rapidly. In either case, your message won’t get through.

Quality - The quality of your voice is its most distinctive and individual characteristic. This is where the essence of warmth, understanding and likeability come into play. Smiling as you speak enhances your vocal quality. Whereas being angry, upset or in a hurry negatively affects your vocal quality.

Articulation - The price of poor articulation is high, particularly in business. You must pronounce your words very clearly or your listeners will misunderstand you. Faulty articulation and incorrect word pronunciation will give your listener the impression that you are sloppy, careless and lack subject efficiency.

Some Handy Tips to Help You Escalate Your Speech Tool on the Telephone

• Smile when you’re on the phone; your customers will hear this unspoken pleasant disposition of yours!
• Never answer the phone with food in your mouth or try to eat quietly while talking. Beware that munching, drinking, chewing gum or sucking on a mint gets amplified over telephone lines.
• Reciprocate to all phone calls within 48 hours.
• When you place a call that you know might be lengthy, ask if it’s a good time to talk before you dive into your speech.
• Know what you want to say before making an important call. Spell out your intension through adequate words instead of talking all those irrelevant things!
• Don’t read from a script during a call. Instead either memorizes your script as an actor would or use thought starters in form of a short note with a word or two on the index cards to guide you from one idea to another.
• Make a telephone appointment when you want to have a focused, longer (15 or more minutes) conversation with someone who is normally busy.
• Don’t do things such as open mail, flip through the newspaper or do paperwork while on the phone. The person you are talking with will easily smell that you are distracted.
• Listen and respond to the person on the other end of the line. When you focus on them rather than on what you are going to say next, the phone call becomes much more wordy and verbose.