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Overcoming Call Reluctance

Date Posted: 2005-10-05

Direct sales may be defined as crossing the social gulf to consort with a stranger for the purpose of requesting his or her business and gaining compliance with that request. Selling is about compliance seeking, and more and more, this is being done by telephone. Anyone who has done this type of work knows the experience of reluctance to approach strangers. The prospect of cold calling by telephone can produce numerous internal obstacles which tend to have an inhibiting effect: rear of rejection, fear of giving unintended offense, fear of failure, feat of not successfully achieving the purpose of the call, self-doubt, etc. The result is that callers, or those training to become callers, find endless forms of avoidance to cope with the discomfort associated with this activity; hence the label call reluctancy.

My theory of call reluctance is that in the mind of the caller there is a conflict between the wish to make the call (they know it will bring them more prospects, build their business faster and make them less referral-dependent) and their fear of doing so, which may take a variety of forms, both conscious and unconscious. The most common fear is that of negative evaluation. The way many resolve this conflict is to procrastinate, which does take away the threat, but eliminates the chance for flew business. Hence, the challenge is to find a more functional resolution that deals with the anxiety and allows the prospector to garner more prospects.


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