How to Overcome Your Call Reluctance and Increase Your Sales

Would you rather walk through a raging fire than make a cold call? Would you prefer to eat rusty nails than attempt to up-sell a customer? As a sales person or sales manager, if you even hesitated with your responses to these questions, then you may be suffering from call reluctance. But that's okay, because you're not alone. In fact, nearly ninety percent of sales people experience some level of call reluctance.

The number one reason people fail at the sales profession is that they don't initiate enough sales to be successful due to call reluctance. Most sales people prefer to wait until the customer initiates a sales discussion, rather than bring the topic up on their own. And this challenge exists in all fields, from banking institutions where tellers are pressured to up-sell customers, to the most experienced sales professionals who are relied upon to expand existing customer relationships.

A huge number of causes for call reluctance exist, but the main reason is simply discomfort. Either you feel uncomfortable with the possibility of rejection, or you don't know what to say or do to initiate the sales conversation. Regardless of the root of these uncomfortable feelings, you can overcome your call reluctance and feel more comfortable approaching customers and prospects when you use these six steps:

1. Recognize, Acknowledge, and Express Your Negative Feelings
Many sales people don't like making new business approaches to customers and prospects, and these feelings are natural. But this doesn't have to hinder your success. In fact, research has shown that a sales person's attitude toward cold calling has little effect on their prospecting effectiveness, as long as they don't let these negative feelings stop them. Recognizing your negative feelings and expressing how you feel about making sales approaches to a friend or colleague can actually help overcome call reluctance. Simply through expressing how you feel, you can release the paralyzing energy of your negative feelings and be more comfortable initiating sales situations. So talk about your call reluctance with someone you trust, release all your negative feelings, and you'll find that this alone makes you perform much better.

2. Determine the Necessary Levels of Contact
The next step in overcoming call reluctance requires you to look at how your discomfort affects your success. To meet the goals that you set for yourself, the goals your company places on you in terms of new accounts and growth of existing accounts, how many new sales do you need to get? Say, for example, that to meet your goals, you need to make ten sales per week. Next you need to subtract the number of new sales that will come to you either through advertising, referrals, or existing accounts. Maybe five new sales seek you out, without any effort on your part. So ten minus five means you need to initiate five new sales per week to be successful.

3. Set Goals
Now that you know how many sales you must initiate, you must set behavioral goals for yourself by looking at what you're currently doing. Say, for example, you need to initiate five sales per week to meet your goals, but currently you're not initiating any. If you decide you're going to stretch yourself for five calls in the first week, you're setting yourself up for failure, because the behavior change is too drastic. Instead, set a reasonable stretch goal. So if you're initiating zero new sales now, then anything greater than zero is reasonable.

Suppose you set your goal for this week at one new sales call. After you reach that goal, you can set it one higher at two. The key is to set goals you know you can make, work yourself up, and build your confidence until you become more comfortable.

Also, your goal must be behavioral based, rather than time based. For example, if you say you'll spend two hours prospecting this week, then you'll never do it. Human beings are extremely talented at putting off the things they don't want to do. No matter how disciplined you are, you'll never find the time for the things you don't enjoy.

4. Pick Targets
Once you have set your goal for contacts, you must determine who you want to target. When you're just starting to overcome your call reluctance, you must pick the low-hanging fruit – typically, your current customers. With these people you've already accomplished the hardest part of the sales process, which is to get people to buy from you the first time. Don't start looking for new customers until you've completely exhausted the new business opportunities with the ones you already have. Plus, at this stage in overcoming your call reluctance you want to recondition yourself and build your confidence through several small successes.

5. Devise a Plan
Part of the reason sales people feel uncomfortable with initiating new business is that they don't know what to say or what to do to win people over. So after targeting specific prospects for your sales efforts, you must plan how to approach them. Your plan must be very specific in what you will say and what you will do to win their business, and then you must practice it until it feels natural. Your approach plan should also be easy to memorize and duplicate so you can use it over and over again, and make it your own. The more detailed you are in your plan and the more you practice your approach, the more conversational it will be and the more comfortable you will feel delivering it.

6. Implement
Overcoming your call reluctance will not be easy; it takes work and commitment to make behavioral changes. But one of the greatest ways to make something you find uncomfortable feel more comfortable is to get out and do it. If you don't start making calls and initiating sales discussions, you'll never overcome your fear. So you must hold yourself accountable for the goals you set. By communicating your goals to a trusted friend or colleague, you can ensure greater follow-through. Make yourself accountable for results by telling someone about the behavioral goal you've set for yourself, and then plan for follow-up discussions to make sure you stay on track. Plus, by sharing your goals with someone, you take the goals out of your head and make them more real.

Successful Sales in the Future
Call reluctance is a common problem, but with commitment and practice anyone can overcome it. By recognizing your discomfort and expressing your negative thoughts, you can release your paralyzing feelings and focus on the process of improving yourself and your sales. By setting attainable goals according to the necessary level of contacts you must make to be successful, you can develop an action plan that yields positive results. By choosing easy targets at first, then planning your approach, you'll feel more comfortable with initiating sales discussions. And through implementation and practice, you'll overcome your call reluctance one successful sale at a time.

When you commit yourself to improvement and use these six steps for overcoming call reluctance, you can increase your sales, exceed your goals, and reap the benefits of greater success in your sales career.

About the Author: Bill Gager is President of Gager International, a sales consulting and coaching firm. You can visit his website at www.gagerinternational.com or reach him at 1-860-526-5922.