The voice of a Michigan Real Estate Investor

By Mark Ijlal on December 18, 2005 6:33 PM

If you ever had the misfortune of working as a telemarketer in a big room environment then you would probably know already what I am talking about.

Your voice has carries much more than you think – smile, happiness, confidence, sadness, despair, anxiety and anger – big telemarketing departments actually have mirrors installed on top of the workstations so people can actually smile when they are taking inbound or outbound calls.

Your smile shows in your voice.

Notice some people “sound” happy yet other sound miserable.

Why is it important for you as a Michigan real estate investor?

1. If you are running an advertising campaign to attract motivated sellers – their first personal contact with you is almost always on a phone call. They will hear your voice before they meet you.

2. If you are selling a house that you have just renovated to sell – your buyers will talk to you first before actually going to the house or meeting your face to face.

3. If you are talking to a private lender – most likely some conversation will happen on the phone before a personal meeting.

Our business is a “phone business” – meaning there is a more time that you will talk to people, for the first time ever and all they have is your voice to go on.

Here is the funny part – the way you sound on the phone is completely different from the way you “think” you sound on the phone.

If you are coaching group member and you talked to me last week on the one on one call – go to the Members Only area and download your session and listen to it. I bet you that you will be surprised on how you sound.

I talk a lot – on the phone and most of the time I will tape my own calls and listen to them later.

A good way to find out how you sound when talking to prospective buyers, motivated sellers, private lenders etc – is to invest in the cheapest digital voice recorder you can find - $50 will buy you a pretty decent one and start taping yourself.

And then actually listen to your conversation later and see if you like you what you hear.

The ability to talk well on the phone – sound confident, happy and on top of your game – is a great skill to develop. Nobody is born with it – after all we all came to this world without any voice. We all learn it as we go along.

So it is a skill that could be learned and you can become better at it. I know that I have improved tremendously in the last two years over the phone. I still have some of my old recordings and I sound horrible. But that was one thing that I always thought would be a good skill to have and I worked on it.

By the way, if you are having a bad day – don’t take calls from anybody in your real estate business – misery has a way of multiplying. Turn the phone off and take it easy for the day.

If you take a second and think about it – the last time you called your doctor to get an appointment, made a business call to set an appointment, got a call from one your advertisement running to get homeowners in preforeclosure to call you – what impressions you formed in the first 30 seconds you started talking?

I had two very smart people in my Gold/VIP coaching group in 2005 which just concluded – Susan Berkley a voice coach who was actually on Apprentice Season 4 coaching the contestants who to speak better and Chris Mullins who has training business teach sales people and everybody else how to talk better on the phone.

The astonishing part about all this – how bad most people sound on the phone whose entire job description consists of taking phone calls.

If you have somebody else taking phone calls – business partner, significant other, employee, answering service – mystery shop them, tape it and listen to it. You will be surprised.

The key to getting better at this is one to know how you sound like right now (tape it), and notice what people actually make you want to talk to them over the phone.


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