فصل 07

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ADVANCED TONALITY

LET’S PICK UP RIGHT WHERE we left off in Chapter 4, starting with a detailed explanation of each of the ten core tonalities that drive human influence.

However, before I dive in, I first need to give you a quick ethical warning regarding the extremely powerful unconscious communication strategy for which these ten tonalities serve as the primary building blocks.

When I say, “extremely powerful,” what I mean is that once you become even reasonably proficient with this strategy, you can actually get people to buy things they shouldn’t buy, and do things they shouldn’t do, without them even realizing that an extraordinary amount of influence was brought to bear.

Now, obviously, a strategy like that has the potential to be seriously abused by an unscrupulous salesperson, so I want to make sure that it’s crystal clear to every last reader that I don’t condone that sort of behavior in even the slightest way—hence, I would greatly appreciate you signing the following ethical warning:

I will never use the strategy I’m about to learn to manipulate my prospects into acting against their own self-interest. If I do, then I deserve the same ten years of pain and suffering that Jordan had to endure.

X ______

Your Name

Remember, maintaining your ethics and integrity is the gift that every man and woman gives to themselves. Whether it’s a lack of sleepless nights, being a role model to your kids, enjoying a sense of well-being, or building an impeccable reputation that creates even greater success, I can tell you from my own personal experience that there’s no better feeling than achieving wealth and success without cutting any corners.

So, that being said, let’s dive in.

What I’ve been leading up to here is the existence of an immensely powerful strategy that uses the ten core influencing tonalities to enhance your outgoing communication in a way that’s so profound that your prospect’s conscious mind finds itself struggling to keep up with all the additional words it’s hearing as a result of the constant shifts in tonality.

In a matter of seconds, virtually all of its processing power is now dedicated to this one specific task—trying to keep up with the avalanche of additional words it keeps hearing—and you’ve taken control of your prospect’s own inner monologue and have it narrating for you, versus against you.

Are you slightly confused? If you are, you’re not alone.

You see, while this strategy is very easy to learn, it’s somewhat harder to understand. So let me break it down for you step by step—starting with a quick refresher from the previous chapter regarding my mother’s strategic use of tonality when she called my name.

If she said “Jordan!” in a stern, no-nonsense tone, then the additional words I heard were: “Get over here right now! What have you done!” And, conversely, if she said “Jor-dan!” in a singsong tone, then the additional words I heard were: “Where are you, my love? Come out, come out wherever you are!”

Now, this is just one basic example of how each individual tonality creates its own set of unspoken words that the listener hears in their conscious mind, and to which the listener then applies the appropriate meaning.

To that end, when you’re speaking to a prospect in a situation of influence, their brain is actually listening to two distinct things at once: first, they’re listening to the words you say and analyzing the meaning of each one, both individually and in the context of the overall sentence; and second, they’re listening to their own inner monologue, as it debates the pros and cons of the last few words you said, based on the meaning they applied to them.

For example, let’s say you cold-call a prospect named John Smith, and he picks up the phone and says hello, to which you reply, “Hi, my name is Bill Peterson, calling from the Acme Travel Company. I’m looking for Mr. John Smith. Is he home?”

Now, unless John Smith has been living under a rock for the last thirty years, there’s a 99.9 percent chance that he will strongly suspect that Bill Peterson is a salesman. Precisely what product he’s selling and where he got John’s number from John still doesn’t know, but that doesn’t change the fact that this person is a complete stranger, as opposed to someone John knows.

After all, a friend, or even a casual acquaintance, would never address him in such a formal manner, and such a person would likely also have recognized his voice over the phone. And when he combines that with the fact that virtually every time his phone rings, it turns out to be a telemarketer, John knows the deal within the first five seconds of the sales encounter.

So how does he respond?

Well, in many cases, your typical “John Smith” simply hangs up the phone, confident in the fact that he won’t be offending anyone he knows.

However, let’s say this particular “John Smith” has impeccable manners and doesn’t feel comfortable hanging up on someone, even if that someone is a pushy salesman, who’s had the audacity to cold-call him in the sanctuary of his home.

So, instead of hanging up, Mr. Smith says, in a slightly annoyed tone: “This is Mr. Smith. Can I help you?”—while his inner monologue says to his critical judgment center, in a thoroughly pissed off tone: “Shit, another damn salesman calling my house and interrupting my dinner! I gotta figure out a way to end this call, and then I’m going to put myself on the Do Not Call List.”

Now, obviously, this is not the sort of inner monologue that sets the stage for the salesman to have any reasonable chance of ultimately closing this deal. In fact, the reality is that the sale was over before it ever started. However, since all Bill Peterson heard was Mr. Smith’s outward response—which was, “Can I help you?”—he is completely in the dark to this, and he continues on confidently with the sale.

“Good evening,” he says. “I’m calling to let you know about an incredible opportunity in the . . . ,” and as the salesman drones on, explaining this incredible opportunity of his, Mr. Smith’s dialog is already on the attack.

“Incredible my ass!” says Mr. Smith’s inner monologue to Mr. Smith’s critical judgment center, in his prefrontal cortex. “This guy is so full of shit! If he was in front of me right now, I swear to God I’d ring his damn neck and—” Suddenly, Mr. Smith realizes that he’s being asked a question.

“. . . simple as that, Mr. Smith. I just need to ask you a couple of quick questions, so I don’t waste your time. Sound good?”

“Sorry, you caught me at a bad time,” Mr. Smith replies quickly. “I gotta go.”

“No problem,” Bill Peterson replies. “What’s a bet—”

Click!

And, just like that, the sale is over before it even started, another in a long list of “blown sales” that could have gone the exact opposite way, if the million Bill Petersons of the world were aware of what was happening with their prospect’s inner monologue and had been taught a simple, yet immensely powerful, strategy to counter it.

Ten Core Influencing Tonalities

Before I teach you the specifics of this strategy, there’s one crucial distinction that I need to go through first. It has to do with how born closers automatically apply the proper tonality to the words they say, as opposed to everyone else.

You see, when you’re a born salesperson, you don’t have to consciously decide which of the ten core influencing tonalities you need to apply to your words in order to take control of your prospect’s inner monologue and stop it from narrating against you. Your unconscious mind provides this service for you automatically, and gets it right every single time.

As if by magic, if at any point during the sale it behooves you to sound absolutely certain or utterly sincere, or caring and sympathetic or perfectly reasonable, or any of the ten core tonalities that drive human influence, then that very tonality will get layered on top of your words, without you having to even think about it. It simply just happens.

On the flip side, though, when you’re not a born salesperson, a literally ginormous group that includes over 99 percent of the population, then a breakdown in your internal communication occurs. Specifically, your conscious and unconscious minds fail to link up in a way that allows for the unimpeded exchange of information between the two.

In consequence, your outgoing communication ends up becoming a watered-down version of what you’d originally intended—lacking the richness and vibrancy that you thought you had expressed through the use of tonality and body language.

You see, unbeknownst to you, the tonality that you thought you had applied had somehow been blocked or impeded from completing its journey out of your mouth, to accompany your words, which, for their part, faced no blockage or impediment at all.

In other words, the absence of tonality—or, far more frequently, the presence of only a trace amount of tonality in your outgoing communication—was not a conscious choice you made; rather, you were a victim of a subpar internal communication platform that made you “tone deaf,” as the phrase goes.

At the very instant that your words were escaping your lips and you heard them with your own ears, you were tricked by your unconscious mind into thinking that you sounded perfect, which is to say, that you sounded just the way you had intended to sound.

Yet, in reality, attributes like certainty, confidence, passion, enthusiasm, urgency, empathy, clarity, and other subjective qualities that characterize a well-told story or well-explained concept got lost in translation—victims of a one-two punch at the formidable hands of nature and nurture, which sent you into adulthood with an internal communication platform that waters down your outgoing messages by allowing your words to flow freely, while it impedes the tonality you’ve applied.

Now, insofar as how this impacts your ability to close, on the most basic level—meaning, when you use tonality in the traditional sense, as opposed to taking control of your prospect’s inner monologue—you can draw a straight line back to the emotional component of the Three Tens to see the carnage. You see, in the absence of the right tonality, your ability to move your prospect emotionally is severely limited and your ability to close is also limited accordingly.

Remember, it’s your words that move a prospect logically, and it’s your tonality that moves your prospect emotionally. And, in addition to that, we can also use tonality at a much higher level to take control of our prospect’s inner monologue and stop it from narrating against us. In fact, it’s time to get specific about that.

Let’s go back to the example of the well-mannered Mr. Smith and his telemarketing nemesis, Bill Peterson, from the Acme Travel Company. The only difference is that, this time, Bill Peterson is going to be armed with the tactics and strategies of the Straight Line System—starting with the simplest of all rules, which states that a salesperson should never address their prospect in an overly formal manner; instead, the salesperson should address the prospect in the way they would respectfully address a friend.

So, instead of saying, “Hi, my name is Bill Peterson, from the Acme Travel Company. I’m looking for Mr. John Smith. Is he home?”—which is the equivalent of death—the salesperson should simply say, in a very upbeat tone: “Hi, is John there?”

Now, when I say, “a very upbeat tone,” I’m referring to one of the ten core influencing tonalities, called the “I care” or “I really want to know” tonality. By applying this sort of upbeat, enthusiastic tonality, while virtually all other salespeople are saying the same words in a perfunctory manner, not only do I immediately stand out from the rest of the pack, but I also begin the process of taking control of my prospect’s inner dialog.

In essence, this is about being fully engaged and showing great interest in speaking to your prospect. In other cases—like when you say “how are you”—it goes a long way toward establishing instant rapport with someone and establishing yourself as a person who cares and really wants to know how they’re doing.

This tonality creates an unconscious psychological connection, because we naturally feel closer to people who express a sincere caring for our well-being.

Now, in this particular case, the additional words Mr. Smith heard after “Hi, is John there?” were: “I really want to know! I’m not like the rest of the salesmen who ask you that, just to get it out of the way. I genuinely want to speak to him!”

Now, to be clear, there is a sweet spot here, insofar as just how much peppiness and upbeatness you can layer onto your words until you start to sound disingenuous. In other words, you don’t want to say it like Tony the Tiger says, “It’s grrrrrreat!” I mean, you’d sound like a complete idiot if you did that. You want to be upbeat enough to get your point across, but not so over the top that you sound ridiculous.

Remember, tonality is the secret weapon of influence, because it’s an unspoken language. Your prospect hears words without you having to say them, and gets influenced without even knowing.

So how does Mr. Smith respond?

At the same time he’s hearing the additional words from Bill Peterson’s amped-up greeting and trying to process their meaning, he says, “Yeah, this is John,” to which Bill Peterson immediately breaks out his second core influencing tonality, which is called phrasing a declarative as a question, and he applies it in the following words:

“Hi, my name is Bill Peterson, calling from Acme Travel Company in Beverly Hills, California. How are you today?”

Now, notice how each one of those three thoughts is a declaration:

1 Hi, my name is Bill Peterson,

2 calling from Acme Travel Company

3 in Beverly Hills, California

Now, clearly each of those three thoughts is a declarative statement, not a question. However, by phrasing them as questions, you’ve tapped into the power of three separate human desires simultaneously:

1 To not be perceived as being out of the loop

2 To remember people we’ve met before

3 To appear generally agreeable

Now watch what happens to the punctuation when Bill Peterson phrases those declaratives as questions:

“Hi, my name is Bill Peterson? Calling from Acme Travel Company? In Beverly Hills, California? How are you today?”

By phrasing each of these three statements as questions, back to back, you infer what’s called a microagreement, and the additional words Mr. Smith hears are: “Right? Right? You’ve heard of us, right?”

Here’s another example, from my personal life:

My daughter was the best salesperson when she was little. She’d say, “Daddy, we’re going to the toy store, right? You said so, right?” If you’ve ever heard kids do that—you know that they naturally know how to use this tonality. Now, when my daughter would do this, naturally I’d go into my head and start searching my memory, thinking, “I don’t know. Did I?” But she’d already moved the conversation forward and was headed out the door to go to the toy store before I could stop and really think about it. Using this tonality before I knew what was happening, she’d Straight-Lined me into the car, to the store, and into buying her the toy she wanted.

This is a tonality you want to use sparingly, but it’s incredibly powerful in gaining agreement with your prospect. You can either phrase your statement as a question or, in some contexts, just use the exact words as you raise your voice again, again, and again, to which your prospect will hear: “Right? Right? Right?”

When Bill phrases his name as a question, Mr. Smith’s inner monologue starts saying, “Wait a second! Am I supposed to know who this person is? I better hedge my bets and sound like I do!”

What happens in that very instant, when you phrase a regular statement as a question, is that it sends your prospect’s brain into search mode, as the prospect tries to figure out whether or not they should know the person who’s calling. And again, due to the conscious mind’s limited processing power, as long as your prospect remains in search mode, their internal monologue is paralyzed from working against you.

Now, to be clear, as powerful as this concept is, you shouldn’t delude yourself into thinking that just because you phrased a declarative as a question, your prospect is now going to buy from you. That’s simply not how tonality works. Rather, it keeps the prospect in the game—by stopping their inner monologue from narrating against you—thereby, opening up the possibility for further influence by you, which will come in the form of your next sentence.

In fact, at this point in the sale, that’s precisely how I want you to be thinking about things: word by word and sentence by sentence.

I want you to make sure that each word you’ve chosen is the absolute best one possible given your desired outcome (more on this later in the chapter on scripting), and that the tonality you’ve applied allows you to maintain control of your prospect’s inner monologue and, as a result, the sales encounter.

In this particular instance, the next group of words you’re going to say—aka, your next language pattern, in Straight Line parlance—is going to explain the precise reason why you called the prospect today.

In other words, you didn’t just call the prospect out of the blue. You didn’t call yesterday, you didn’t call tomorrow, and you didn’t call next week; you called right now, and there’s a very specific reason for it.

We call this reason a justifier, inasmuch as it creates a justification for your reaching out to the prospect. I’ll go through this in more detail in Chapter 10 (which goes into detail on prospecting), but for now all you need to understand is that when you use a justifier correctly, it will dramatically increase the compliance rate for whatever request you’re making. In this case, the request that Bill Peterson is going to make will be for permission to ask Mr. Smith a series questions, so he can begin the intelligence-gathering process. However, for now, let’s just focus on the justifier itself and the tonality that Bill is going to apply to it—namely, the tonality of mystery and intrigue.

Bill says, “Now, John, the reason for the call today is that we’ve been reaching out to a select group of homeowners in your area to offer them . . . ,” and then he’ll go on to explain whatever that offer happens to be. It could be a marketing special, where Mr. Smith is going to get free airfare or a free night in a hotel; or it could be the chance to join a vacation club or travel club, or anything else that offers a perceived benefit to Mr. Smith.

The way you create mystery and intrigue with this tonality is by lowering your voice to just above a whisper and then hanging on the R in the word “reason” for an extra fraction of a second.I

In addition, because you lower your voice to just above a whisper, the reason takes on the properties of a secret, creating a sense of urgency and scarcity, which takes us now to our fourth core influencing tonality, namely: scarcity.

In sales, we use the word “scarcity” to describe a prospect’s natural inclination to want more and more of what he or she perceives there to be less and less of. In other words, when a person finds out that something they desire is in short supply—or scarce—it makes them desire that something even more.

All told, there are actually three types of scarcity.

The first type is called verbal scarcity.

Verbal scarcity is a state of scarcity created strictly by the use of words. Let’s switch examples now (and say goodbye to Mr. Smith and Bill Peterson), and let’s assume that you’re a BMW salesman and a prospect walks into your dealership looking to buy a black 750iL with black leather interior. And say you wanted to create verbal scarcity about the model and color of car that prospect wanted.

You could say something like “We only have one black-on-black 750iL left on the floor, and it’s going to be three months until our next shipment comes in.” Pretty straightforward, right?

In essence, by explaining to the prospect that the car he wants is in short supply, the salesperson increases the likelihood that the prospect will buy the car now, to avoid the possibility of missing out.

In sales, we refer to this process as creating urgency, and it’s an integral part of persuading your customer to buy now, as opposed to sometime in the future. In consequence, you should always try to create at least some degree of urgency right before you ask for the order, as it will dramatically increase the likelihood of your prospect saying yes.

Now, if the salesperson wanted to increase that likelihood even further, then they could layer the tonality for scarcity on top of the words said.

We call this second type of scarcity tonal scarcity.

Specifically, tonal scarcity is when you lower your voice to just above a whisper and then put a little oomph into it! Applying that tone of voice to a word or phrase triggers a sense of scarcity in the listener’s unconscious mind, which then sends a signal to its conscious counterpart, in the form of a gut feeling. In other words, tonal scarcity stacks on top of verbal scarcity, so that the sound of your words intensifies the feelings of scarcity in the prospect’s gut to a level far beyond what they would have felt from words alone.

And that takes us to the third type of scarcity, which is called informational scarcity—meaning, the information itself is in short supply. In other words, not only is the black 750iL in short supply but also nobody else is aware of that fact.

In essence, informational scarcity compounds the effect of the whisper, turning what is said into a full-blown secret that the prospect feels they can use to gain a personal advantage.

Here’s how you put it all together:

First, verbal scarcity is used to convey the logic: “We only have one black-on-black 750iL left, and once it’s gone, it’s going to be three months until our next shipment comes in.”

Second, you add on tonal scarcity by using a power whisper, which greatly intensifies the prospect’s sense of scarcity.

And third, you add on informational scarcity by explaining that even the information itself is in short supply.

For the next three tonalities, let’s jump ahead to the end of the main body of your sales presentation, right to the point where you’re going to ask for the order for the first time.

In this case, we’re going to apply a series of three tonal shifts as we ask for the order—starting with a tonality of absolute certainty, then transitioning into a tonality of utter sincerity, and then transitioning again to the reasonable man tone.II

Let me first explain each tonality separately.

1 Absolute certainty: I’ve already explained this to you in detail in Chapter 4, so let me just quickly refresh your memory. In essence, with the tonality of absolute certainty, your voice takes a firmer, more definitive tone, with a power that seems to come right from your solar plexus, in order to convey your absolute conviction about whatever you happen to currently be saying.

2 Utter sincerity: This is a calm, smooth, confident, low-pressure tone that implies that what you’re currently saying to the prospect is coming directly from your heart, and that you’re being absolutely sincere with them at the highest possible level. It’s a velvety smooth tone that’s so humble, and so nonthreatening, that it sounds almost apologetic in nature, but, of course, there’s no apology being given. Rather, you’re telling someone something that is clearly in their best interest, and hence they would be a fool not to believe what you’re saying and take your advice.

3 The reasonable man: This is one of my favorite tonalities, as it’s used at some of the most important moments in the sales encounter. In this particular case, we’re focusing on how it’s used at the close; however, what I want you to understand is that we are also going to be using it at the beginning of the sale, when you ask your prospect for permission to explain the benefits of whatever product or idea you’re offering them. In other words, you don’t just start pitching your prospect an idea, without first saying something along the lines of “If you have sixty seconds, I’d like to share an idea with you. You got a minute?”

Those last three words—“got a minute?”—are when you apply the reasonable man tone, which entails you raising your voice up at the end of the sentence,III to imply the reasonableness of your statement.

In essence, when you use the reasonable man tone, the extra words your prospect hears are “I’m reasonable, you’re reasonable, and this is a very reasonable request!” And since it’s basic human nature to want to obey the golden rule—do unto others as you’d have them do unto you—your prospect feels an unconscious obligation to return your reasonableness in kind, causing them to say yes to your request.

Now, when it comes to the close, here’s an example of how we put all three tonalities together into one tonal pattern.III

First, the typical language pattern for a close would be something along the lines of “If you give me one shot, Bill, believe me, you’re going to be very, very impressed. Sound fair enough?”

Now, let me show you how we take the above three tonalities and turn them into a very powerful tonal pattern.IV

First, we start with the tone of absolute certainty, which is applied to the words “You give me just one shot, Bill, and believe me . . .”

Next, we smoothly transition from the tonality of absolute certainty to the tonality of utter sincerity, which is applied to the words “. . . you’re going to be very, very impressed . . .”

And then lastly, we transition from the tonality of utter sincerity to the tonality of the reasonable man, which is applied to the words “. . . sound fair enough?” And this implies that you’re a reasonable man making a reasonable statement.

Remember, you don’t want to say “SOUND FAIR ENOUGH?” in an angry, aggressive tone, or “Sound fair enough?” in a nasally Poindexter tone, or “Sound fair enough?” in a high-pitched Mary Poppins tone. Rather, what you need to get across is that you’re reasonable, and hence the whole thing is reasonable and it’s no big deal to buy. That’s how you want to finish the close, not in a tone of absolute certainty, which implies pressure.

Now, let’s say you gave a great presentation, which ended with you asking for the order for the first time, but, for whatever reason—meaning, your prospect hits you with one of the common objections—they still want to think about it.

The first question you’re going to ask them, no matter what objection they hit you with, is: “Does the idea make sense to you? Do you like the idea?”

That’s the beginning of a language pattern that will allow you to transition into your first looping pattern, which we’ll discuss later, where you’re going to begin the process of increasing their level of certainty for each of the Three Tens.

So let’s say in response to you asking for the order, your prospect says, “It sounds good. Let me think about it.”

Your reply would be: “I hear what you’re saying, but let me ask you a question. Does the idea make sense to you? Do you like the idea?”V

Now, the key here is that the tone you use—starting with “I hear what you’re saying . . .” and going all the way to the end, when you say, “. . . do you like the idea?”—is going to be your hypothetical, money-aside tone.V The additional words that your prospect hears in this case are “Hypothetically speaking, putting money aside, does the idea make sense to you? Do you like the idea?”

In essence, you’ve made the whole thing an academic exercise, which totally disarms them—allowing you to continue the process of increasing their level of certainty for the Three Tens, through the process of looping.

Next, we have the tonality of implied obviousness.V

In essence, this is an advanced form of future pacing, because you’re creating the impression in the prospect’s mind that the benefits of what you’re selling are a given. If you’re in finance, for example, you might say, “Now, John, you’ll make money with this, but more importantly, what I can do for you over the long term in the way of new issues and arbitrage plays . . .”

In other words, you’re using tonality to infer the notion that it’s beyond obvious that your product or service is a winner.

This brings us the to last of the ten core influencing tonalities: “I feel your pain” V—which I also refer to, on occasion, as the Bill Clinton tonality, due to his complete and utter mastery of it.V

In essence, this is a tonality that you want to use when you’re asking questions that are designed to uncover your prospect’s primary and secondary pain points and, if necessary, amplify them.

You see, if you try to do that while using an aggressive or unsympathetic tonality, then you will instantly break rapport with the prospect, and there’s an excellent possibility that they will end up despising you. However, if you use the “I care” tonality, they’ll end up falling into an even deeper state of rapport with you, because they will get this powerful gut feeling that you understand them, and that you truly care.

The key to this tonality is that you’re expressing empathy and sympathy, and that you truly feel their pain and deeply care about helping them resolve it. You’re not just there to make a commission.

And, with that, let’s move on to body language.

I. Go to www.jordanbelfort.com/tonality to hear exactly how it sounds. 

II. Go to www.jordanbelfort.com/tonality to hear the tonalities in action.

III. Go to www.jordanbelfort.com/tonality to listen to the tonality.

IV.  Go to www.jordanbelfort.com/tonality to listen to the tonality.

V.  Go to www.jordanbelfort.com/tonality to listen to the tonality.