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Sales Call Rejection Syndrome
October 18, 2007

I was reading Farquharson's last Sales Blog and realized he would have a field day training someone like me to use better sales practices. In Bill's blog yesterday he talked about the pain and fear of rejection from selling from a Kiosk. For someone with bad sales habits the pain and fear of rejection often comes from much more simple things - like phone calls.

I am part of a large group of people (many are younger and grew up with text messaging) who would  rather email then call. How do I know this? Because I spent the whole day yesterday carefully crafting a letter that I am emailing to companies inviting them to participate in a Digital Services Peer Group. Now this particular product is nothing like selling print. Selling graphic arts services like print is hard much harder and more competitive then selling something that has no competition.

But like everyone else with this bad habit I have well crafted excuses - ready at all times. My first and best excuse is that the resulting letter is well written and articulates the value and benefits very clearly. While true, it is more true to admit that the value of this product or service like so many other high value products is better sold on the phone or better yet in person.

But like other people every time I reach for the phone I experience “Phone Call Rejection Fear” Syndrome. You may be laughing but that’s a real expression. How do I know? Like any nerd worth they weight in MB's  - the proof of anything is based on Google searches. If you can’t find something on a Google search then it does not exist. So I Googled Phone Call Rejection Fear and found 1.58 million web sites.

And I have a pretty good idea what Bill would do if he discovered this fear and it would have something to do with the words “Snap out of  it!”

So what’s the moral of the story. If you know someone with Phone Call Rejection Fear Syndrome and they are compensating with “carefully crafted email" excuses (Real expression - 1.62 M Google hits) you may need to find someone to coach them or better yet just yell at them.

Posted by Howie Fenton on October 18, 2007 | Comments (0)