Call reluctance is an emotional short circuit that diverts energy from the act of engaging prospective candidates to the act of procrastinating. Instead of making calls, call-reluctant salespeople are busy preparing to prepare and avoiding the phone. They allow their fears to stand in the way of their goals – and it extracts a high emotional and financial cost.
It’s important to point out that Call Reluctance is an internal roadblock. This is not something that exists in any place other than your mind. If someone asked you to bring them a jar of “call reluctance,” you would not be able to do it. So there is no “call reluctance” in the world; there are only salespeople thinking scary thoughts that make them reluctant to get on the phone.
Call Reluctance can extend beyond the initial call to also avoiding in-person meetings with a prospective candidate. This is detrimental to the client acquisition process because if the entrepreneur is not making calls to engage prospective candidates, there will be few appointments, fewer program presentations, and ultimately less people buying your products and services.
A significant number of new entrepreneurs fail to achieve their goals within their first year because of insufficient engagement activity and not sharing their story and message often enough and not following up with those they do.
Causes of Call Reluctance:
Although there are many reasons for Call Reluctance, they can be described within three major categories;
Take action today and call someone on your “Chicken List” (the list of people you’ve been “chickened” to call”. Remind yourself that you’re sharing what you’re excited about and if they’re not excited about it that’s okay.
Think of engaging the people on your list of people to call like jumping into a cold swimming pool. Your best bet is to just dive in without too much thinking. You see the pool. You may think it’s cold, but if you dive in, you will get acclimated pretty quickly. If on the other hand you keep walking around the pool, dipping your toe in, putting on suntan lotion, adjusting your suit, etc., you’ll start to have second thoughts and become paralyzed by procrastination.
Once you’ve jumped in, it’s easy to keep jumping in because your body has been in and out of the water several times and has acclimated to the temperature. You will actually start enjoying the process and realize that the water you thought was cold is really rather refreshing.
It’s the same with reaching out and engaging others to find out if they need what you have to offer and to share what you're doing for others. Are you up for a 30-minute Business Challenge? Would you pick up the phone and reach out 10 people (spending no more than 2-minutes on the phone) to share your story and services with those who could benefit or know someone who could benefit? It could transform your future. Here’s how it works...
Your goal is to call a connection/candidate, ask them if they have 2 min. and share your exciting update. Tell them your story and then ask if you can send them some information about your program/services just in case they know of anyone who might be interested.
If possible, try to schedule a follow up appointment while you have them on the phone to reconnect and confirm they received the information you sent so you can answer their questions and/or to catch up on life. You might even want to have an egg timer or stopwatch on your desk. Simply set the timer for 30 minutes and don't stop until you've engaged 10 people.
The 30-minute Challenge will help you to get into action before you have time to start procrastinating. Think of making your calls as a video game. If you don't get your desired response, just hit reset (make another call) and play another game. If you jump right in each day, you’ll find that this becomes second nature, your results will increase substantially and you will help a lot of people get what they need from you!