Is Your Team Suffering from Cold Call Reluctance?

Imagine that you just hired a new salesperson, and they’ve just sat down to make a few cold calls. You’ve trained them well to develop prospects and you’ve provided all the necessary tools — products, schedules, pricing strategies, etc. Basically, you’ve given them everything they need to be successful on this call. But they can’t seem to pick up the phone.

Uh oh … it sounds like they have a nasty bout of cold call reluctance.

But why? What’s the problem here?

Cold call reluctance is any action or emotion that makes your salespeople question their abilities, think twice about what they think they know, or talk themselves out of being effective.

Just think about all the things that are possibly going through their mind:

• The customer won’t say yes
• They don’t want what I have to sell
• No one will pay this much money
• We should think about lowering the price for this service
• Maybe I can delegate this to someone else
• I’ll put these calls off until later (ahhhh … procrastination at its finest)

You know as well as anyone that cold call reluctance (or just call reluctance) can strike at any time, whether it be for cold calls, a carefully crafted email to a prospective client, or even for a pre-scheduled appointment. It’s a natural reaction to what we may be slightly uncomfortable with. And the funny thing is that the customer hasn’t even said “no.” This is all going on before your salesperson even spoken to them. Things could work out just fine, and yet, they’ve already made up their mind that it won’t. They’ll fail miserably. Not because anyone else said so. But because they said so.

Help Your Team Become Effective Again by Getting Them the Right Training

The good news is that cold call reluctance is a common ailment and only has to be a temporary insecurity. What makes the difference between really super successful people and the rest is overcoming these kinds of issues.

As a sales leader, here are a few ideas to consider during your next conversation with them:

1. Exude confidence — Ask them to get up in the morning and tell themselves that they’re ready to take on the world. This mindset shift will help them prepare for the day ahead.
2. Remind them that they know a lot — While we live in an age where customers are more educated than ever before, salespeople still know things that their prospects don’t. This includes why they need your product, service, or solution.
3. The client needs to meet with them — It is not your salesperson’s job to withhold this opportunity from the client. They need to meet and get to know the company, whether they ultimately buy from you or not. 
4. Remind them that regardless of their securities, they’re bringing something of value to the table — Plain and simple.

How Can We Help with Call Reluctance?

If you’ve got one or two employees with call reluctance, they’re not alone. We’ve all been there. We know the feeling and can appreciate the pain that they’re in. But if you help them put the steps above into practice, and you invest in better training, your sales force will gain confidence — and call reluctance will go away.

At Sciolytix, we are advocates of using consequence-free simulations to do this. There’s no consequence. No manager is judging their sales force. It’s not a top client. Your team is free to explore their skillset and behaviors and work on trying things a different way until that feels natural.