Voice Coaching For Total Communication

Make the best of your most powerful selling tool - your voice

Movie stars Whoopi Goldberg, Pierce Brosnan and Robbie Coltrane have something in common with successful Irish salespersons, chief executives, telesales and call centre operatives and many top rate company spokespersons.

That 'something' is voice coaching. High Performance Programme Director for Voice, Poll Moussoulides, is Ireland's leading voice and communications specialist. Not only has he coached the above stars (and many more), he coaches people working at all levels in the corporate and state sectors.

They have something else in common, too: a recognition of the value of working with the voice. "The person who normally comes to us for voice coaching is someone who recognises that there is more they can do to communicate effectively with the voice," Poll says.

If you know how to do it, you may be able to convey, with just an emphasis on a word, a sense of empathy to the frazzled customer who has been wrestling with the voicemail system: "If you can make someone feel that they are important enough for you to spend time listening to them, then you've won them over," he says.

The benefits for those who want to sell a product or service or who are networking, negotiating, trying to gain credibility in an extremely short time span or want to impress a possible new employer are obvious. And yet, we give little attention to that most important communications instrument, he says.

"It's about optimising what you have," he says of his one-day course Voice Coaching for Total Communication. "Everyone has the potential to improve their voice. Because the voice is a series of muscles you can't expect to be an excellent speechmaker just because you can talk. It's like saying I'm going to go and run a marathon because I can run." Without training, the would-be marathon runner won't get very far.

Improving the voice is within the capacity of every person, he says. "We can all speak more effectively just by applying a few different techniques. I'm talking about things like pace, pitch and volume. These are the things that all of us can change quite quickly. We can sound more authoritative, gain credibility faster and so on."

"We can all do those things straight away, we can all pause and we can all breathe."

But why bother?

Research shows that the message others receive from us is based on what they see (visual), how we speak (tonal) and what we say (verbal). What is really important about this breakdown is that the verbal only accounts for seven per cent of the message others receive from us! The tonal part of the message accounts for 38 per cent and the visual part for 55 per cent.

So if you find that other people are not "getting the message" you may be falling down on the vital visual and tonal aspects of your communication. Imagine, then, the value of working on your tone of voice, your gestures, the use of your eyes as well as on your words!

"Your job as a communicator is to draw the listener's ear to what you want them to hear," he says. "Otherwise you might as well hand them a piece of paper with that information on it and let them read it themselves. That would probably be better than you saying it in a way that isn't going to be effective."

"Over the years I've worked with many heads of national or multinational companies." Some wanted to be more effective communicators within their own organisations, to come across more effectively to clients, employees and shareholders. Others wanted to impress new employers or partners.

"What was very rewarding and inspiring for me is that these are people who are leaders and they know they have to have the edge from a vocal point of view. You can have the snappy suit, car and speechwriter but the bottom line is that the message has to be delivered in a way that's going to inspire and influence your audience, be it your clients, your workforce or whoever you're talking to."

The Voice Coaching For Total Communication course takes place in Browne's Brasserie, St.Stephen's Green, Dublin 2 on Thursday 10th May.

Click here for a full course outline.

In-house training
For information on in-house training please:
Phone : Loretto Mara 01 853 2215
E Mail : loretto@highperformance.ie

Back to Top