Tim Noonan Presentation: Vocal Branding, Customer Experience and Trust for AMP Annual Conference

Introduction

This post has been prepared for attendees of the 2013 AMP National Conference Plenary Session.

‘Vocal Branding’ – Main Plenary

“The human voice is the most influential sound on the planet”.

“As a professional listener and creator of the Vocal Consciousness approach, Tim Noonan knows better than most the incredible power of the human voice.

Tim’s fascinating and informative presentation will explore the importance of voice in developing open and sincere trust-based relationships in addition to the intrinsic relationships between voice and likeability, voice and authenticity, and voice and trust.

From speaking with clarity and confidence to listening with a greater depth and understanding – you’ll be amazed at Tim’s insightful strategies and practical techniques to creating a richer, more meaningful connections in both your personal and professional life.”

Please email me tim@timnoonan.com.au to inquire about our corporate voice workshops and conference presentations.

• Learn how to use your own voice to create more meaningful and trusting customer connections face to face and over the phone!

• Learn strategies and techniques which promote vocal understanding; foster expressive speaking and nurture insightful listening.

• Learn a range of strategies and practical techniques for speaking with more clarity, confidence and compassion, and skills for listening to others with greater recall, depth and understanding.

• Exploration of the inevitable and essential relationships that exist between Voice and Likeability; Voice and Authenticity; and most important of all, Voice and Trust.## Presentation Intro

The human voice is the most influential sound on the planet. this is because of its unique capacity to harmonise thoughts, feelings and intension into a single unified sound.

In the next 35 minutes we will explore a range of ways you can start to connect more consciously with your voice and engage your listening to tune up and even transform your client relationships, as well as your family connections and friendships.

The human voice is the most influential sound on the planet, and yet –

it is one of the most under-utilised and overlooked resources in Australian business.

Fortunately, such as with AMP, this situation is starting to change …

Free eBook

During this talk I mention my eBook ‘Your Voice is Your Business: Seven Voice Strategies for Vocal Brilliance’. download my Your Voice is Your Business eBook.

Some themes covered in this talk include

Humming, Ahhhhhh (Vocal Valium) and Eeeeeeeee (Sonic Caffeine)

Vocal Toning – using the voice to produce sustained sound and elongated vowels – can rapidly shift our emotional state, release stress or even raise our level of alertness.

• Quiet humming is a great way to wake and warm up your voice, and prepare for an upcoming conversation. Humming brings you more into present moment and out of your head.

• The descending Ahhhhhhh sound, in addition to releasing tension, can also bring your voice down from your head into your chest, leading to increased vocal warmth and emotional connection with others. I call this Vocal Valium

• A minute or two of producing prolonged Eeeeeeee sounds – sounded at a mid note, a mid-high note and a high note – will wake up your intellect and prepare you for the day or task ahead. Don Campbell calls this Sonic Caffeine.

5 Qualities of a Vocally Conscious (Authentic) Voice

If you start applying some or all of the following V-O-I-C-E techniques, you will be more effective as a communicator, more interesting to engage with, and your likeability factor will almost certainly increase.

• V – Vibrant
• O – Open
• I – Intentional
• C – Conversational
• E – Emotionally Expressive

You can read the full V-O-I-C-E article here.

Voice, Relationship and Speaker Attitude

Whenever we hear someone speak we automatically make an assessment of their attitude to us and to what they’re talking about. I talk about this more in my Voice is All About Relationship post.

Deeper More Insightful Listening

Research has found that closing the eyes can lead to the listener hearing more detail in sounds. In yoga we sometimes say Close the eyes; open the heart. When we close our eyes we increase the amount of cognitive processing available to interpret and understand what we hear, such as the emotional state of the speaker.

The Likeability Factor

Tim Sanders has written an entire book and recorded a great lecture on The Likability Factor – Our level of Emotional Attractiveness.

Your likeability factor reflects your personal capacity to consistently produce positive emotional experiences in other people. You have this capacity in good and bad times. You are natural and authentic, smart when it comes to your emotions and more importantly, the emotions of other people.

We’ve learned that in the case of humans, you can make a bet on the “law of reciprocity”. This law states that people will reciprocate emotional experiences. Sometimes they reciprocate in a direct reflection (back at you) and other times they reciprocate in an indirect deflection (at the next Customer, a coworker or family member).

A conscious intention to be more vocally generous when you speak, and more compassionate as you listen, is the key to increasing your likeability Factor.

The Relationship Between Voice and Trust

Our voice can invite trust, develop trust and we can also learn to listen at a more insightful level to assess or ‘feel’ trust based on the sound of another.

“The human voice forces its way into us. It is really inside ourselves that we hear it. To hear it properly we must allow it to vibrate in our heads and our chests, in our throats as if, for the moment, it really belonged to us. That is surely the reason why voices never deceive us.” – Jacques Lusseyran

I talk in more detail about Jacques Lusseyran and the importance of voice for assessing trust in my Voices, Relationships and Trust Video

“The voice is the gateway to our intuition and intuition is key to assessing trust.”

Trust can be assessed in the following ways:

• Being open to the possibility that human speech and human hearing/listening can read the emotions and assess the trust of another within a specific context;

• Rich speech which isn’t missing key emotional and personal information – I call head speaking empty speech;

• The congruency of our words and of our sound and body language is the key to trust;

• Deeper listening which involves dimming our visual processing (such as closing your eyes at the start of a telephone call);

• Allowing a voice to resonate inside us, to feel how it makes us feel, rather than limiting our focus to just the words;

• When questions or doubts arise, probing or seeking more information.

“Brand trust comes when the sound of your brand and its look and its values are all congruent. This trust is often undermined when we place insufficient attention on what voice to match with the rest of our brand.”

Voice Readings with Tim

I mentioned my new Voice Readings with Tim voice counselling and life coaching service. to find out more please go to Voice Readings with Tim at www.voicereadings.com

Presentation Close

So how can you make Your Voice one of the most influential sounds on our planet?

Step 1, Make a conscious choice to be more vocally generous and more compassionate as a listener. this is by far the number one approach for building respect, creating success and increasing your likeability.

Step 2: work on being more Vibrant, Open, Intentional, Conversational and Emotionally Expressive, whenever you speak

When you connect to others with your heart as well as your mind and consciously apply V O I C E, you can truly transform your client relationships as well as tuning and enhancing your family connections and friendships.

So Love your voice, be kind to your voice, treat it as you would your very best friend.

And In return it will lovingly serve and support you, as well as being more kind and vocally generous to others, every single time you speak.

when we connect to our voices with heart, and open ourselves to more compassionate listening, we are well on the way to making our clients and everyone we care about, once again,
start to feel truly
Safe – And – Sound.

Discussion of Vocal Branding and Contemporary Applications of Voice

Vocal branding is the strategic and purposeful use of voice to convey ideas, impressions and feelings from speaker to listener. It realizes the intrinsic capacity of the human voice to transmit emotion, and its extraordinary potential to create compelling, durable and trusted brand relationships with clients, colleagues and customers.

About Tim Noonan

Tim Noonan is a voice consultant and lecturer, telephony consultant, inspirational conference speaker and the founder of Vocal Branding Australia.

Tim has a degree in Cognitive Psychology and Education, with a particular focus on how people process and comprehend auditory information. A lifelong student, his formal studies also include a Diploma of Remedial Massage Therapy, a Certificate in Relaxation Hypnosis and extensive studies in energetic & sound healing.

Tim Noonan is a professional listener and the creator of the Vocal Consciousness approach – strategies and techniques which promote vocal understanding; foster expressive speaking and nurture insightful listening. As a person blind from birth, Tim has learnt to listen for countless vocal cues that reveal so much more than the casual listener is aware of; and once enlightened, your way of speaking and listening will change forever.

Tim conducts personalised voice and presentation skills sessions as well as providing a variety of corporate voice strategy services.