3 Ways to Overcome Sales Call Reluctance

telephone call

Selling over the phone is still one of the greatest tools you can use to sell your product or service. Sure, social media marketing, or social selling, works but when it comes to asking someone for a sale the telephone is an incredible – only second best to face to face selling.

However, from time to time even the best of us suffer from sales call reluctance. The inability to pick up the phone and have real sales conversations with our prospects or our customers. You may not know it, but you may recognise some of the symptoms of sales call reluctance:

  •  Procrastinating instead of picking up the phone and dialing out.
  • Getting involved with simple tasks such as admin, or filing.
  • Making up excuses as to why you cannot call the client: “They may be busy” or “I bet they might be on lunch, I will call them later” or “I don’t want to pester them”.
  • Choosing to contact the prospect via text message, or email instead of having a real conversation with them.

Can you recognise any of these traits as something you have experienced? Or perhaps you have noticed a team member displaying these symptoms? If so, it could be that they are suffering from sales call reluctance. We have all gone through bouts of it, and sometimes we all suffer from sales call reluctance on just a random day from time to time.

Now, I don’t think we have the time to go through the whole ins-and-outs as to why sales call reluctance happens, or the psychology behind it. This is a module that can be covered in our sales training courses if it is a subject that you would like to go in to depth about it – but for now, let’s leave it brief. Predominately, sales call reluctance occurs when we feel unprepared, when we feel low in confidence or uninspired. There are plenty of other deeper reasons, however these are the most common and easy to describe reasons.

So what can you do to overcome sales call reluctance? What are the three things you can introduce to your sales team to ensure they can recognise the signs of sales call reluctance and beat it early on?

Research

Before any sales call, be sure to research everything you can about your prospect, their business, what they expect of you and also be sure to know all of the answers to questions your prospect may ask. The majority of the time, sales call reluctance stems from the fear of the unknown. We fear picking up the phone in case we get things wrong, embarrass ourselves or make a fool out of the whole process. By researching everything you can in advance, you limit the chance of things like this happening.

Research does not have to take long. Perhaps 10-15 minutes of your time before the call using all you can find online is a massive help. By having all of this knowledge at your fingertips will give you the confidence to take control of the sales call and give you the courage to pick up the phone.

Script

Write a simple script, and keep it with you. And when we say a sales script, we are not expecting you to have a full on 10 page brochure on what you can or cannot say. Nor do we want you reading from that script like a robot. What a script will allow you to do is give you some fall back options should the conversation start to go weak and provide you with plenty of questions to ask to keep the sales conversation moving forward.

This script can be written using the research you prepared earlier. Think of the script more like a road map; sure, you can try to direct the conversation using your natural social skills and experience but if you get lost, you have something to fall back on.

Set Goals

We all know that goals keep the world turning. Without goals, we will all eventually stand still. The same can be said for your telesales campaign.

By setting small, achievable goals, you will not only fight to get the achievement of completing the goals, but you will also improve your confidence over time. I advise against targeting the amount of dials, or calls made in a day. This rarely works, and doesn’t offer a true representation of what you have achieved. Let’s say you make a target of making 20 dials in a day. Out of those 20 dials, you left 7 voicemails, 3 people were unavailable, and 2 people asked you to call back. By the end of the day, only 8 true sales conversations would have been achieved!

Whereas, setting a simple target of 10 sales conversations made in the day will be more beneficial for your business or career, and boost your confidence ten fold.

 

As mentioned earlier, we all suffer from sales call reluctance from time to time, and it is something either yourself has gone through, or perhaps you have seen on your very own sales floor. If that is the case, try putting the above tips into action. As always, we are here to help and support you. Should you need us to step in and coach you through your sales call reluctance phase we are here to help you break out of it and perform at your absolute best!

 

Paragon Sales Solutions are Leicester’s leading sales consultants, offering:

– Sales Contracts

– Sales Training

– Social Media Management

– B2B Telesales / Telemarketing

We cater for any size business, and what makes us stand out is that we truly care. Our services can be catered for your business and our sales professionals will work tirelessly to ensure your sales targets are met. Be sure to visit our website for more details on how our sales solutions can help your business. 

paragonsalessolutions.co.uk

 

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