What Is Call Reluctance
Call Reluctance is a challenge that severely impedes your ability to be successful in finding new prospects and customers. Prospecting is the key to building your business and making outbound calls is a key prospecting strategy. Without prospecting you can't qualify people to determine who needs your product or service. When we suffer from call reluctance we tend to develop rationalizations and other tactics to avoid making necessary prospecting calls.
The first key to overcome call reluctance is to develop a prospecting plan. Your prospecting plan will include a variety of prospecting tactics and strategies to develop new business. Your prospecting plan will include activities such as: direct mail, advertising, networking, referrals, etc. The cornerstone activity to any prospecting plan is outbound "cold calls" to your defined target market.
If "cold calls" are not at the top of your list or if you try to avoid cold calling, you are doing yourself a disservice. There's a rule in sales: "You don't have to like making cold calls...you just have to make them!" If you do avoid making cold calls, don't feel alone. There's another old saying, "The only people who say they like making cold calls...never made any!"
You have heard of the "Pain/Pleasure" theory. We tend to avoid anything that causes us pain. Well, cold calling causes us emotional pain. It makes us step out of our comfort zones. And we don't like to be out of our comfort zones. We would rather not experience the pleasure (the results) than experience the pain (being out of our comfort zones).
One reason people don't like to make cold calls is because of the "fear of rejection". In their minds, when they make a call and the person on the other end says, "No, I'm not interested!", they feel that the person rejected them personally. It's almost like the person on the phone attacked them. What happens is our built-in "Fight or Flight" syndrome kicks in. We either get mad and start our internal attack on them (and everyone else) or we flee back into our comfort zone so we don't have to experience that rejection again. Typically when we get mad at the rejection, we start an internal dialogue along the lines of, "That idiot, who do they think they are. I hope I run into them on the street. I'll show them..." Now when we get mad, are we in the proper mindset to continue to make successful calls? No! When we flee back into our comfort zone are we going to make that next call or find some excuse not to?
There are also internal scripts from our childhood experiences that cause call reluctance. One of the most obvious is "don't talk to strangers". Didn't you hear that constantly when you were growing up? How about, "it's not polite to ask for money" or "don't be a pest". These beliefs were pounded into us growing up. But now as salespeople or business owners, to be successful we need to talk to strangers, ask them for money, and sometimes be a pest. No wonder we struggle with call reluctance.
Dale Richardson
Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach
DRCOP MARKETING
www.drcop.com
Call Reluctance is a challenge that severely impedes your ability to be successful in finding new prospects and customers. Prospecting is the key to building your business and making outbound calls is a key prospecting strategy. Without prospecting you can't qualify people to determine who needs your product or service. When we suffer from call reluctance we tend to develop rationalizations and other tactics to avoid making necessary prospecting calls.
The first key to overcome call reluctance is to develop a prospecting plan. Your prospecting plan will include a variety of prospecting tactics and strategies to develop new business. Your prospecting plan will include activities such as: direct mail, advertising, networking, referrals, etc. The cornerstone activity to any prospecting plan is outbound "cold calls" to your defined target market.
If "cold calls" are not at the top of your list or if you try to avoid cold calling, you are doing yourself a disservice. There's a rule in sales: "You don't have to like making cold calls...you just have to make them!" If you do avoid making cold calls, don't feel alone. There's another old saying, "The only people who say they like making cold calls...never made any!"
You have heard of the "Pain/Pleasure" theory. We tend to avoid anything that causes us pain. Well, cold calling causes us emotional pain. It makes us step out of our comfort zones. And we don't like to be out of our comfort zones. We would rather not experience the pleasure (the results) than experience the pain (being out of our comfort zones).
One reason people don't like to make cold calls is because of the "fear of rejection". In their minds, when they make a call and the person on the other end says, "No, I'm not interested!", they feel that the person rejected them personally. It's almost like the person on the phone attacked them. What happens is our built-in "Fight or Flight" syndrome kicks in. We either get mad and start our internal attack on them (and everyone else) or we flee back into our comfort zone so we don't have to experience that rejection again. Typically when we get mad at the rejection, we start an internal dialogue along the lines of, "That idiot, who do they think they are. I hope I run into them on the street. I'll show them..." Now when we get mad, are we in the proper mindset to continue to make successful calls? No! When we flee back into our comfort zone are we going to make that next call or find some excuse not to?
There are also internal scripts from our childhood experiences that cause call reluctance. One of the most obvious is "don't talk to strangers". Didn't you hear that constantly when you were growing up? How about, "it's not polite to ask for money" or "don't be a pest". These beliefs were pounded into us growing up. But now as salespeople or business owners, to be successful we need to talk to strangers, ask them for money, and sometimes be a pest. No wonder we struggle with call reluctance.
Dale Richardson
Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach
DRCOP MARKETING
www.drcop.com
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