I’ve never met a salesperson who did not experience a fear of cold
calling at one time or another. Almost all of them have their
reasons for being reluctant to make cold calls, and most of them
have no idea what really causes it. Their are two basic reasons
for the fear of cold calling. Both are easy to cure if you know
how.
1. The Experience of Repeated Failure
Most salespeople set out to contact a large number of people who
have an apparent need for their products and service.Their
objective is to convince every one of them to grant them an
appointment.
Let’s assume that you contact 50 people a day and average 2
appointments. In your business, that may be a very good result.
Nevertheless, you have the experience of repeated failure
because you tried to convince all of them and you failed to
meet your objective of 48 out of 50 calls.
The Cure – Change Your Objective. Your new objective is to make
appointments only with High Networth Prospects – and to
disqualify everyone else. Make fifty calls and be clear that
you’ll only make an appointment if the prospect wants what you’re
selling. If the prospect doesn’t want what you’re selling,
terminate the call quickly and courteously. You now have the
experience of succeeding in your objective 50 times out of 50
calls.
2. Fear of Rejection.
Most salespeople have a prospecting “pitch” which is designed to
interest, entice, excite, convince and persuade people to give
them appointments. They have a string of questions to get the
prospect involved and interested in meeting them. Every question
that they ask increases the prospect’s sales resistance. Thus,
negative reactions to their methods grow very quickly.
Most prospects react to any prospecting pitch defensively. Their
sales resistance is aroused as soon as they hear your warm
greeting and your friendly, enthusiastic, professional pitch. The
more skillful you are in keeping them talking and listening, the
more they become wary and annoyed. Eventually, many of them
become non-communicative, or too busy to talk, or abrupt, or sarcastic,
or otherwise negative. All of these reactions cause most
salespeople to feel rejected.
Almost all sales managers and trainers tell you that you’re not
being rejected, that the prospects are merely declining the offer
of your products or services. Why then do almost all salespeople
feel rejected? Are you too sensitive, too thin-skinned?
Think about it. Who do you trust? Is it the sales manager who
wants you to keep on going until you become insensitive to the
rejection? Or do you trust your own perceptions, your feelings of
rejection? Are all other salespeople who feel the rejection also
wrong? No, you feel rejected, personally rejected, because you are
being rejected. That rejection is caused by the normal defensive
reactions that everyone has against being persuaded to do
something they don’t already want to do. If you want to eliminate
rejection you must change the way you prospect.
THE RESULTS – No more fear of cold calling and no more wasted
time with Low Networth prospects.
