Month: June 2009

All salespeople feel it, but no one wants to talk about it:  the fear of cold calling.  As  a sales and business coach, I’ve often heard the following comments from salespeople I have coached:

• “I feel like I’m bothering people by calling them.”
• “I think I need another sales course to get up to speed.”
• “I need a better list.”

“I feel like I’m bothering
people by calling them.”

These comments are ways of not thinking about the elephant in the room:  the fear of cold calling.  We don’t like admitting we are afraid.  It’s embarrassing, so we unconsciously invent creative ways to avoid thinking and talking about it.  And that’s OK; we’re all human.  But if we want to be truly successful in sales, we’ll have to find ways to surmount the fear barrier.

Traditional sales methods gloss over the fear of cold calling with useless admonitions of, “You need to develop a thicker skin”, and “You just need to make more calls.”  Additionally, most salespeople have been trained to use manipulative language which automatically causes resistance in the prospect.  As consumers, we have been trained from birth to be suspicious of and resistant towards sales people.  No wonder it doesn’t work.

But top salespeople have found ways to drill into and dismantle their own fears so they can actually pick up the phone without getting paralyzed.  In my experience as a coach, the two best ways to get beyond the fear are, 1) use a sales method which minimizes fear and, 2) use an accountability partner who holds the salesperson to his commitments.

The best sales method I have found is High Probability Selling, which reduces fear of rejection dramatically and almost completely eliminates sales resistance.  The process itself was developed by Jacques Werth, of Media, Pennsylvania.  As well as being a master salesman in his own right, Werth also studied the top 1% of salespeople in many industries and distilled the methods they were using into a teachable process that dramatically reduces fear and resistance and increases closing rates.  Werth has been successfully passing on his knowledge in a variety of books, teleseminars and on-site trainings for many years.

The other element to conquering cold-calling fear is using an Accountability Partner.  These can come in different forms.  One might be a partnership with an office friend with whom you make agreements as to your calling commitments, checking in with one another regularly to compare and log results.  These are usually informal arrangements between friends or co-workers.  The partners decide what their arrangement will be.  Because of the informal nature of the partnership, the success of these arrangements is highly variable and depends on the commitment level of each partner.

Another more formal type of Accountability Partner is a Sales Accountability Coach, who is a trained professional who follows a systematic process which usually includes these elements:

• Understanding the best selling mindset.  Good selling methodologies come from a mindset of abundance which prevents the neediness and groveling that demeans salespeople and turns off prospects.
• Crafting and practicing a number of good phone offers.
• Managing the fear.  Beyond good selling methodology, some coaches are also well-versed in psycho-physiological techniques that can further reduce the residual fear of the phone.
• Getting a weekly commitment to phone prospecting, and then reporting and analyzing the results with the coach.  Knowing that his coach is depending on him and will be checking in with him on a weekly basis makes this the most powerful element of using an Accountability Partner.
• Tracking the numbers.  According to Werth, the top sales people know their numbers: calls, appointments, sales.  Having a system for tracking your numbers and using it consistently is absolutely essential.

Accountability Coaching is accomplished through weekly meetings, usually over the phone.  Because the salesperson is paying a fee to the Accountability Coach, there is a strong incentive for the salesperson to actually accomplish the commitments he has made with the coach.

Tired of cold-calling fear?  As a coach, I have a few recommendations for you:

• Pick up a copy of Jacques Werth’s book, High Probability Selling.  It is available at their website, www.HighProbSell.com or at amazon.com.
• Consider using some type of accountability partner to break through the fear.

Fear:  we all feel it, even if we sometimes don’t want to acknowledge it and we don’t know what to do about it.  It most likely will continue to attempt derailing our efforts.  The most accomplished salespeople find ways to stare it down and step over it into the success they are seeking.

Elizabeth Blane is a Sales Accountability Coach and lives in San Diego, California.  Phone 858-240-7730

An earlier version of this article was posted on Business Insurance Agents on 12 March 2009.

Suppose you are watching a James Bond movie and Agent 007 says to another character, “Tomorrow I am going to pick up my dream car.”  If you know much about Agent 007, you will immediately have a mental picture of a gleaming white Aston-Martin hardtop.  If you are not familiar with the James Bond character you will probably picture your own “dream car” whatever it is;  perhaps it’s a Porsche, Corvette, Ferrari, or Lexis.

That describes a powerful marketing concept called “Front of the Mind Awareness.”  A refinement of that concept, which is applicable to excellent telephone prospecting, is “Favorable Front of the Mind Awareness.” 

Get a list of six hundred prospects that meet the demographic criteria of companies or individuals that buy the type of products and services that you sell.  You can call those people every three to four weeks, providing that you change your prospecting offer every time you call.  The first time you call the list, about seven percent of them will ask you not to call them anymore;  so don’t.  That leaves you with about 560 prospects on your list.  It is easy to contact that many every three to four weeks.

If the way you do your prospecting leaves those people feeling good about each call they receive from you, you will be developing Favorable Front of the Mind Awareness in most of their minds.  That means that anytime they are exposed to marketing, advertising, or cold calls about your type of products and services, most of them will immediately have favorable thoughts of you.

If you call them more frequently, a higher percentage will become your customers.  However, if you push them for an appointment or try to engage them in a sales conversation, that will create the opposite effect. 

People buy in their own time, for their own reasons. They do not buy because you need to make a sale this week. It is important that you are in frequent contact with your whole list so that you are there when they want to buy what you have to offer. The more often they hear from you, provided that your calls are very brief, informative, and free of any pressure, the greater positive affect it will have on your prospect’s minds.  That will continuously increase Favorable Front of the Mind Awareness. 

The end result is that almost all of your appointments will be with people who want to buy what you have been offering them.  After they become your customers, provided that you continue to call them at the same intervals, they will be loyal clients for years to come.

You can learn more about this kind of prospecting by going to www.HighProbSell.com.