Nor should you take it for granted. Your voice can have a profound impact on how successfully you influence and persuade others. Your voice effects how seriously you are taken... how respected you are... the results you get with clients, co-workers or vendors in business, with lovers or spouse and children in your personal life.

Your voice can be a powerful secret advantage you very deliberately use for influence and persuasion (just as actors and people paid thousands of dollars per minute to record commercials do)—or it can be a handicap (like it was for Markus on The Apprentice), undermining the impact of everything you say.

Here’s why.

Voice works on a subconscious level even more than on a conscious level. There is ‘voice detection technology’ used by law enforcement agencies and in corporate espionage. It works much like a lie detector—but without the person being judged knowing that it’s happening.

However, every individual has similar “technology” installed in their own subconscious. It judges truth, veracity, substance, gravitas and authenticity constantly in all the voices that try to influence you. This goes on all the time and is one of the five “feeds” from the subconscious to the conscious that directly determines whether you are accepted, believed and paid attention to.

For example, does your voice quiver when you quote your price or fee? It might not seem that people notice, but they do.

In fact, in a study done at UCLA, Dr. Albert Mehrabian found that up to 84% of your success depends on your ability to skillfully ‘play” your speaking voice.

© Copyright 2005 Susan Berkley. May not be reprinted without permission. For permission to reprint mail to: susan@greatvoice.com. The Great Voice Company , Inc. 110 Charlotte Place, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632 (201) 541-8595 greatvoice@comcast.net. www.greatvoice.com