Are you having trouble cold calling potential clients or prospects in your sales career? This fear of failure can sabotage your sales. To help you get over your fears of rejection and become a more confident salesperson follow this method for making sales on the phone.
Eliminate the Fear of Rejection on Your Sales Calls
Here is a simple formula that I learned from Brian Tracy that you can use to eliminate the fear of rejection from sales calls called the “100 Calls Method.” Over the years, Brian moved from company to company, selling different products and services in different markets.
At the beginning of each new sales job, Brian was always nervous and uneasy, I can totally relate, my fears of rejection and call reluctance surged to the front of my mind and held me back from calling on new people.
Cold Calling Tip: The 100 Calls Method
Brian developed the phone sales cold calling technique, "The 100 calls method." It changed his career. This method is simple. We use this for our own business as well. Wherever you are in your sales career, at whatever stage, you simply make a resolution to go out and make sales calls on 100 prospects as fast as you can. You combine this resolution with a decision not to care at all whether the people end up buying.
[quotes]As far as you are concerned, you don’t care whether they respond in a positive or negative manner.[/quotes] Your goal is simply to make 100 calls as quickly as you possibly can. You can challenge yourself to make ten calls per day, by setting this as your goal and within two weeks you'll have reached your goal. If you make 20 calls a day, you can achieve your goal of 100 calls in one five-day workweek.
The shoe manufacturer’s slogan "Just Do It" may not be that easy for you because of your current reality and self-concept around cold calling. There are a couple of things you can do to help trick your subconscious and turn it from your inner critic to your inner coach:
- Create a list of your successes, recalling what you did and how you felt at that time. You can leverage those feelings to change your state and increase your self-efficacy, that's your ability to get stuff done. See yourself successfully having fun meeting new people and learning what they are about.
- Figure out how many leads you need, the desired conversion rate, and the average commission that you would earn. Then you could turn the No’s into a positive step by associating an amount per No. As an example, if your average commission is $3,000 and one out of 100 people that you speak with buys, each No has a value to you of $30. Reframing the No to have a value of $30 can shift you can thank them for the No because it has a $30 value. Using this trick helps keep your energy and stick-to-itiveness high and you start to look forward to the No's because with every No you are one step closer to gaining a client.
Getting Better Results and Lead Generation
[quotes]Now, here’s what happens. When you don’t care whether you make a sale or not, most of your fear disappears.[/quotes] In fact, you begin to see it as a game. How many people can you get through to and talk to, and how fast can you do it? What I’ve found is that having high intension and low attachment to the outcome is the very best lead generation mindset when you both care and don’t care.
Of course, you care about getting a positive result from your prospecting efforts. But if simultaneously you don’t care if the person likes you or not, is willing to see you or not, or wants to buy your product or service or not, you maintain a sense of emotional detachment that allows you to remain calm and positive, no matter what anyone says.
Here is the most remarkable discovery. If you make 100 calls as fast as you can with no concern about whether people are interested or not, you will actually start to uncover good potential prospects. You will start to make appointments. You will start to make sales. [quotesright]By having a high intention and low attachment, by caring yet not caring, you can break out of any sales slump and step on the accelerator of your sales career.[/quotesright]
Just try it!
This one simple method will supercharge your sales, unlock your energy, and give you a “fast start” on sales success for the year or for the quarter. Why not give it a try for yourself and see?
