Break the Barrier

Overcome sales call reluctance by following these four important steps.

By Lucretia DiSanto Jones

For many multiline agents, walking into the office and spotting the phone on the desk can be stomach-turning. Instead of picking up the phone, they pass the time shuffling paper, checking email or running out for coffee.

Multiline advisors, however, have considerable sales numbers to meet, which means they face heavy prospecting needs daily. They must overcome this sales call reluctance.

Sales call reluctance is not just a fear of making calls or picking up the phone, however. Sales call reluctance interferes with all efforts to prospect for new business. Clearly, it can be disastrous for new and seasoned multiline agents alike.

Here are four steps to eliminating call reluctance in multiline advisors, courtesy of trainer and coach Connie Kadansky, with Exceptional Sales in Phoenix.

1. Become aware.
The first step, she says, is to become aware of the reluctance. “Check your wallet, check your bank balance and check your calendar, because to become aware of it, you need to recognize it and say, ‘Yeah, you know, I’m not putting new business in,’ ‘I’m not following up on leads,’ or ‘I’m not calling my regular insureds and asking them about their other insurance needs.’”

2. Assess.
The second step is to assess yourself and your fears, says Kadansky. “You need to figure out what is the ‘theme,’ what is the ‘fear,’ because, for example, some agents are afraid of asking for a referral.” A free assessment is available at Exceptionalsales.com, or, as Kadansky suggests, you can turn to the best-seller The Psychology of Sales Call Reluctance by George W. Dudley and Shannon L. Goodson.

3. Admit it.
“The third step, and it is sometimes the most difficult,” says Kadansky, “is to admit it. To say, ‘You know, I am call reluctant. I emotionally hesitate to prospect. I’m fearful to close the sale or ask for their homeowners’ policy or to ask them about long-term care insurance.”

4. Use what works.
Finally, use techniques that have been proven by behavioral scientists to break the emotional barriers that many advisors have.

Kadansky explains that individuals hide, deny and suppress their fears, so they never really get past them. “People need to handle their feelings when they’re prospecting because prospecting truly is a mindset,” she says. Very often when somebody reaches to pick up the phone, Kadansky says, they stop. “I teach them to zero in on what is causing them to stop. When they’re in that prospecting mode and they don’t know how they’ll be received or what people will say when they pick up the phone, they make up stories. ‘Oh, they’ll just want a quote.’ That’s what I hear from agents. They brace themselves because that’s been their experience, so when they pick up the phone, they have this feeling of dread,” she says.

The good news is that human beings can only have one thought at a time. Shifting into neutral and building a really powerful neutral statement around your prospecting efforts will help you replace the stories—negative intruders Kadansky calls them—with positive thoughts.

A technique called thought realignment could help spark this shift. “It is derived from behavioral science and suggests that whatever you think and feel determines what you do,” she says. “If you become acutely aware of what it is that you’re feeling and what you’re saying to yourself when you pick up the phone, you can realign your thoughts and retrain your brain to say, ‘I am important to families. They need my expertise and they need me as a resource.’”

The nose knows
Another technique is sensory injection. “It uses the powerful sense of smell,” says Kadansky. “It really works for someone who has telephobia. A smell will instantaneously take somebody elsewhere,” where the person had a positive experience.

“If they have a threatening feeling when they pick up the phone to prospect, they can grab a scent, smell it, and it instantly takes them to the beach in Hawaii—or whatever pleasant experience they’ve conjured up,” she continues. “So, they can then pick up the phone and make the call because they have broken the emotional barrier.”