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Phone Terror!!!
March 3, 2008

What is the most terrifying moment in the life of a sales rep? Certainly meeting with someone can moisten the armpits and asking for the order can easily result in certain muscle groups starting to shake. But by far the single scariest moment in a sales rep’s life occurs when the prospect picks up the phone and says, “Hello?” <<insert B-movie scream here>>. OMIGOSH, don’t you hate that?

I generally get voice mail 7.8 times out of ten, and that’s when I am calling customers! Given the short attention span I live with and the fact that the phone has rung three times, I make the killer assumption that “Aw, he’s not picking up” and mentally prepare for voice mail while changing screens and check emails while waiting for the inevitable, “Hi! I am either on the phone or away from the office. Please leave your name and number and I will call you back.” It is typically at that moment when he or she picks up and says, “Hello?” and I have completely forgotten whom I was calling. Dang.

Okay, that aside, phone terror is not funny, especially when it happens to you. Now, leaving effective voice mail is an oft-visited subject in my conversations with sales people over numerous coaching calls. The other side of the phone issue is, “What if they pick up?” We don’t have the luxury of being able to walk in to any company we desire any more since the doors are locked. With gas at $3+ a gallon, we need to be more efficient than in years past when we’d simply drive around.

My experience has been that the two factors in improving phone technique are confidence and knowledge. A confident rep (especially the kind of confidence that comes from having just made a sale) radiates positive energy. The person on the other can feel that and hears every bit of it just as sure as he/she does when the opposite occurs and the rep is down. The knowledge part comes when the rep has a message to deliver that he/she is sure of. Calling a new customer means doing research prior to picking up the phone. That is a subject in and of itself.

There are days when you are too tired to talk on the phone. If at all possible, avoid it. There are days when you could take on Mike Tyson and win. If at all possible, never leave the phone. In the middle (where we live most of the time), avoid phone terror through preparation and belief in yourself. If you don’t like the phone, you are in the wrong job. I hear Wendy’s is hiring.

Posted by Bill Farquharson on March 3, 2008 | Comments (0)