Put Voicemail Testimonials On Your Blog Or Website: Audio Editing For SalesPeople.

by Chris Johnson

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

Social proof.  It’s what people need to do business with you.  They may not say it consciously, but they need it.  One of my (many) websites, at Ten Day Team, I’ve put up some significant testimonials.  Realtors are always afraid that several things will happen:  The lender won’t return his calls, the lender won’t get the job done, there will be endless delays, and they won’t get paid. They had that fear since time immemorial.  I like consumer business, I love agent-referred business.  So I have to use some artillery to soften them up.  What better than a parade of agents and customers affirming that I, Chris Johnson, do a good job?

To prove that I’m an OK guy, I’ve gotten a few people to say good things about me.  I didn’t edit MUCH of the testimonial content, generally limiting myself to shortening pauses and deleting "ums" that were bookended by pauses.  Edits are easy enough to spot, people have acute BS detectors, and an edited testimonial does more harm than good.  Every website I do in the future will have customer testimonials–in this fashion, because it’s so easy. 

The entire process–start to finish–including learning how, took two hours.  Aside: One of the keys to life is to presume that you can quickly figure out how to do something because someone has had the same problem before and has posted about it.   This is posted for WordPress, but I’ve done this stuff on other blogs and sites.  Email me, and I’ll help if I can, and walk you through doing it on a non WordPress site.

Step 1: Get Some Audio.  Here is the letter I sent out to my clients:

Dear {name}

Thanks for the opportunity to serve you.  One of the things that is important to my practice is the ability to continue to win and keep the trust of my clients.  It would honor me a great deal if you could simply leave me a voicemail message at my phone number,614-839-4850 telling me how I helped you.   You can use your name or not, it’s your choice, but do understand that I want to include it on my website HERE.

A good way to leave a message is to say specifically what you liked best about the process.  Please listen here: for an excellent message.   Don’t worry about it if you have some ‘stutters,’ just be 100% honest and that will be the biggest help.

Remember, I’m going to continue to watch over your mortgage for as long as I am in the business, and I will make sure that you’re always in the plant that suits your current goals.

I’d appreciate it if you’d take just a moment to do this do this today. .

Thanks,

Chris Johnson

Obviously I’d pick clients that I really connected with, as Greg did with his Halversons.  The next thing to do is to get voice mails OFF the system.  I have Vonage for most everything, so I get them as emails with .wav files.  If that weren’t the case, or if the call rolled over to my cell phone, I’d be able to deal with it.  Radio Shack sells an adapter for recording phone calls; use your cell phone to check voice mail and put the mic out right into it.

It was $18 bucks last time I bought it, but your mileage may vary.

Step 2: Get Audacity to Edit The Voice Mails

Audacity is "Microsoft simple" editing software.  It’s probably imperfect, but who cares.  It’s cross platform, free, and you can get it here. 

As my friend Adam once told me, LOOK at what you’re editing.  This is the superbasics of audio editing for salespeople. 

Open your file in Audacity.  (File–>open).

You’ll see a screen like this:  (Click To Embiggen)

Now, I’ve marked some things.  The FIRST thing you do in Audacity is ensure you’re working with and11025 project rate.  Some media players and setups don’t handle non multiples of 11025 well.  Not doing it creats a ‘chipmunk’ effect.

You can also listen to the audio and see what’s going on.  I trimmed it so it would fit mostly on one screen, but the basics are there.  You see the phone ringing, the voice mail, a pause, and an ‘um’ that you want to edit out.  DO shorten big pauses…The tool in the top right is the ‘selection’ tool.  I’ve not used even most of the tools in audacity, but I’ve used the selection and time shift tool quite a lot.

Select the audio you want to get rid of.  If there is a fine line (say, between an UM…) feel free to zoom in using the zoom tool  to get a better look at what you’re doing. 

Once you’ve taken the fat out of your file, you simply export it to MP3 (File–>export).  I think you’ll have to go here to make it an MP3.   Save it somewhere.

Step 3:  Get the 1pixel out Audio-Player

Yes, there may be others.  You can get 1pixelout here.  It has excellent documentation.  Fair warning, however.  I have it working on a WP 2.5 blog, but others have claimed issues.  You have to pay attention to the install directions and make sure that you have the folder and the .php in the root directory, as such:

Remember–it needs the player in one spot and the audio-player outside of the wrapper.  Dunno why, don’t care, easy thing to accommodate.

(You’ll also note that I don’t currently overdo it on plugins–though that is a blog that’s yet to be live).

Now, all you have to do is upload the file, and you’re pretty much done.  You’ll put, within a post  [audio:http://tendayteam.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/quincy.mp3]  If you’re doing multiple files, like I did, you simply put a  comma between files–this way you can go back and do ’em later.  To make it autostart just stick a pipe | in there and put autostart=yes.  You can also make it an infinite loop, and change the color of the files.  You need to do this in WP’s editor, but you don’t need to do it in the "HTML" mode.  Doing it in a reader sometimes includes unnecessary characters, so make sure you’ve gotten into the admin player.

Preview it first, click play to make sure it does what you want. 

Put your testimonials up, man, because we need PROOF.