Thoughts on the “music” of English and the “art” of the sale

With so much out there on the internet these days, it can be harder and harder to get your voice heard selling in the world of interaction with real live people.

So, more than ever, it’s about building relationships, listening, connecting.

But while it’s important to be able to listen, it’s also important to draw people in.

And sometimes, when the pronunciation, rhythm and intonation get in the way, it’s harder to connect.

Of course, when certain vowels or consonants are incorrectly pronounced, it can cause confusion. And when the listener stops listening to figure out just what was said, speaker and listener go out of sync.

The fact is we may not have 20 minutes or half an hour for the listener to adjust. The brain has already done a backflip, and it takes a moment for the listener to get back to the present. In that moment, we can lose the sale.

So the fact is we do need to correct some of the sounds that are causing confusion in the important words. But it’s never every sound.

There was a study done some years ago on by the psychologist Albert Mehrabian, who found that listeners judge the emotional content of speech, first by the speaker’s body language (55%), then 38% on “vocal qualities” – not words, but tone of the voice, the pitch and the pace of the delivery. It’s not about the words.

In any case, anglophones just listen for important words, the ones that provide meaning. We fill in the rest from context. So we need the clarity of important words to make sure we understand them the first time.

But the rhythm, the intonation, the dynamics all help us to understand what we need to focus on and what you want us to feel. When we know how and what syllables or words to stress, we’re guiding and motivating our listener.

English is constantly moving up and down staircases. If we want to emphasize an idea, the voice will rise in pitch, in volume. We’ll hold a note –– maybe just a word, maybe just one syllable –– but we’ll make it just a little higher, a little louder and a little longer.  We’ll speak a little faster. Then get a little slower. We’ll pause for a moment to let the thought sink in.  We’re guiding the listening saying, “Listen to this. This is important.”

We can listen to music that has no words at all. Yet it can motivate us to feel. In fact, it can evoke powerful emotions. The “music” of English works exactly the same way.

We anglophones are lazy speakers, so English is a language of reductions. If something’s too hard to say, we change it. So what you see on the page often has little to do with the way we say it. But that “short-form” English can spark the imagination with its rhythm and melody. It works on our emotions, consciously and unconsciously. It’s about psychology.

And the “art” of the sale is about psychology.

It’s about trying to enter into the mind of the prospective customer to make the listener feel as comfortable as possible. But to make that sale, the salesperson too, has be comfortable. If the customer and client are totally in sync, great. Why bother to make any changes?

But, often, I find that people are hesitant to make changes – as if incorporating more of the Canadian accent (standard North American accent) would destroy a sense of identity.

The thing is … our accents (and we all have an accent) are a beautiful part of who we are. And making some changes isn’t the same as erasing our identity.

People respond to music. And the music of the Canadian English language can help communicate, negotiate and motivate.

In the long run, we’re not just selling a product or a service. We’re selling who we are. We’re saying, “I care about you. Trust me. Listen to me. I have something of value for you.”

The “music” of English and the “art” of the sale have a powerful connection.

Your own thoughts are most welcome.

And don’t forget to check out the latest word-of-the week at One-Minute Words on The Canadian Pronunciation Coach channel.

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Thoughts on staying motivated and managing expectations

For the last two weeks, I’ve talked about how practising in a different way, in small manageable chunks with complete attention, totally absorbed in the task at hand, can bring about improvement more quickly. It’s much more effective to practise for shorter periods before the muscles start to weaken and the mind starts to wander.

Still, there’s what I call the “frustration” factor. You’re working with full concentration and practising every day, but in your own mind, change seems to be taking forever.

How do you stay motivated? How do you keep going? How do you not give up?

The first thing, of course, is to have a very clear long-term goal in mind. Is it:

• to get through conversations without being asked to repeat yourself?
• to get that promotion that has been held back because of your communication skills?
• to communicate more effectively with colleagues, clients, customers, patients?
• to make yourself understood on the telephone?
• to speak more like your kids?

Having your long-term goal clearly in mind is very important. Equally important is having reasonable expectations: understanding that learning takes place in five stages and recognizing and embracing each stage as it arrives.

Stage 1

When you first begin the study of accent management, expect that you’ll leave class and forget everything you’ve learned. Why should you remember anything? You’re letting go of habits you’ve held from the time you started learning this new language – quite possibly years! You’re going to refocus your brain, reprogram your ears, retrain your muscles and strengthen your memory. So just congratulate yourself on having had the courage to actually begin a program of study.

Stage 2

Very soon you begin to develop awareness. You start noticing sounds that you’d never heard before. Certain patterns begin to emerge. You hear syllable stress. This is very exciting. Embrace it, but don’t get too excited. Just keep practising exactly as you have been, in manageable little chunks with full attention, every day. Keep listening passively and absorb what you hear. The filter between your native language and English is beginning to dissipate.

Stage 3

You start noticing your mistakes. You may get frustrated, even angry with yourself. You just can’t seem to make the changes you need to match the sounds and rhythms you’re hearing all around you. That’s okay. Your mind is making the connections. You’re on the verge of change! Keep practising in small manageable chunks, with full attention.

Stage 4

It happens at last! Your awareness shifts. Your muscles get into the correct positions to create the sounds you’ve been hearing. You’re remembering where to put the syllable stress, the word stress. You begin experimenting with the short-form English you’ve been hearing but were afraid to use: gotta, hafta, doncha, wanna. You start, tentatively, linking one syllable to the next.

Stage 5

Now your speech begins to flow as your muscles get stronger and move more quickly. You incorporate more of the English vernacular. You drop consonants, change vowels, add words and expressions in a way you had never thought you would.

These are the stages of learning, and they arrive with continuous concerted focused practice. There are bumps along the way, for sure. At times you may feel stuck.

But like a baby, you’ve been taking small steps, falling down and getting back up, listening to the world around you with innocence and wonder until you start to take note, understand, imitate and make things your own. So keep your long-term goal in mind, but be supportive of your growth.

Be patient. Be determined. And above all, don’t give up.

Thoughts on how to practise better and improve faster

I often find that students have a misconception about practice: that it takes long hours of steady practice to improve. If they don’t have that kind of time, they give up altogether.

But it’s not about long hours of steady practice. It’s about steadfastness with practice over a long time. It’s about not giving up. It’s about finding little chunks of time for as little as five minutes or at most 15 minutes throughout the day, every week, and working with full attention.

It’s about countering every negative thought that says “I’m too busy. I can’t do this. I’ll never get it.” with a thought that says “I seize little fragments of time for me alone. I can do this. I will get it.”

No private place to put on your headphones, listen to the lesson and practise your homework?

• How about finding 10 minutes in the bathroom?
• How about 10 minutes in bed before you turn off the light?
• How about 10 minutes in the morning before you get out of bed?
• How about getting out of your workplace for a 10-minute walk at lunchtime?
• How about a quiet 10-minute escape to the stairwell once or twice during the day?
• How about 10 minutes in their darkened bedroom as soon as the kids fall asleep?

Heck, you don’t even need to practise out loud.

There’s a therapy and exercise method called the Feldenkrais technique (the origins are unimportant) that’s all about gentle movement and directed attention, in which we’re often told to visualize rather than do a particular movement. Extraordinarily, we can achieve the same positive results. In fact brain studies have clearly shown, for a long time now, that thoughts produce the same mental instructions as actions. Visualization is being used to enhance performance, reduce stress, increase motivation, self-confidence, efficiency. It can even help the paralytic learn to move limbs and machinery with the help of electrodes and computers.

Can you choose to find time on your own for just a few minutes each day to suspend judgment, listen intently and practise attentively before your mind starts to wander and your muscles start to weaken?

It’s a strangely simple technique with a huge reward: less stress and faster improvement.

What’s holding you back?

What techniques have you found to maintain a steady practice?

Don’t forget to check out the latest word-of-the week at One-Minute Words on The Canadian Pronunciation Coach YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqJIW9b8ceo&list=UUtLnMIqmYW9uRCi_Kx48AaQ