The following is from a student of High Probability Selling (HPS) who calls himself Francesco the Salesman, and is published here with permission. I have done some minor editing.
Right now my BIGGEST challenge is to get into the damn phone.
I have the fear of God when it comes to using the phone.
It is AMAZING how much I can procrastinate to get into the phone!
I find EVERYTHING to do before getting on the dreaded phone.
It is funny and strange, because I have no problem at all in meeting people COLD in person, nor girls, I can even be in front of an audience of 200 people completely comfortable and with the calm of a Zen monk!
But when it gets to the phone, I start sweating cold, panic and procrastinate like there is no tomorrow.
I know that, in the end, all comes down to de-sensitization through exposure and repetition, but damn is hard to get into it to begin with.
I feel reluctance to the phone itself, besides the cold calling.
Actually I think that more than the actual cold calls, it is the phone that is my problem.
I usually try to avoid making phone calls all together.
If I can do it in person, text or email, I will usually lean over those options first and avoid or procrastinate on making a phone call.
And when I do make a phone call I sometimes get quite nervous and do not like that feeling much.
It is like a phone phobia.
It is quite limiting as you can imagine.
I remember reading something in the book “The psychology of sales call reluctance” that mentioned that usually call reluctance stems from an early childhood trauma for which one with my “first love” girl in high school immediately comes to my mind.
She was a very attractive girl (amazing legs) back in high school and the first girl I got DEEPLY excited for ever in my life (I switched from an all guys school to a mixed one) in both sexually and romantically interest and illusion.
Unfortunately she was EXTREMELY mean and nasty with me (in general too though) and she caused me quite a severe pain, especially on my first very few calling attempts to her.
Even my father teases my phone phobia saying that “Anna (the little vixen) really screwed you up to use the phone forever!”
So my problem is not as much in warming up to calling but to BEGIN calling in the first place.
In reflecting for a solution, I concluded that again a process of de-sensitization through repetition would be the best course of action, for which I was planning on setting a goal of making a certain number of phone calls every day (say 10) as a habit building exercise starting small and then ramping up the number of calls as I got more confident.
That is the idea I am currently playing with and reflecting upon.
My number one priority in my life right now is to get this “being able to make phone calls comfortably and confidently every time I want” thing down and solved, because it is a tremendous peril and HUGE limit both financially and socially and I just HAVE to get this dumb thing solved.
Francesco the Salesman
The text above is copied from emails received in late October 2018.