•Limit Alcohol Consumption
Alcohol dehydrates. Too much of it dehydrates a lot. It also irritates your throat. If you drink more than you should, remember to consume extra water during the day to compensate.
•Take Vitamin C
Vitamin C strengthens the immune system. Talking all day puts extra stress on your throat. A gram of Vitamin C per day will help to prevent problems. If you have a scratchy throat, increase to one gram, three times a day. Vitamin C won’t replace antibiotics if you’re genuinely sick, but it will help.
•For a Mild Sore Throat, Gargle with Salt Water
If you’re sick, see your ENT specialist. But a mild problem will be helped by salt water, a half teaspoon to a third of a glass of warm water. Gargle frequently, letting a little drop down your throat. Keep a small bottle of salt in your desk. Use at first sign of a problem.
•Get Plenty of Sleep
Lack of sleep leads to reduced resistance to illness. Given stress on our voices, that illness is most likely to manifest in a sore throat. Sufficient sleep will improve your chances of a strong voice the next day.
•Learn to Breathe Properly
There are two ways of finding the breath it takes to speak. One is shallowly, from the upper chest. The other is deeply, from the bottom of your lungs or diaphragm, letting your exhaling breath carry your voice. The latter is much more conductive to a strong, resonant, and long lasting voice. To determine whether your breathing is really bad, try this simple exercise:
Sit erect in a straight back chair with one hand on your chest and the other flat on your abdomen. As you breathe, which hand moves more obviously? If your breathing is too shallow (which is quite common), the hand on your chest will move more; if you’re breathing from the diaphragm, the other hand will move more obviously. If you’re breathing shallowly, you’ll eventually strain your voice, and tire more easily as well.
Women in particular tend to ‘suck in the stomach’ and breathe in correctly. Only a good voice coach, speech pathologist, or material arts instructor can reliably teach you to breathe properly.
•Avoid or Reduce Smoking
•Use Decongestant, Not Antihistamines
You’ll see both marketed for colds, but they are not the same. Decongestants won’t dry you out, antihistamines definitely will, and will also make you sleepy whereas decongestants will keep some people awake at night. And if you need either of these to begin with, don’t forget to drink plenty of water, get lots of rest, and take your Vitamin C.
•Rest Your Voice Throughout the Day
Care of the voice is very different for the different types of speakers. The type of work you do is very different from that of a platform speaker, and so is the type of attention you need to give your voice. You have a great advantage over a platform speaker in that you can take short “rest breaks” throughout the day.
Every time you put the phone down to look up a number, every time you write notes of your conversation, every time you put a file away or review notes before calling, your voice will rest – if you let it. On the other hand, if you’re constantly chattering with the person who sits next to you, talking on breaks, communicating at lunch, never taking a moment for a quiet breath or sip of water, your voice will plain run down.
You should obviously work hard and make lots of calls; that’s part of being successful in our sales business. Still, be alert of the innumerable opportunities for ‘rest breaks.’ Take three good breaths; drink some water; have lunch by yourself sometimes. Don’t let pointless non-essential non-sense drain your voice. These rest breaks, if done properly, won’t decrease your time spent on the phone one bit, and will make a big difference in your voice’s durability.
•Find Your Natural, Comfortable Vocal Tone
Voice control is important, but that doesn’t mean altering your entire voice. There’s no question that a high-pitched voice can lack strength, but lowering your whole range is not the solution. Slow your pace and work on more vibration. You’ll get plenty of authority without harming your voice.
Finding your own natural vocal tone is more complicated than it seems. Many people have inadvertently adopted an inappropriate pitch for themselves, and are completely unaware of it. The techniques for finding your natural vocal tone are too extensive to be covered here; but may be obtained in a book entitled Change Your Voice: Change Your Life, by Morton Cooper, and this video.
•Avoid Persistent Throat Clearing
Throat clearing, as done by most people, physiologically consists of slamming the vocal cords together to free them of excess self-lubrication. While there are ways of accomplishing this without harming the voice, the easiest thing to do is just to be sure that you don’t have the habit of clearing your throat frequently. Listen to yourself on the phone and ask other people with whom you work. If you do have this harmful habit, you won’t know it yourself.
•If You Speak Too Loudly, Get Your Hearing Checked
Do people ever ask you to lower your voice? Do you speak other than quietly on a regular basis? Do you play the TV or radio with the volume turned up high? If so, don’t assume you’re just an energetic individual, or pride yourself on having a strong voice. There’s a big chance that you have some degree of hearing loss. Our modern society is a noisy one, and we, having grown accustomed to this, tend to tolerate the noise. But our delicate hearing apparatus was designed long before rock music, jackhammers, airplane or traffic noises were invented.
Primitive people experience very little hearing loss with age. A loud voice is frequently a compensation for marginally decreased hearing. And a large voice is eventually neither durable, nor flexible. You need both to have a long-term career in e.g. sales. If you speak other than quietly, get your hearing checked.
•And Finally
If this seems like a great deal to remember, or even require some changes in your habit patterns or lifestyle, there are four things you might consider:
oBe grateful you’re not a platform speaker or trainer. The people speak for several hours straight, with no breaks. Then they break for 15 minutes, frequently answering questions during that time, and then speak for another two hours! An article on care of the voice for them would be easily three times as long, and contain completely different material.
oRealize that proper voice care will not only affect your voice utility; it will affect your health. Abuse or neglect of your speech apparatus absolutely leads to real physical problems that go well beyond simply a sore throat. Short-term problems will eventually mean long-term problems. Many long-term throat problems can be corrected only with surgery, and the results of surgery in the throat will frequently result in permanent voice changes. These changes are rarely positive.
oYour voice is the instrument of the transmission of your knowledge and skills. A voice that is even a little ‘off’ is distracting to the salesperson and reduces results considerably, hence reduced income.
oIf you’re truly a professional, you take a great deal of pride in just doing things right. The really great ones in any field take care of their tools.
The voice is a marvelous and robust instrument, but the more stress we put on it, the more prone it is to breakdowns. You do a specific type of speaking – many relatively short two-way conversations throughout the day into a telephone or in person. For those purposes, the preceding suggestions will allow you to keep your voice durable and healthy, and to maximize your income throughout a long and successful career.
Your voice, which is so important in describing to the world who you are, dresses at least half as much attention as the rest of you. Balance and use the mask (the