A sales encounter/conversation can be likened to a stage or screen performance. 

The most impactful actors…the ones who win you over and make you fully experience their joy, pain, anguish, anger and exhilaration…use more than words to convey those emotions.

In fact, as the image accompanying this post illustrates, words are the least important part of their performance!

The expressive way those words are delivered (tonality, modulation, volume, disfluency, speed and pitch) has a great deal to do with how they’re received and processed.

Even more significant to an actor’s performance is body language! At 55%, it’s essentially THE most consequential communication tool they (and we) possess.

If you’re finding that hard to believe, I’ll invite you to reimagine the climactic courtroom face-off between Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men.”

Instead of the pulse-pounding intensity leading up to and including Nicholson’s “You can’t handle the truth!” diatribe, envision the two actors calmly facing each other and reciting their lines in a flat, emotionless tone of voice.

I think you’ll agree THAT performance wouldn’t have packed anywhere near the emotional punch of the scene as it was filmed.

So, why am I telling you this? 

Because HOW we communicate when talking to prospects…how we accentuate our words with tonality and body language…will have everything to do with how receptive they are to our message.

And if the message relates to how your product or service can potentially change a prospect’s life for the better, then deliver it with the kind of “performance” you’d expect from an A-list stage or screen actor.

You may not win a Tony, an Emmy or an Oscar, but you’ll very likely close the sale!