1. Acknowledge the common fears of your listeners. Help them realize they’re not the only ones who are scared. Then, share that YOU were scared, and how you overcame it.

2. Give it away. As a Thought Leader, projecting a sense of scarcity isn’t attractive. Just dump every relevant fact. Fear not that your value will be reduced.

3. Be as detailed as possible. The more details you provide, the easier it is for your callers to execute.

4. Attitude. Be confident without swagger.

5. Acid test. Before you deliver ANY content, ask this simple question: Does this give the impression of VALUE or VANITY in the eyes of my listeners?

6. Be funny early and often. Funny is relaxing. Funny makes you appear smarter. Funny makes you more listenable. Funny wins approval. Funny builds trust. Funny captivates attention. Funny lubricates the informational digestive system. Funny makes learning easier. Funny is engaging. In short: Just be funny and you’re halfway there.

7. Breath is fuel. Establish an inner foundation to fuel your phone calls with the passion and energy you need to become more listenable. Do a few breathing exercises before the call. Also, post a sticky note that reads, “BREATHE” by your phone. That will remind you to pause and breath throughout the call. This creates the space needed to punctuate your message with appropriate silences.

8. Constantly throw in unrelated facts. It proves you’re well read and makes the call more interesting.

9. Ahhh. Demonstrate that you’re relaxed immediately. Callers will do the same.

10. Structure. Deliver a flow of inspiring content in an engaging and witty way.

11. Disturb and offend people. Those who are comfortable do not act.

12. Don’t share things to show how smart you are. Offer insight with the intent to help the attendee understand something.

13. No vomit.Don’t spew a steady stream self-glorifying wisdom; instead, challenge people by leaving them with any Meaningful Concrete Immediacy, (MCI).

14. Also. Don’t give people the ability to remain mediocre.

15. Energy. Don’t just have fun, SOUND like you are having fun.

17. Contact. Enable the ability to email, tweet or connect with listeners during the program.

18. Goal. Get people thinking about THEMSELVES in a different way.

19. Know. Have a clear understanding of who your audience is and what their pain is.

20. The art is hiding the art. If you sound rehearsed, people will start checking email while they’re listening to you. So, the best way to sound like you’re not rehearsed is to spend hours and hours rehearsing.

21. Openness. Make it clear that you welcome communication: Questions, emails, messages, etc.

22. Make your content actionable. Your listeners need to think, “I believe this! I can do this! I want to try this!” after they’ve been exposed to your ideas. Otherwise, your material, ideas and presentations are nothing but motivational garbage. Inherently impressive and interesting, yet clearly irrelevant and inapplicable.

23. Just tell people how. That’s the posture of the masses. That’s the collective self-interest of our hyperspeed, A.D.D. instant gratification culture. They want to know HOW, and they want to know NOW.

24. Test actionability of your material. Ask: How does this idea directly affect the daily lives of people? How will people be able to execute your strategy in spite of their boss’s insistence on doing it the old way? If someone else were delivering this information, what would move ME to take action on it immediately? REMEMBER: Persuasion = Content + Action.

25. Preparation is persuasion. Develop a pre-call ritual.

26. Research creates confidence. Gather the resources will you need instant access to in order to make this phone call perfect.

27. Shorter wins. Ask yourself: How could you send this message so it gets through the clearest and quickest?”

28. Speak in sound bites. Keep in mind that the human attention span is six seconds.

29. Duh. Talk like a 5th grader.

30. Synergy sucks. The less jargon you use, the more engaging you become.

31. Vary your sentence structure. Short Sentence. Long Sentence. Long Sentence. Short Sentence.

32. On stories. When you tell stories, use specific times, places and names, or else it will sound made up. Specificity is both credibility AND persuasion. The more details you can provide the more likely someone is to execute.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are people checking their email while listening to your teleseminar?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
For the list called, “30 Ways to become the Most Interesting Person You Know,” send an email to me, and I’ll send you the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Coach, Entrepreneur
[email protected]

Who’s telling their friends about YOU?

Tune in to The Marketing Channel on NametagTV.com!

Watch video lessons on spreading the word!

“I feel like we could talk forever!”
“Wow, has it been a whole hour already?”
“This has been the most enjoyable phone call of my week!”

How many of your customers are saying that about YOU?

Answer: Not enough.

Take your pick:

Chatting with a hot prospect…
Following up with a new client…
Interviewing with a potential employer…
Interviewing with a member of the media…
Hosting a teleseminar for your membership…
Participating on a conference call with your superiors…

Whomever you define as your “customer,” the challenge in approaching people over the phone is to make your phone conversations MORE.

More engaging. More listenable. More interesting. More fun. More relaxing. More unforgettable.

REMEMBER: Because they can’t see you, (unless you’re Skyping), they need to FEEL you.

After all, the only judgment people can make – the only impression their unconscious mind can form – is a function of how interacting with you made them FEEL.

Here are three practices to make your phone calls SO engaging that customers never want to hang up.

1. Poll your past. Think back to the five most engaging phone calls you had this month. The ones where you felt like you could talk forever and never wanted to hang up. The ones where you sprung out of your chair and started pacing around the room.

What made those calls so interesting and listenable? Was it the passion? The energy? The topics discussed? The attitude you had before picking up the phone?

Now think back to the five most BORING phone calls you had this month. The ones where you caught yourself bobble heading and/or drooling. The ones where you tuned out the speaker and started playing solitaire.

What made those calls so boring and unlistenable? Was it the irrelevance? The lack of energy? The topics discussed? The fact that your boss was about as exciting as a WNBA pre-season game?

THEN, TRY THIS: Make a list of the attributes of those five engaging/boring calls. Look for commonalities and patterns. Then, step back ask yourself how well you embody/avoid those same attributes in your daily telepresence.

If the answer is “Not enough,” here’s what you do. Extract a few reminders from that list, i.e., “Get out your chair!” “SMILE” or “Talk about your passion!” Then, write them on sticky notices and post the reminders next to your phone.

This measure of accountability will punch youself in the face and immediately double the engagement and listenability of your phone calls. What structure could you put in place to remind yourself to do this consistently?

2. Writing metabolizes ideas. You know my mantra: “Writing is the basis of all wealth.” Now, one of the cool attributes of this philosophy is that writing makes everything you do easier, which, in turn, makes everything you do BETTER. Speaking. Thinking. Selling. Marketing. Talking. Everything.

Think about it. Imagine you have a phone interview with The Wall Street Journal THIS afternoon. At the reporter’s request, let’s say you’re going to share your expertise about how entrepreneurs can recession-proof their business. Cool!

TRY THIS: Spend an hour the morning of the interview journaling; brainstorming or free writing as many ideas as you possibly can on this topic. Forget about grammar, punctuation, spelling or sentence structure. Just think. Just write. Just puke onto the page whatever comes to mind. Let what wants to be written be written.

This process accomplishes four things:

FIRST: It clears away the crap. Gets the mental shanks out, if you will. This frees up a space where your best insights can comfortably arise.

SECOND: It brings clarity to your ideas. After all, you don’t know how you truly feel about anything until you’ve written about it.

THIRD: It normalizes, naturalizes and internalizes your material. See, any time you write something; it becomes etched upon your consciousness. “It goes into to The Matrix,” as the late George Carlin used to say – who, by the way, wrote twenty pages of new material EVERY DAY. Think it’s a coincidence he won dozens of Emmys, Grammies and The Mark Twain Award? Nope.

FOURTH: It builds your confidence. Writing isn’t exactly rehearsal, but it IS a form of preparation. And although most of the benefits will be subconscious, come interview time, the reporter on the other end of the phone will think, Wow! This girl really knows her stuff!

REMEMBER: The art is hiding the art. And writing makes everything you do easier and better. Especially making phone calls. Find a way to merge your writing practice with your telepresence. What did you write today?

3. Meaningful concrete immediacy. Those three words changed my life. (Read them again, please.) Timely. Relevant. Practical. The “How.” Stuff people can use TODAY. All keepers, no fluff. That’s what your clients want. That’s what the media wants. That’s what your audiences want. When they’re listening to your words, they need to be thinking to themselves, “I believe it, I can do it and I’d like to try it.”

TRY THIS: Grab a few more sticky notes. Post any of the following Phrases That Payses on your computer, bulletin board or, if you’re ambitious, directly on your phone.

o “How can my customers apply this TODAY?”
o “Does this leave an impression of value or vanity in people’s minds?”
o “I tell you that because I’m curious how YOU…”
o “This is important for you because…”
o “The secret is…”
o “Here’s the best part…”
o “Yes, and here’s why…”
o “Here’s the good news…”
o “The question you’ve got to ask is…”
o “The three questions you need to ask yourself are…”

REMEMBER: Give people the meat. Tell them how. Make your information applicable and actionable. What can people do TODAY?

More engaging. More listenable. More interesting. More fun. More relaxing. More unforgettable.

That’s what will happen to your telepresence if you execute these three practices.

Your customers – whether they’re clients, superiors, audience members or the media – will never want to hang up.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How engaging is your telepresence?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
For the list called, “27 Ways to OUT Your Competitors,” send an email to me, and I’ll send you the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Coach, Entrepreneur
[email protected]

How many unsolicited referrals did YOU get this week?

Tune in to The Sales Channel on NametagTV.com!

Watch video lessons on enabling customers to buy!