“Vocal tonality is very important to be able to articulate what you’re trying to say.” – George Penyak in today’s Tip 696
How about you? How do you practicing your vocal tonality?
Join the conversation below and learn more about George!
George Penyak Blog
George Penyak Website
George Penyak on LinkedIn
Loving The Climb Sales Podcast
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from George Penyak. George is currently a national sales director for Restaurant Technologies, where he earned Salesperson of the Year honors in 2019. Prior to that, he was in sales management. He also hosts a sales podcast called Loving The Climb and blogs at GeorgePenyak.com. Here he is:
George Penyak: What’s up everybody George Penyak here, and I’ve got a quick sales tip for you as we go into the new year. So right now I think we’re still all living in this somewhat digital environment. In some way, we are most definitely still selling digitally, whether it be more phone calls and zoom meetings or presentations are done just via the internet. They are not done as frequently in person as they were before in the pre-COVID.
So in this new world, I think the sales tip is especially relevant in this something that you can do today or practice today and get better at it today in your digital environment. And this will also carry over to strengthening your presentations when we get into the post COVID world. And we’re back to somewhat a level of normalcy here and we’re doing face-to-face presentations, often like we used to in the prior COVID days. And this tip is practicing your vocal tonality. And if you’re unsure what vocal tonality is, it’s essentially stressing emotion into what you say and essentially how you say it.
So for example, take the phrase, I didn’t accuse you of stealing, that phrase alone. I didn’t accuse you of stealing. Think about the different ways you can say that you can say, “I didn’t accuse you of stealing.” That would mean one thing to somebody. You could also say, “I didn’t accuse you of stealing.” That would mean a different thing. You could also say, “I didn’t accuse you of stealing” and you can all say “I didn’t accuse you of stealing.”
All of the different ways to save things can actually mean completely different things. And so I think vocal tonality is very important to be able to articulate what you’re trying to say. And oftentimes you’ve heard this so often in sales. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. And a lot of that has to do with vocal tonality. And I think when you hear people talk and what they call monotone, where it’s very boring and they’re talking just like this, and there’s absolutely no emotion on what they’re saying. That will lose an audience very fast, but not enough people talk about what the opposite of monotone is.
In my opinion, the opposite is using vocal tonality and stressing certain words. And when you do that, you come off as much more engaging. You come off as much more, honestly relatable in my opinion. And you just sound like you have a lot more credibility in what you’re talking about. You’re ultimately a better communicator if you use vocal tonality. And I really feel like it’s one of these skills that comes more natural for some than it does for others. It’s not necessarily something that I’ve ever practiced, but I’ve gotten feedback that people say that I use vocal tonality a lot, and I stress certain words and I speak faster on certain things. And I’ll slow down on certain things when I’m trying to stress something.
But I think traditionally a lot of your great communicators, your great speeches, anything that, that you will feel is very engaging or emotional. And it’s through words, it’s through speaking. A lot of that is the vocal tonality and a lot of the great communicators of our days and ever really do a really good job, stressing certain words and elevating certain words and lowering certain words by the way they say it to prove a point or to articulate something and the audience will receive it so much better audio and listen back to it and ask yourself, do you sound engaging.
Now I think this is incredibly important in a world where we’re doing more phone calls, we’re doing less face-to-face, we’re doing zoom meetings. I think it’s, it’ll, it’ll increase your outcomes and increase your odds for successful with better to have a stronger vocal tonality, especially in this digital world. But I also think too, it’ll carry over very, very well. And when we get back to face-to-face or what I call hand-to-hand combat, when you’re out in the field more, and you’re doing more presentations and you’re doing more face to face meetings, it’s going to carry over just as much. And these days, anything can give you the edge. And if this is something small that certain person in that certain presentation, vines you a little more engaging and they’re listening just a little bit more attentively than they normally would. It could be the difference in a deal or not.
So anyway, hope you guys really enjoy this podcast. If you would like feel free to follow my podcast, Loving The Climb Sales Podcast, I have a little more longer-form content on tips, strategies, tactics, and sales, but also, I also speak a lot about the career, how to advance your sales career. And then also too, I would love if you linked up with me on LinkedIn at George Penyak, it’s pretty easy to find, and there’s not many George Penyaks, but anyways, thank you guys so much. Hope you have a great holiday season and we will catch you guys next time.
Scott Ingram: For more about George including links to his podcast and his blog, just click over to DailySales.Tips/696 and we’ll have everything for you there.
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!