Every company needs to have an effective and comprehensive system that consistently generates a healthy pipeline of prospects and customers to reach your sales goals. However, when it comes to prospecting and more specifically; cold calling, all of your efforts will be futile if you don’t make this critical shift in your thinking that will overcome call reluctance permanently.
If you’re like many salespeople, the idea of prospecting or cold calling to generate new business, although effective, may not be the primary revenue generating activity that excites you.
When salespeople resist cold calling or any business development efforts, sales managers often respond by providing additional training, role playing, a revised script or presentation, or more qualified prospects to call on as the solution to improving cold calling results and productivity. Unfortunately, these tactics don’t always eliminate the anxiety or level of resistance that salespeople experience when cold calling.
Perhaps the real issue is not tapping into the source of prospecting reluctance. Fixing the symptom without understanding the true source of the problem only results in a temporary solution with short lived results.
Instead of focusing on strategies that only address the symptom, explore the source of your anxiety to permanently overcome the fear and resistance to cold calling; your beliefs surrounding cold calling.
Your Outlook Is Your Outcome
We all have a certain set of beliefs or rules formed through our upbringing, education and experiences that influence our decisions and shape our attitude towards life and our career.
Unfortunately, there are those old limiting and confining beliefs that often keep us prisoner, stalling our professional growth and preventing us from creating greater selling opportunities.
Your outlook determines your outcome. In other words, what you believe to be true about cold calling is exactly what you’ll continue to manifest in your career. So, if you believe that cold calling is, “Forcing someone to accept something they don’t want, intrusive, annoying, manipulative, a waste of time, intimidating, scary, something I hate being subjected to myself, a way for me to make a living, how I make money, what I need to do to keep this job and grow in my career, etc.,” that’s exactly what you’ll continue to experience every time you cold call.
Consider challenging these assumptions and replacing them with healthier ones that would better serve you. For example, “Cold calling is informative. It lets the prospect know where they can locate the product/service they need.” “Cold calling is a way to educate and serve people. It enables me to become a prospect’s trusted expert or advisor, preventing them from making potentially costly mistakes that result from purchasing the wrong product/service or using a company that may not effectively fill their needs.”
When Selling, It’s Not About You; Really
Notice how these upgraded beliefs make the cold calling process less about the salesperson and more about the prospect. In other words, either you are making the selling process about YOU (Ex: how much you can gain, your fear of rejection, looking bad, hearing no, etc.) or you’re making it about the prospect and how much value you can deliver to them. Now, the cold calling process is no longer focused on your negative assumptions, fears or what your true intentions are that surround your efforts (what you have to gain or lose) but on the prospect and the benefits you can provide them.
To eliminate your resistance to generating new business via cold calling, try this exercise the next time you prospect. Unhook yourself from the outcome or to hearing a “Yes” or a “No” and focus solely on uncovering the prospect’s needs, providing solutions and giving value. You’ll notice that this shift in your mindset will produce the outcome you want with less effort; attracting new customers towards you without having to push.
Upgrade and direct your thoughts so they enhance you without them controlling or consuming you. (Otherwise, we’d still believe that our flat Earth is the center of the universe!) When you exercise your choice to upgrade your current beliefs in a way that serves you and your prospects, you’ll find the permanent solution to eliminating your reluctance and accelerating your cold calling success. Hey, you might even enjoy it!
Photo Credit: BrAt82 (via Shutterstock)
