Your Telephone

I read a post on a message board today from a gal asking how to get over her fear of calling people who requested information from a fair she worked. I shared with her an article I wrote about 10 years ago when I was cold calling people. This article is still relevant today. I hope you find it helpful.

Does Your Telephone Have A 100 Pound Weight Attached To It?

Think back to when you first learned to ride a two wheeler bike. You were probably both scared and excited. Your first thought was you would get on this bike and win all the nieghborhood bike races. Then you fell down. If your folks were like mine, they insisted you get right back on the bike over and over again. Eventually there were no more falls, no more scraped elbows and knees and you were able to compete in those neighborhood bike races.

Now as an adult, you are faced with picking up the phone and either making a prospecting call, or perhaps a follow up call to a person you met yesterday. You are feeling both exicted and scared. What if the person hangs up on me? What if the person isn't interested?

The fear of one of those two things happening has stopped 200 pound men from having the strength to pick up the phone.

I have had people tell me they ended up rearranging every closet in their home as a result of not being able to pick up the phone.

Believe it or not, you are 2/3 of the way to being able to pick up the phone with ease. There are really only 3 things that can happen when you make a phone call. The person can say no, they can say yes, or they can hang up. Ok, you could get an answering machine also, in which case I always leave a message and have over time recieved calls back.

Let's face it, if telemarketing did not work, I would not continue to be called weekly by many different companies selling many different items.

Just yesterday, my daughter was woken up just after 8 a.m. by a telemarketer offering her a free pager. She did do one of our three options, she hung up on him. She does not know him, she actually loves the company he represented, she simply rejected his poor choice of timing.

When we make phone calls and we are told no, it's our job to listen to what is being said to us. I remember one woman said to me "I don't do business over the phone". Instead of hanging up, I told her I certainly understood and would she like me to mail her information about my company. She said yes. If the gentelman who called my daughter looks at his numbers, he may soon realize that calling that early produces more hang ups. Since we are strangers or virtual strangers to the person we are calling, we know that a hang up or a no is not a personal rejection of us.

Knowing that someones no is not a personal rejection but rather a rejection of some part of the offer you have made them, makes it much easier to pick up that phone.

Remember we did not learn to ride our bike on the first try, we may make mistakes in our calls too. So what? We are constantly learning. If you hang up thinking you should have said something different, GREAT, use that something different on the very next phone call. Each time someone says no, you are that much closer to hearing a yes and learning what triggers those yes's.

How many yes's will you get this week?

Audrey :)
http://mytupperware.com/audreyoka