Personally, I find cold calling easy. Now it’s easy. Because I’ve flexed my cold calling muscles by making more than 1,000 phone calls to some of the biggest businesses in Israel. And yet, it’s the warm business phone calls that I still find difficult. Very difficult.
Take last week for instance, when I wanted to make a phone call to a successful business mentor, writer and speaker who I dared approach at a conference. She gave me her card and said “call me.” I was about to email her because it was the easy way to get in touch, and yet her words “call me,” echoed in my mind.
So I picked up the phone. But I couldn’t do it because fear and anxiety held me back. What if she thought I was a total idiot? I put the phone down. I realized that I would have to work on myself, maybe even trick my brain into making this phone call.
So what do you do when your fear stops you from making an important business phone call?
Here’s what I did:
1. I took a sheet of paper
2. Split it down the middle into two
3. On the left hand side I wrote down all the reasons I couldn’t and shouldn’t make the phone call
So now I was feeling really crappy about myself. But I wasn’t going to give in to the war between my id, ego and superego.
So for my next step:
4. I countered the stuff on the left side of the page.
In other words, I spoke back to my anxiety very firmly.
Three reasons were enough to convince myself that this phone call had to be made and that I was going to do it then and there. So I did.
And guess what?
It was a highly successful phone call. She still remembered me, and we managed to set a date for a meeting.
Usually, things are never as difficult as we predict them to be. It’s usually the stuff that we don’t predict that end up being difficult to manage.
So the next time you have to make a business phone call and it’s difficult to pick up the phone, consider using this tactic.
Good luck and let me know if it helps!
