How to Deal with Cold Call Anxiety

In this tough economy, you’ve got to pull out all the stops to bring in new customers. Yes, new customers. Many of your existing customers are hunkering down, spending less, going to discounters or “staying home.” One way to get new customers is the dreaded cold call. But many salespeople suffer from cold call anxiety—usually rooted in a lack of confidence or fear of rejection.

Unfortunately, the “nature of the beast” is such that rejection builds up to the point where selling becomes a chore that grinds down your enthusiasm. This will begin to show in your phone demeanor. Potential customers will sense the "downer" in your voice. And they’ll be able to tell when you’re no longer smiling.

Michael Pedone, founder and CEO of SalesBuzz.com, thinks this cold call anxiety can be prevented. He suggests that salespeople ask themselves why they are so often rejected—especially when their cold call rejection rates start to climb. He refutes the notion that “that’s the way sales is.”

“There’s a difference between being rejected and a prospect not being qualified,” says Pedone. A high rejection rate is a red flag that your sales process isn’t what it should be. He defines the process as what you say, when you say it, how you say it, why you say it, and who you say it to. Pedone encourages salespeople to re-evaluate their sales process. One suggestion is to emulate your company’s top sales person and follow their sales process.

A big reason customers reject a cold call is that they're in denial about a problem they may have. Here, they may list an objection or two. But if what you’re selling were of no interest to them, they would just hang up. Bringing up an objection means the prospect “can be sold.”

Geoffrey James writes the Sales Source column on Inc.com, the world's most-visited sales-oriented blog. His newly published book is Business to Business Selling: Power Words and Strategies From the World's Top Sales Experts. In an INC article entitled “Getting Past 'No': How to Move a Cold Call Forward," James cites seven most common objections and ways to respond to each.

The key here is to find the sales process that produces the kind of results you need. Once you zero in on the right process, your confidence will go up and your cold call anxiety will drop. That said, there will inevitably be a sales call where the sales prospect drags you way back down. When this happens, Pedone tells salespeople to resist the urge to modify a successful sales process. He advises not “to start tweaking the heck out of it because of one prospect that read them the riot act over the phone. This is a mistake,” says Pedone.

Your sales process should be fine tuned until it succeeds, call after call. “If an occasional call goes bad, you’ll have the confidence to know it wasn’t anything you did and you’ll be able to move on to the next call without an ounce of anxiety,” says Pedone.

Photo courtesy of MorgueFile.com