Smile on the phone, my experiment

#HowToWinFriends

From part two "Ways to make people like you", chapter two a simple way to make a good first impression, Carnage goes through examples of how important the first impression is to achieve your communication goals. His usual anecdotes state how actions are valuable and how a smile can be worth it million dollars.

The effect of a smile is powerful - even when it is unseen. Telephone companies throughout the United States have a program called "phone power" which is offered to employees who use the telephone for selling their services or products. In this program they suggest that you smile when talking on the phone. Your "smile" comes through in your voice.

The experiment

It was Friday, somewhere around 8:30am and national holiday's eve in Hungary. I needed to call someone on the client for getting information of a new marketing campaign that needed to go through our project management system, luck wasn't in my favor, I could feel it.

My first thought was to be positive since the very beginning, and the idea of "trying to smile" came up.

Hello how are you? Good to hear your voice, long time no see huh? So, how are you? Me? I'm just great, it's finally Friday and we have holidays just around the corner! But hey, remember that project management software that you liked last time, I wanted to show you an improvement that I've made over the campaign process, do you want to jump on Skype and we check this? Maybe even use your last campaign as a real demand test!

Done, thank you for reminding me to smile on the phone Carnage, that was definitely a productive talk.