Use Your Voice Effectively To Attract Clients

Use your voice effectively to attract clients

When you’re a coach, your voice is your tool. How you use that tool can empower, enlighten and energise, or the opposite. For example, you may use your voice for live videos, pre-recorded training, webinars, client work and speaking gigs.

So how can your voice help you attract clients?

1. People will be more engaged in what you’re sharing
2. Your training sessions/webinars will be more interesting
3. Your clients won’t fall asleep as you talk to them
4. Your audience will leave your talk feeling inspired

Be different and get your business noticed

One of the things that can happen is you can blend into the crowd where your message and conversations are the same as others. You may not want to stand out, so you quieten your voice or, worse dumb down your opinions for fear of being different.

In a world of online coaches/authors/business owners, being different will get you and your business noticed.

I’ll be honest, when I was asked to write this article or the IAPC&M, I put it off. Why? My voice triggers me. I’ve picked up some vocal undertones that make me cringe to the point that I didn’t want to go on camera and speak for years because of it.

Fast forward a few years, and helping clients back then with their visibility, I realised I just needed to let go of this limiting belief. I recognised that people would meet me, and I’d speak in a certain way, so it was no different to being online. While I could have elocution lessons, that doesn’t feel authentic, so I now accept who I am and only cringe now and again!

Check Your Tone

Many years ago, when I was in HR, I had to do my first big presentation, and I knew I needed to captivate my audience. The problem was that when I spoke in front of a room full of people, I spoke in a monotone manner. Even I was bored with what I was saying, so what chance did I have of engaging my listeners in what was to be the dry topic of health and safety? Because of the importance of the presentation, I recognised I needed to do something different, so I went through it, underlining keywords that I needed to enunciate.

The difference in the presentation was incredible. While my topic was still enough to make people fall asleep, people were engaged and thoroughly enjoyed my content. Admittedly, I had to inject some fun content to make it more interesting, but overall the energy shifted because my energy and tone shifted.

Check Your Pitch

Fast forward many years later, and I did my Train the Trainer training (say that one quickly!) and learned all about pitch, pace and tone.

Pitch is where you change your voice according to the mood you want to create, i.e. you’d have an excitable pitch if you want to increase energy in a room/person, whereas you might lower your pace to calm the energy. In my presentation example, I enunciated specific words in a particular tone to create more interest.

Think of webinars you’ve attended where the speaker spoke in the same pitch throughout. How did it make you feel?

Check Your Pace

Another way you can improve your voice is to change your pace, so as before, if you want to motivate people, your pace will be slightly faster and more lively, and if you want to emphasise particular points, you might slow your speech down.

When you watch motivational speakers, you’ll notice they change the pace of their talk to match the content.

Check Your Message

When communicating your business message, you also want to consider how you write. Your message should showcase the real you so that when people meet you, there is a congruence between who you are online and offline. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of trying to write what others are saying but to stand out from the crowd. Instead, you want to speak in your unique voice.

If you want to learn more about using your voice, check out Julian Treasure’s interview on How to speak so that people will want to listen (Julian is the 6th most popular Ted Talk speaker of all time, apparently). Whatever route you choose, it’s worth improving your voice skills as a host, speaker, coach, etc.

Learn how you use your voice more effectively, both vocally and through your written messages.

Remember to be different and get your business noticed.

Here’s a quick recap:

1. Check Your Tone
2. Check Your Pitch
3. Check Your Pace
4. Check Your Message

Which area would be the best one for you to focus on? Share in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you.