What Are The Appropriate Actions To Help A Call Reluctant Salesperson?

When it comes to call reluctance©, simply telling the sufferer to, “Just Do It!” rarely works. There are two issues that need to be dealt with when you are looking to coach and support worthy salespeople to overcome their call aversion:

1. Psychic issues and

2. Activity issues

Psychic Issues
In some call reluctance situation the individual knows the “how to’s” of prospecting. It’s not their knowledge of what to do that stops them, rather it's overcoming the psychic and emotional barriers that requires your support. Please note you are not their therapist or counsellor, you are their sales performance coach! Your role is to assist them to overcome the roadblock that is preventing them from doing what they know. Here are 2 tactics that you as their sales performance coach can use to get the call averse individual up and running again:

Uncover their self-saboteur  - Have them fold a piece of paper in half. Then have the individual write down, on one half of the page, the stories that their internal “self-critical voice” is telling them. Together with you, have them examine their internal sabotaging language. Your role is to prompt them to get the saboteur out in the open. Ask them, “What are the things you tell yourself when sitting down to make the phone call to set an appointment?” or “You are about to walk into a reception office, cold, off the street, what does the little voice inside your head say to you?” etc etc.

Get their stories out on the table! Stories in which they say things like, “They are probably in meetings at this time” or “I haven't done enough research about their company” or “They are most likely happy with their current supplier or they would have called us” or “They won’t take a cold call”

Once their internal “self-critical stories” have been captured, have them write rational (have them answer their critic as though they were the sales manager) responses to their critic's claims. In other words, have them confront their inner critic in written debate. As an example, “Even though they may be happy with their current supplier, they might be looking for a second tier alternative supplier.” Therefore your role as sales performance coach is to get the individual to counter their internal roadblocks with supportive arguments to the contrary. For many call averse sufferers this exercise is sufficient to get them moving again. For others you will need to walk them through tactic # 2 below.

Change the definition of what it takes to win - Help the call reluctant sufferer to re-set their call objective. Often the objective for the business development call is completely unrealistic. For salespeople that struggle with call reluctance, winning is far too black and white. They either got the appointment or they didn’t! Goals like make a sale or secure an appointment may be reaching too far ahead. When the goal is too “big” it can seem daunting and the individual will more than likely experience a high degree of perceived failure should they fail to achieve the goal. This sets up the reluctance to make the attempt.

As the sales performance coach, you need to help them re-define “what it takes to win!” You need to help them to chunk down their business development process into much smaller wins. Take the game of tennis as an example. Look at the amount of opportunities one has as a tennis player to achieve a win. Look at all the points of winning along the tennis pathway. As sales leaders, we need to help the call averse salesperson build a model like this, where there are multiple opportunities along the pathway for them to achieve a win.

As an example, let us imagine that it takes an average of four to five sales contacts before a customer will give you an initial order. What then should the strategy be for each one of those sales calls? In other words, what needs to happen, specifically, before visit one, during visit one, visit two, visit three, etc.? What would a “win” look like for each visit? Your job as the sales performance coach is to help the salesperson to develop a tactical new business call plan. Help them to chunk down all the elements of the business development call into smaller elements such as: 

• Pre call research - gathering of specific “prospect intelligence
• Planning their line of attack - “Determining what problems they can solve for the prospect
• Make the prospect’s acquaintance and establish a rapport
• Send out customized info pack
• Set up a follow-up meeting

When you shift their paradigm of what it means to win at the game of prospecting, you change their perception of rejection. As the sales performance coach, help acknowledge and celebrate their wins when they achieve the objectives that were determined in their pre-call strategy.

Activity Issues

Very often a major reason salespeople struggle with new business development is tied in with their lack of confidence. They may not know what to say or what to do to move a prospect forward. Therefore it is often helpful to use the “Change the definition of what it takes to win” tactic above.

Once they have targeted the specific prospects, as the sales performance coach you must help them construct the “how to approach them “plan. Their approach strategy must be very specific in what they will say and how they should say it. Prepare and rehearse actions like how to:

• be professional but friendly

• effectively start the call

• engage the prospect in conversation

• effectively steer the conversation

• respond to concerns and possible objections

• professionally end the conversation

Then they need to practice, drill and rehearse their approach until it feels natural. The more detailed the plan and the more they rehearse their approach, the more at ease they will be when it comes down to delivery. For a terrific approach review a previous newsletter I have written - A Powerful Tactic for Rapidly Determining a Prospect's Needs

Another powerful tactic to manage the “activity reluctant” salesperson is to provide them with an “accountability partner.”  Team them up with a co-worker to whom they will be accountable. To whom they will report regularly as to their call activity.  it’s a bit like having a jogging partner or personal trainer - they drive you to get you out of bed in the morning, or do that extra rep, especially when you don’t fell like it. By teaming up the call reluctant salesperson with an “accountability partner” you will help them to break their inertia and thereby get them up and running again.

Finally, you need to check the call reluctant salesperson's product belief. How congruent are they when they talk about your products and services? Congruence is the state achieved by coming together, the state of agreement. In psychology and NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming), congruence is often defined as one’s internal and external consistency. The perception others have of your sincerity or certainty. Congruence is when the words that come out of your mouth match with your tonality and body language in such a way as to be believable.

If your salespeople absolutely don’t believe fully in the value your products and services provide they will very often be reluctant to go out into the marketplace and talk about them. The more they believe, the easier it will be to lift them out of their call reluctant stupor because “people need what they have to offer!”

In Conclusion
Economic crisis is all around us. TV, online, radio and print news all spread fear and anxiety about an unprecedented global economic situation that continues to slide downwards on a daily basis. It is so easy, and even logical, to buy into the fact that your sales team’s lack of sales performance is due to the economic upheaval. Even though by now you have most likely encouraged (or threatened) your salespeople to ramp up their selling activity, their poor results may well be because of their own internal struggle with call reluctance more so than because customers have stopped spending.
Jumping up and down, shouting for all your people to “Stop screwing around and get serious” will only exacerbate the problem for those team members who are suffering from call aversion. So before you just get rid of good people, make sure you look first to see if they have the symptoms of call reluctance. If they do, then it is part of your role as the sales performance coach to “Call out the culprits”. Provide them with accurate feedback and choose the appropriate actions to help them overcome this insidious disease which is killing both their and your sales.