A Conversational Marketing™ Expert (CME) at Incept will use their voice every week to have hundreds of productive conversations that are aimed to produce results in the form of blood donations for our clients. The voice in this type of work serves as our most essential tool in the contact center. It is not only a big part of what defines us on a humanistic level, but when it is used as a tool, the efforts to get people to donate become personal too.
Do I really sound like that? Did I pronounce this the right way? Does my voice sound assumptive and confident? All of these are questions I have heard from new Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs). You might have even heard some of these questions from your own organization’s representatives. I’m going to give you a few bullet points on easy ways to make sure you are maximizing the impact that you, as a person, have with your point of contact just by allowing your voice to develop on the phone.
Stretching Your Vocal Chords for Success on the Phone Lines
- There is a fine line between “game show host” and sounding enthusiastic. It is OK to sound excited about what you are trying to pitch. In our case, it is awesome and encouraging to hear newer Conversational Marketing™ Experts (CMEs) sound enthusiastic about donating when talking to donors. We want that. We want our CMEs to sound interesting, exciting, and motivating when it comes to the donation process. However, you don’t want to have so much voice inflection or sound so overzealous that you come across like a radio disk jockey or game show host. Such an approach can be off-putting. When you sound “overproduced”, you don’t sound personal or natural. Ultimately, donors won’t take you seriously when you’re trying to recruit them to donate. Keep in mind you want confidence to show through in what you are saying, not misguided exuberance.
- Get them on your side by emphasizing the donor’s previous donations. More often than not in the industry of tele-recruitment for blood donors, the call center that is making the outbound calls will typically have some type of donation history available within the scheduler to assist in the recruitment process. At Incept, we are able to see how many times a person has donated, where they like to donate, and even their blood type. This gives us the chance to personalize our pitch to them. Half of the battle with recruitment-type calling is making the point of contact (donor) feel they are doing a good thing and build enough positive rapport with them to make them want to continue. When you can effectively convey how important a donor is to their respective program, it makes it so much easier to deliver a solid, assumptive trial close to your pitch. Focus on the good and emphasize the good your donor is doing before you initially ask them to donate to reap the benefits of this technique.
- Volume and speed indicate more to a donor than you think. It’s not what you say, but how you say it. When I sound excited about a subject, I usually speak about that subject in a faster and more enthusiastic way. If I am bored with a topic in a discussion, I most likely speak slower and am less enthralled overall. These type of things can show through if you allow them to. They can either help you or hurt you. When you are excited about something and sound excited in your pitch, the donor is not only going to listen more, but your interaction with that donor is going to be much more fluid in your call flow. The opposite can be said for a recruiter that sounds dull. Sometimes it isn’t about what you are saying in your pitch, but how you are saying it that will determine the outcome! Keep that in mind!
When thinking about good voice inflection, think about reading a children’s book. Sure, the words might be few and simple, but the way you read them is what makes the story interesting and paints a mental picture.
What do your representatives do to makes sure their voice inflection helps in their efforts to boost results?