It Took Me 1,000+ Hours to Master Tonality, I’ll Teach You in 10 Minutes
In this advanced sales training video, Matt (Speaker A) explains how mastering vocal elements—intonation, inflection, pacing, pausing, word choice, and overall tonality—can make sales conversations far more predictable and effective. He demonstrates how subtle shifts in phrasing (e.g., “why is that important to you now though?”) produce different buyer responses, and he breaks down the mechanics behind those shifts: the specific words used, the pitch and direction of the voice at the end of a sentence, the speed and pauses, and the physical placement of the voice (chest vs. throat). Matt argues that consistent, scripted delivery (with a visual “legend” for emphasis, pauses, and intonation) reduces variation, allowing salespeople to diagnose problems, ask precise probes, and steer outcomes without feeling manipulative. He advises practicing these techniques in everyday conversation, studying actors to see how they use timing and inflection, and tailoring the style to one’s natural personality (forceful vs. passive). The video concludes with a pitch for a $50‑per‑month course that provides deeper training, live calls, and resources for implementing these vocal strategies.
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Hey guys, what's up? Matt here. In today's video, I'm going to be talking to you about intonation. This is more of an advanced sales video. It's for people who have been in sales for a while. And what I'm going to be going over is the ways in which you can use your voice, the ways in which you can structure sentences in order to get more predictable answers in your sales calls when you're doing outbound, inbound, no matter what it is. And this helps in overall day-to-day communications as well. Okay, so I'm at an event at the moment in Florida. So excuse kind of the weird background. But yeah, here's the information. There are multiple ways in which you can express the intent of what it is you're trying to relay. And that's really what hyper- predictable sales ends up giving you. And so I'll give you an example. Like I could say, well, why is that important to you now though? And comment down below how you would answer that. Okay. And I can go, well, why is that important to you now though? And so comment down below how you'd answer that one. And so chances are the majority of you would use the timeframe as sort of the main response there. So in the first one, why is that important to you now though? You're gonna go, well, you know, I feel like I've been doing one, needed to do something for a while or something that's time-based. Whereas if I go, well, why is that important to you now though? Then what you're gonna do is go back to the thing that you were just talking about. So it's accountability or whatever. It's like, why is it— why? So like, with the accountability, like, why is, why is that important to you now though? They're gonna go, well, just having anyone like looking over my stuff. Or you go, well, that, like, that accountability, like, why is that important to you now though? And they're gonna go, well, you know, I just really need to get my shit together. And so it's those little tiny differences, and you get really, really predictable responses. And that's what allows you to get really, really, I guess, predictable sales. Okay. And so there are multiple ways in which you can do this. Like, that was just one example. The key way ways are one, like the words that you say. So just using really definitive words or really leaned out words, again, you're going to get different examples. The second one is going to be like where you put the intonation, like the inflection on the actual word. So what I mean by that is like whether you go up at the end of a sentence or down. So if I walk in and I go, hey man, how's it going? Or I go, hey, how's it going? And if I go down at the end, so again, you're going to get different feelings that way. So the first one is like nice and jovial and curious. Okay, the middle one is like quite neutral. Hey, how's it going? Like, it's like, oh hey, how's it going? And you go down at the end, it shows real concern. And so that's going to tell you how to feel, okay? And again, if you do all of them together, it can be a little bit much. So the key is being able to sort of pepper some of those things in, okay? So you've got your pausing and pacing, okay, which is like that, how is that important to you now though? Okay, you've got your like inflection, so the ups and the downs or like the neutral. You've got the word choice itself, so if you're going to be using things like now or you're going to be, you know, doing things like, you know, like more definitive or more neutral in terms of that. Then what you've also got is you've got your overall like tonality. So am I going to constrict my voice? Am I going to do high? I'm going to do more of a high pitch like, hey, how are you? Okay, it's quite nice and jovial. Or hey, how are you? Okay, down, I'm speaking from my throat. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm speaking from my chest. The more breathy, it's going to be more of like a dad or a mom energy, right? And so all those things together, they combine to express the intent of what it is you're really trying to say. Now the reason why this is important is because if you want really predictable sales, and you want to be able to be someone who can control a conversation really well without it feeling like you're controlling a conversation, then this is really important stuff to learn. The reason being is because good salespeople don't have to say a lot of words. They don't have to talk a lot. It's just things like, oh, why is that? Okay, tell me more, you know. And it's like little probes and clarifies and, you know, probing statements and stuff like that that are going to get you deeper and deeper and deeper and like into a conversation. And being able to structure a sentence in a way where you are intentionally creating predictability out of and inducing an answer that you want is how you get a really, really consistent outcome. And that's like the most important thing that you can do in sales is figuring out how to have a really consistent outcome. One of the best things that you can do to practice this is just start to do it in everyday conversation, because this comes from being able to have a conversational flow with somebody and being able to listen intently enough to know what it is you're looking for, and then be able to like transfer that just by having more intentional conversations day to day. Have a look at how people, or how even how actors— so you can watch movies and you can see like what are they doing to actually induce that. Because people who say like scripts don't work are idiots, right? Because like course scripts work, like movies are based on scripts. Like it's just that you suck at delivering them, right? Like that's basically it. It doesn't mean you're going to be scripted word for word all of the time. But what it means is that like you're going to follow a framework and you're going to have particular like set points and ways of asking things. And the more consistent you get that, like, like the better hands down. People who are like, oh, don't sell scripts. Like, no, you just suck at sales. Like you're just not that good. You haven't sold many things or like you've just never actually implemented one properly. Like it's stupid. Um, but if you go and if you watch actors, then you can see exactly what they're doing, why they're doing it, where they're placing the inflection, how they're making you feel. And then you'll be able to see exactly what they're doing. You can break it down, you can start to put some of those elements in there yourself. If you want to get good at it in terms of being able to implement into, um, like your sales day-to-day, then one of the best ways is when you write your script out is you want to like, um, have like a little like legend for yourself. So, uh, for example, like if I'm going to emphasize a word, I'm going to put bold. If I'm going to do a pause before or after a word, which again puts importance on it. Why is that important to you now though? Why is that pause important to you now though? Like that old scene from Borat where it's like, this suit is black. Not. This suit is not black, right? The reason why that's so funny is because he uses intonation to give you like an unpredictable outcome. So it's like if I'm doing that not joke, like, this suit is black. Not, right? It's the pause and then the intonation or how you say the not that makes it like funny, right? But if I say this suit is black, not this suit is not black, like those small changes, although like if you write them down, it doesn't look like that big of a change, it makes a huge change to how that, to how that feels. That's why I say they said that timing is everything inside of, you know, like when you're looking at comedy, right? It's all about the timing. And with words and with sentences and with scripts and with sales and with communication, it's all It's all about the timing. It's all about like when you say certain things, how you say certain things, when you're gonna go in hard, when you're gonna go in soft, like when you're gonna do definitive or non-definitive. If you're someone that has like quite a passive leaned-out nature, then you're gonna wanna use more definitive and a more forceful or like a more forceful tone. If you're someone like me who's like covered in tattoos, 6'2, 240 pounds, like very forceful type personality, then I need to use more neutral language and a more leaned-out tonality in order to like not seem so forceful because that's my natural demeanor. One of the mistakes that people make is they'll use like very neutral tone, right? Like all the time they'll use maybe, might be. So they use these like super leaned out neutral words, and then they're super leaned out and neutral, and then they're also not a very dominating type person. Like they're quite passive as a person. I don't say beta or anything like that, but they're quite passive. And so when you, when you learn certain sales styles that are much more neutral, it causes you to feel and act like a pussy. And so then nobody wants to buy from someone who seems like they're uncertain of what they're doing. And so you have to figure out this balance between like what is neutral, what is definitive, what's leaned out, lean in. Like when am I going to use this pacing and pausing and how am I going to interpret all this stuff to actually get the outcomes that I'm looking for based off me as a person? Because if you're very leaned out and you're a very passive person, you have to be more leaned in, more definitive. Try and be, you know, like overly excited or whatever because you're probably someone who's like, hi, how are you? And overly excited, it's like, hey, how are you? And it's like, yeah, that's fine. Because if I answer— if you answer the phone and someone's like, for example, like if you're doing outbound, your tone is so important, especially when you first kind of get the— like when someone first picks up the phone, if you're like, hey, how are you? Hey, is this John? You know, it's terrible. It's like, hey, is this John? It's like, hey, you sound happy. You sound like you want to be there. And it just puts a whole different spin on the entire conversation. Okay. So, but going back to that script, you want to write it out exactly how you want to say it, because then you can start to create some predictability. Getting good at sales is not a super intellectual endeavor. What it is, it's a problem-solving endeavor. And most people don't get it right because they're looking to solve a ton of problems at once, whereas you don't really know what problem to solve. So in order to create consistency, which gives you a lot higher level of predictability, is write out exactly how you're going to say things, especially your openers, right? And your pitch and those really important key parts of the sale. Write it out exactly how you're going to say it with every single intonation. Okay. And then notice what kind of response you get. And then from there, you can start to change it because again, this suit is black knot, this suit is black knot, is a totally different thing. Okay? And the same as where butt dial and booty call are totally different things. Right? But they sound pretty similar. Okay? But the context and all that kind of stuff plays a huge role. And so if you write it out, then you will start to reduce the variation. Because if you come to me and you're like, Matt, I want to get better at sales, I want to make my outbound better, whatever it may be. And you're saying something different every single time, there's no feedback that I can give you that's valuable. So when you start writing it out, then you can start to create consistency. Then you can start to use things like your pacing, right? If I speed up at the end of a sentence, then I'm basically placing importance on this part that I said slow. Hey man, so like what we're looking to do here is just kind of get you in at a level like that, right? You know, like that PDS statement at the end of an ad. It's like, hey, I don't want you to really pay much attention to this. So pay attention to this stuff. Hey, it looks like we're really going to get together and Just figure out how it is we're going to— like that, you know. Um, and then so, so you can use that kind of stuff. You can also then bring in your pauses, right? You know, pausing for effect. It's very, very effective. You can pause directly after or directly before a word and it places more importance on it. You can hit it with a nice, you know, a nice inflection, okay? You can hit it with a tonality, whether it be like soft or hard or, you know, like whatever, right? Curious, challenging, and whatever. And then you can, you know, play around with basically like the commas, right? So like how you're structuring the sentence. And then from there, you can start to learn how to structure a script to be highly predictable. And this is a skill set that will transcend multiple offers and multiple industries, right? So a lot of different things. And it's not some like kooky sales training thing. It doesn't even require somebody to help you. It just requires a problem-solving process that you need to go through in order to actually figure out how you can get better at If you want to learn more about this stuff, you can click down below and I have a course. It's like $50 a month. You can go through it. There's tons of training and there's like training calls and all this kind of stuff. It's just cheap and cheerful. And this is designed to help people out and to get people started. All right guys, hope that was helpful. Like, subscribe, notification bell, all that kind of good stuff. And I'll see you in the next video.
