Filled with Sales Call Anxiety? This may help…
“I’m new to inside sales and get very nervous before making calls… What Can I Do to Reduce My Sales Call Anxiety?”
I need to share a personal story with you. Early on in my sales career as a straight commission inside sales rep, I used to suffer from the same sales call anxiety you are describing.
Every morning on the drive into work I would get nervous, knowing that I have to make tons of cold calls and if I didn’t close any deals, I wouldn’t have a paycheck at the end of the week.
Having the pressure of making cold calls is one thing. Not having a base salary adds a whole other level of stress. Start having a bad sales week with no numbers on the board and it’s easy to become down right certifiable.
Attack, Quit or Keep Status Quo
In this situation I found three choices to deal with my sales anxiety:
Attack. Find out why I felt the way I did and eliminate the cause at the source. I’d ask myself why I felt the way I did and the answer was, I didn’t like being rejected over and over again nor did I like the stress that came along with not having a paycheck. So I attacked the problem in order to understand why I was getting lots of rejection and little sales. Turns out, what I was saying after “Hello, my name is…” was causing the negative responses / reactions from my prospects. Once I realized that, I changed my opener to a more compelling reason for the sales call that created interest and reduced resistance. Next thing you know, I started having more prospects wanting to engage in a conversation which made it a lot easier to move to the next step of the sales cycle. This wouldn’t have happened if I weren’t willing to investigate and deal with the real cause of the problem.
Quit. No one was forcing me to work as a straight commissioned sales person however, I don’t like having my earnings capped and I didn’t have a back-up career plan that would allow me to make the kind of money or live the kind of life-style I was seeking.
Keep Status Quo. I’ve seen a lot of fellow sales reps fall into this category. They simply learn to live with the anxiety or worse yet, they no longer let it affect them. They just accept low sales performance as a standard. I’d rather quit before opting for this choice.
So my advice: Investigate the root cause of your sales call anxiety and then attack it until it no longer has air to breathe.
– Michael Pedone
Michael Pedone teaches outbound sales teams exactly what to say to get sales conversations started with hard to reach decision makers. He is the CEO/FOUNDER of SalesBuzz.com – An online sales training company.
