A (0:01)

You're listening to the Sales Hunter podcast. My name is Mark Hunter, the Sales Hunter. Hey, we're talking about sales call reluctance. How many times have you been hesitant to reach out to somebody to make that call? Hey, it hits everybody. That's the issue, that's the topic. And the show begins right now. You're listening to the Sales Hunter podcast with Mark Hunter where the focus is to help you as a salesman sell with confidence and integrity. And now here's your host. I want to help you get over this sales call reluctance. And first of all, don't think this doesn't impact everybody. It impacts me. Hey, I've had many a time when I've had sales call reluctance. But what we're going to do is we're going to break it down. I'm going to show you some strategies. I'm going to show you how. But first of all, you got to realize that sales call reluctance is really, it's all mental. And more than that, you got to really stop and ask yourself, it's just a conversation. It's just a conversation. It's just you talking to somebody else. Now, I know you say, oh, whoa, hold it. That person I'm talking to, they don't like me. They hold it just a moment. You know what's interesting? They have the same level of fears as you have. Just maybe in some other areas. It's just a conversation and all you're looking to do is to move the conversation forward. Today I've got to make a number of calls. Some of them are going to be very, very tough on the surface because I'm talking to people who, you know, I don't normally talk to people who have pretty high level positions, but I'm going to make the call. So now let's walk through the strategies to help you get over this. First of all, it's a mental issue. I mentioned that already. But you got to know something. The challenge is all about kind of crowling that voice in your head. You know that voice in your head. Oh, we've all had that voice in your head. That one that says, you can't do this. You don't have, you don't know what it takes. You don't know. And what does it do? It eats away at your confidence. It eats away at everything that you believe. And before you know it, you just don't make the call and you say, I'm going to send an email. I'm going to send a text message. Let me tell you something, Phone calls right now are more Valuable than ever because so few people get really phone calls. It happens again. Here's the thing. Stop and ask yourself, do you believe in what you do? Now, hold it. It's not about what you sell. It's about the outcome you create. See, it's not your product, it's the outcome you create. How do you help make people feel better? How do you help people accomplish things that they didn't expect to accomplish? Here's the thing. What you want to have is you want to have just. Just two or three success stories. I had one last week, and believe me, I've got it right here. Right here on my desk. A success story where I was able to successfully help somebody. And that's incredible. That's what you want. You see, here's the thing. This is the reason you're making the call. Because you know you could help someone. I want you to have on your desk, by your phone, in your car, wherever you're making calls, I want you to have a couple of success stories and you use them to motivate yourself. Okay, let's go on. Let's keep going. What are the questions that you want to ask? You want to go into the call prepared with questions you're going to ask? It's not about having this big, long script. No, it's about having just a few questions. Keep it simple. Your goal is to just earn the right, the privilege, the honor and the respect to be able to move forward to the next call. That's it. That's it. You're not selling world peace. You're not solving global hunger. You're just trying to gain a little bit of information about them. You're just trying to make a connection with them. Because again, when you're calling somebody that's not expecting your call, they're not going to suddenly break out their Visa card, their Amex, whatever, and suddenly give you the deal. No, they're not going to do that. So in other words, you're just trying to get the next step. Now, here's the thing. When you make that call, what you're really just trying to do is you're just trying to, hey, make sure you learn their name. Maybe you can learn a key date. Maybe you can just learn one thing about them that you could follow up with them on, on the next call. That's it. Keep it simple. Now, here's the situation. Let's be truthful. The vast majority of calls go to voicemail. I get it. A vast majority of my calls go to voicemail. You're Right. And people call me and you know what? I let the phone ring and it rolls to voicemail. Right. See? So you got to be prepared to leave a voicemail message. A short, tight, just really 11 to 14 seconds. Don't make it long. Keep it short, keep it tight. Now here's situation. You've got to script that out, and it's really only two or three sentences. Now, I've done other podcasts on how to leave a good voicemail. Go back and find that, check that out, because again, it's all there for you. But what you want to do is after you leave that voicemail, you always want to follow up with an email and pretty much just put the same thing in the email. Again, it's very short. It's very tight. Now here's Situation. People are pushing back on me and they say, hold it, Mark. I thought you wrote this book Integrity first selling and is cold calling. Is making calls like this Integrity First? Yes, it is. Because again, if I know I have the ability to help someone, I owe it to them to reach out to them. So I, I really do believe. I really do believe. Yeah, but let's get back into this and let's talk some more about this. You've got to be prepared to make your calls. If you just wait for a random something to happen before you make calls, you're never going to make them. So what you want to do is you want to have your list already built. Who's the person, who's the company, why are you calling? Do. And do you have any intel on them? Now, this doesn't mean that you spend 30 minutes of research before you make a call. No, it's just that get your pertinent facts together so you have them. This gives you a little bit of confidence. This gives you. This gives you a feeling that, okay, hey, I know something. Now, you may not know the person's name, so you may be calling a general number and saying, hey, I'm trying to reach whoever is in charge of this. That's fine, too. But be prepared to know what you're doing now. Set a time when you're going to start making your calls. This is absolutely. This is an appointment with yourself. Don't delay when the time comes. In other words, if you say you're going to make your calls at 10am make your calls at 10am don't say, well, you know what, I got to take care of these emails and I'll get to it. 10:30. As soon as you start allowing yourself to make excuses as to why you're not making your calls, you won't make your calls. In my company, in my business, I have a personal goal. It's five conversations a day. Five conversations a day. And I know to get five conversations a day, I've got to back into my schedule, I've got to back my time, and I gotta block the time to absolutely make the calls. In other words, I have the appointment with myself. It's on my calendar. Don't delay when that time comes. And the whole purpose is not to be distracted. That means you may turn off email, turn off text messages, turn off, turn off other things. So you're just focused on the, on your calls. Now, here's the deal. When you set this appointment with yourself, set a goal, and it may only be two calls in 30 minutes. That's fine. That's fine. Set a goal and when you accomplish it, celebrate it. I've worked with a lot of people who have called reluctance. And we start off with a very low, okay, at 10 o', clock, you're going to make two calls. That's it. And then they get comfortable making two calls. And then we, then we increase it to three, then we increase it to four, then we increase it. You see, what you want to do is you want to set a goal that you know you can accomplish. This is key. This is absolutely key. So many calling processes and reluctance breaks down because you set a number that, oh, I gotta make 30 calls. And you just don't make 30 calls. And then you feel disappointed. Well, that didn't work, so forget it. No, set your goal to a point to where you know you can achieve it at least 90% of your time before you increase it. I said earlier that My objective is five conversations a day. I didn't start out at five. I, I started out at two, two and then I increased it to three, then I increased it four, then I increased it five. Do I hit five every day? No, I probably average about 24 calls. Conversations total a week. Yeah, see, I slept. But, but that's okay. I keep driving myself to that. See, here's what it really comes down to. Getting in the habit of making progress. You see, here's the whole thing. Your objective is to just have a conversation. Now, after you've had some conversations, I want you to record them. I really want you to record them, or at least take really good notes. And I want you to review what you're saying, what sounds good, what should be tweaked, and most of all, look and listen to see how much more comfortable you're becoming. Because I'll tell you what, calling is like anything, it's a muscle that needs to be exercised. And the more you do it, the more comfortable it becomes. Every morning I exercise and the exercise routine I do today is dramatically different than the exercise, you know, routine I did five years ago. It's, it, it's much more, much harder. It's, it, it's a lot more activity because I've worked my way into it. This is what is absolutely key. Now, let me give you some other tips. You do use a headset. Having your hands free makes you feel more comfortable. There's just something magical about this that I have found that if I can use a headset, I use AirPods when I'm calling. It makes me feel a lot more comfortable and much more relaxed. And I also stand up when I'm making my calls. Now, this is your own personal opinion, but I just found that that it makes it. Now, you got to make sure you're recording everything in your CRM system in the moment it happens. Don't wait till the end of the day. Again, this is a good drill for you because now you say it breaks up your pace a little bit. Yeah, it is going to break up your pace a little bit, but it has you completing a task and you're going on to the next thing. And when you record it in your CRM system, make sure that you're recording the next step. What's the next step? You know what, what is it? Score the call. You may have a note system in there that you're going to score. Is there a high probability? Low probability? This gives you a sense of control and feeling positive. Now, few more things I want to share. You need someone to lift you up. This is really key. If you are a solopreneur listening to this call, you may not have somebody else. You need to have a peer. You need to have another salesperson who you can rally around and they can rally around you. In other words, the idea being is that both of you are in this game of saying, I got to make X number of calls a day. And you reach out to each other in the morning, hey, here's what my call list looks like. What's your call list look like? And you challenge and push each other forward. I do this still to this day in my business, I've got people in my mastermind group that I'm continuously comparing notes to. And what does it do? It allows us to do two things. One, celebrate. It allows us to celebrate when you achieve your numbers, because now I'm celebrating with somebody else. And two, it helps hold me accountable because I know if I don't make my calls, I don't do what I'm supposed to, they're going to get on my case. So what does it come down to? It really comes down to this. The more calls you make, you're going to find whether or not you record your calls or not record your calls, you're going to find that you're really improving. You really are. I'll tell you what, the first 10, 20 calls that you make and don't worry about them, don't worry about them at all. Because again, who cares? Who cares? Who cares if you blow? I have blown so many calls in my life. It is amazing and yet I keep coming, I keep going. And this is absolutely, without a doubt key. Now here's what I want you to do once you right now to set your goal for the number of calls that you're going to make. I want you to put in your calendar the time that you're going to start making the calls and I want you to have that make sure that you record them after you do them in your CRM system. Go back, catch this podcast again. I want you to really understand what's happening out there. Hey, I want you to also do something else. Make sure you pick up a copy of the book Integrity first selling. People are picking it up, they're loving it and it's absolutely fantastic. You can get it out on Amazon in both the Kindle paperback and hardback. But I want you to pick it up and leave me a review on it. Would you? Would you leave me a review? I'd certainly appreciate it. Hey, the podcast. Two shows like this one, well, one like this where I do a single topic and the other one comes out on Thursdays of each week where I do a kind of a sit down with a subject matter expert. The podcast is all designed to help you see and achieve what you didn't think was possible. And today it's to help you overcome sales call reluctance. I'm Mark Hunter, the sales hunter. Great selling.