David B. Givens, Ph.D. Center for Nonverbal Studies Spokane, Washington
Though their work is verbal and vocal, telephone salespeople can benefit significantly from training in body language. A phone conversation consists of two parts: (1) words themselves, and (2) the manner in which the words are presented. The former is verbal, and can be recorded as a written transcript. The latter, which is nonverbal, is what behavioral scientists call voice quality, intonation, prosody, paralanguage, or tone of voice. Tone of voice carries the feelings and emotions we detect in words.
In a conversation, voice quality is what we either like or dislike on the phone. Two people can read the same lines, but through tone of voice one person sounds friendlier, more helpful, and more convincing.
Physiologically, the diaphragm controls tone of voice, by intercostal muscles between the ribs, and by tiny muscles in the voice box or larynx. All of these muscles register emotion.
The most productive way to teach telephone sales is in the context of body language as a whole. The neuromuscular systems for facial expression, gesture, posture, and tone of voice are interlinked. They are governed by the same modules of the emotional or limbic system.
We know that smiling produces a softer, more inviting tone of voice. Even on the phone, hand gestures “reach out” to help establish rapport. Studies show that the use of natural speaking gestures aids in verbal fluency. Orienting one's eyes, face, and shoulders toward listeners—even those across a phone link—adds immediacy to one's voice.
Structured training in which telephone salespeople have the opportunity to see their own body language as they speak can help them become more confident, convincing, and effective speakers on the phone.
Tone of voice is the manner in which a verbal statement is presented—its timbre, rhythm, breathiness, hoarseness, or loudness. These are the qualities of speaking and vocalizing not usually included in the study of languages and linguistics.
Tone of voice reflects psychological arousal, emotion, and mood. It may also carry social information, as in a sarcastic, superior, or submissive mode of speech. A normal listener hears feeling and emotion in spoken words.
We usually take for granted the emotional power in tones of voice. A significant number of voice qualities are universal across human societies, though they are subject to cultural modification and shaping. In Japan, voice features that indicate respect and politeness include breathiness, openness, lowered volume, and a raised level of pitch. Adults everywhere use higher pitched voices to speak to infants and young children.
A softer pitch is innately “friendly,” and suggests a non-aggressive, helpful pose. With each other, men and women use higher pitched voices in greetings to establish rapport. In almost every language, speakers use a rising intonation to pose questions and ask for help. The higher register appeases requests for information, and is often accompanied by diffident palm-up hand gestures and submissive shoulder-shrugs.
Meanwhile, there's a hidden battle for dominance waged in almost every conversation—and the way we modulate the lower frequencies of our voice shows who's on top. Deeper voices carry more authority, both for men and women, and everything they say somehow seems truer or more important. As laboratory studies show, voice tones stimulate the brain's right hemisphere, the one that generates emotions instead of logic.
Expressive muscles of our face, too, are programmed to show how we feel. We smile when happy, frown when unhappy, and curl our lips in disgust. Facial muscles are linked to emotion centers of the brain via “special visceral” nerves. These nerves pull our lips upward in a smile and downward in a frown. Meanwhile, “somatic” nerves flex our bicep muscles as we curl a training weight. While our facial muscles register emotion, our arms do not.
Emotion also registers in tiny muscles of our voice box. They, too, link to emotion centers of the brain via special visceral nerves. When we feel happy or sad, our voice sounds happy or sad, as well. For both the face and the voice, emotional responses are unconscious and out of awareness.
For video training in phone sales, consider what psychologists call the “feedback smile.” The physical act of smiling itself produces a feeling of happiness. The facial feedback hypothesis proposes that involuntary facial movements provide sufficient peripheral information to drive emotional experience. Physiological feedback from smiling or frowning affects emotional expression and behavior. In one study, participants were instructed to hold a pencil in their mouths, either between the lips or between the teeth. The latter, who were able to smile, rated cartoons funnier than did the former, whose lips could not smile.
In videotaped protocols like those of SureSpeak, trainees monitor and shape their own facial expressions as they speak to clients. They learn to project a positive facial image that also projects positively in tone of voice. Thanks to special visceral nerves, emotions look and sound the same. A confident, happy face clearly registers in sound you can hear on the phone.
In every society, people gesture with their hands as they speak. Anthropologists agree that spoken language had a gestural origin, and manual gestures are universal in speech today. Often neglected in telephone sales, gestures are as important as they are in the normal face-to-face conversation.
Research at the University of Chicago shows that speaking gestures aid memory and thought. Subjects performed 20 percent better on memory tests when permitted to gesture with their hands. Those asked to keep their hands still as they answered questions did not perform as well. Gesture and speech are integrally linked. Since they enlist spatial and other nonverbal areas of the brain, gestures make thinking easier.
A growing body of evidence suggests, moreover, that teaching babies gestures—such as American Sign Language—improves their ability to speak. This again reflects a link between manual signing and vocal speech. Babies express cognitive abilities through hand gestures—by pointing with the index finger—earlier than they do through articulated words.
Training for telephone sales benefits by showing callers how to use natural hand gestures as they speak. Gestures add authenticity and register in more articulate, authentic, and convincing voice tones.
Posture is a fixed, stationary position as opposed to fluid bodily movements. When sustained or held longer than two seconds, a body movement such as a bowed-head may be considered a posture. Postures are more expressive of inner attitudes, feelings, and moods than are briefer gestures and more fleeting, acute shifts in body motion.
Humans are primates, and posture is a key status signal in monkeys, apes, and man. The stance of a baboon, independently of any specific gesture, may indicate differences in tension and individual status. A dominant male chimp tends to stand and sit more confidently than submissive rivals. In salesmanship, your posture should be almost military but not stiff and uncomfortable-looking. Shoulders should not stoop forward, head should not bow, chest should not cave in. Such a downcast, dejected, or “defeated” posture would echo in voice qualities heard on the phone.
For greater personal connection and more immediacy in your voice tones, angle your shoulders and upper body directly toward the image you “see” on the phone. A squared-up, aligned posture feels emotionally closer than one that is angled away, and the feeling registers clearly in your vocal tones. While conversing face-to-face, your upper body unwittingly squares-up, addresses, and “aims” at those you like, admire, and agree with, but angles away from disliked persons and people with whom you disagree. Drills in which you see yourself conversing on video provide good practice toward achieving your perfect telephone voice.
Eye contact is the visual connection we make while gazing into the eyes of another. It is a highly emotional link established as two people simultaneously peer into each other's eyes. Gazing at eyes arouses strong emotions of liking.
Studies agree that there is more direct gaze when people like each other and cooperate, and significantly less eye contact when they dislike each other or disagree.
In phone conversations, mutual gaze is the single most-missed part of the electronic interaction. For a more natural exchange, imagine your partner's eyes and nod your head as you understand or agree. Though unseen, doing so enables you to feel emotionally closer. Seeing your own head nods and establishing eye contact with yourself on videotape offers valuable training. The more comfortable you feel with the imagined, inner-visual image of your partner, the better your voice will sound. Neurologically, the same brain modules that control your eyes' visual response govern the tiny emotional muscles of your larynx and its incipient tones of voice.
An emotional brain module is a part of the brain—a nucleus, structure, circuit, or layer—that is involved in governing, controlling, or modifying our emotions, feelings, and moods. An emotion is a pleasant or unpleasant mental state, such as agreement, anger, disagreement, disgust, disliking, embarrassment, fear, happiness, hate, interest, liking, love, sadness, shame, surprise, and uncertainty. Our eyeball, eyelid, and pupil movements respond to emotional signals from emotion modules of the brain. The eyes tell what a person is feeling inside.
When we agree, for example, we tend to look at the person with whom we agree. When we disagree, our eyes gaze away. It happens unconsciously and without deliberate control. The same emotions cause changes in the larynx muscles, so we hear differences in tone of voice. When we agree, our voice registers a higher, friendlier pitch that sounds different from a lower, raspier pitch heard in the voice of someone who disagrees. Over the phone, even slight differences in attitude are easily heard, and we get a clear feeling that the speaker agrees or disagrees with us. This is because the listener's temporal lobes are highly attuned to subtleties in voice tone and prosody (the musical melody voices give off). The sound of a voice tells what a person is feeling inside.
Positive emotions benefit almost any sale, whether in person or on the phone. Since both vocal and visual emotions are linked in the brain, we recommend that training for telephone sales be based not on voice alone but on voice in tandem with body language.
David B. Givens began studying “body language” for his Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Washington in Seattle. He served as Resident Anthropologist and Director of Information Services and Programs at the American Anthropological Association in Washington, D.C. from 1985–97, and is currently Director of the Center for Nonverbal Studies (CNS), located in Spokane, Washington. He taught anthropology at the University of Washington and teaches in the Department of Communication Arts at Gonzaga University. His expertise lies in nonverbal communication, anthropology and the brain.
Givens offers seminars on nonverbal communication to diverse audiences, including lawyers, judges, social workers, salespeople, physicians and nurses, and works with law enforcement agencies and the U.S. intelligence community on matters of nonverbal communication. Two of Givens’s articles on nonverbal communication are recognized as international classics by the Max Planck Institute in Germany. Givens and neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean introduced the word “isopraxism” (the reptilian principle of mimicking) into the English language, as announced by the executive editor of the American Heritage Dictionary, Anne H. Soukanov, in the Atlantic Monthly in 1993.
David Givens was a member of a team of anthropologists, linguists, astronomers, nuclear physicists, psychologists and materials scientists charged by the U.S. Department of Energy with designing a marker to warn human beings 10,000 years in the future about the dangers of nuclear waste. Givens has spoken on nonverbal communication to the Smithsonian Institution, National Academy of Sciences, European Cosmetic Toiletry and Perfumery Association (COLIPA), New York Life Insurance Company, Washington State Administrator for the Courts and other groups. He has done communications consulting for Sandia National Laboratories, the Bechtel Group, U.S. Department of Energy, Pfizer, Epson, Wendy's International, Dell Inc., Unilever, Hallmark and Best Buy; his ideas on nonverbal communication have been written about in Omni, Harpers, the New Yorker, U.S. News & World Report and other magazines, and in newspapers including the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.
Author of reports, magazine and encyclopedia articles himself, Givens’s book, Love Signals: A Practical Field Guide to the Body Language of Courtship, is in press at St. Martin’s Press, New York. His online Nonverbal Dictionary of Gestures, Signs, and Body Language Cues is used around the world as a reference tool.