“Just pick up the damn phone!”
That was the prospecting advice a distinguished keynote speaker gave at a national conference for consultants I recently attended.
The millennial woman sitting next to me, with a smartphone in hand, looked puzzled.
“Back in the day,” I, the baby boomer, explained in a whisper, “we used to have to pick up a piece of the phone to make a call.”
“Oh, I’ve seen the old movies,” she said. Ouch. If she wanted, I told her later I would explain travel agents, the post office, and the concept of clockwise. That wasn’t mansplaining, that was boomersplaining. She assured me she could look them up on Google.
Touche.
But the speaker’s point was a good one: if you want to attract high-paying clients you have to get over call reluctance.
At another conference I caught up with an authority on overcoming call reluctance, Connie Kadansky.
Emails, texting, and social media will never replace person-to-person communication.
“Call reluctance springs from three sources: personality predispositions, hereditary influences, and exposure to others with call reluctance,” said Kadansky at the 2018 NAIFA conference for financial advisors.
Her main message: Call reluctance destroys careers. Don’t let it destroy yours.
Kadansky is a consultant, speaker, and trainer specializing in overcoming sales call reluctance. She offers tools and training to diagnose call reluctance and assist in highly profitable prospecting.
“If you don’t approach enough people, it makes little difference how thorough your expertise is,” said Kadansky. “Without a steady flow of prospects, your magnetic personality, credentials, product knowledge, and perfect presentations won’t make much impact. Inactivity on the prospecting front nullifies your ability to engage these other strengths.”
Kadansky told the financial advisors gathered at the NAIFA conference that successful selling usually involves five steps:
- "Identifying prospective clients (includes identifying referral sources)"
- "Initiating contact with prospective clients and referral sources"
- "Introducing yourself, your products, and your services"
- "Informing prospective clients of how you can help (giving your sales presentation)"
- "Influencing the prospect’s decision to retain you"
According to Kadansky, many people trying to attract high-paying clients are uncomfortable with steps 2 and 3, initiating and introducing -- but without them, informing and influencing can’t happen.
“Fear of initiating contact can become so great that it limits one’s ability to connect with potential new clients,” said Kadansky. “Many advisors find making that first contact so emotionally uncomfortable that they avoid it, delay it, or fake it with ineffective strategies like sending out colorful mailers, deflecting the identity (“I’m not selling anything”) or calling on only limited, emotionally safe segments of the market.”
Is there a solution for call reluctance?
“The first, but often the most difficult, step in overcoming call reluctance is admitting that you are not prospecting consistently,” says Kadansky.
This sounded like the first step of a 12-step addiction recovery program: you have to admit you have a call reluctance problem.
“Once you’ve admitted that to yourself, you can look at changing your attitudes,” she said. “Call reluctance is simply a manifestation of a person’s negative beliefs about prospecting for new business. So overcoming it is all about learning to change your beliefs.”
To overcome the negative chain reaction of call reluctance, Kadansky advises that you overcome uncertainty by being curious.
“There is uncertainty when we prospect,” said Kadansky. “The uncertainty fuels anxiety. Anxiety leads to distress. Distress stimulates fear. Fear creates doubt and doubt wastes energy. People outgrow their need for certainty by being curious.”
For additional ideas on overcoming call reluctance, visit Kadansky’s website at www.exceptionalsales.com.
