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CHAPTER 5 WHY WE AVOID THE PHONE

If proactive calls are so singularly effective for expanding your pipeline, creating new opportunities, moving existing ones forward, cementing your relationships, and creating new business, why don't more people sell with the phone?

There are a number of reasons – both practical (not enough time) and mindset (fear of bothering or upsetting the customer). I will focus on the real-world, practical reasons in this chapter, briefly touch on the mindset issues, and dive into them in much greater detail in Part 2 of this book.

PRACTICAL REASONS WE DON'T PICK UP THE PHONE

Many of the reasons we avoid the phone are mindset- and fear-based. I will review these in the next section and Part 2.

This list is about the real-world reasons we don't make proactive calls. These are the realities of the business-to-business selling life that get in the way of our making proactive calls.

You're Very Busy – Calls and Customer Requests Come in All Day

If you've been a business-to-business salesperson for more than a year, you're very busy.

The phone rings all day long.

You're answering and reacting all day.

Answer and react.

You're serving the customer.

You have to; there's no choice.

After all, you're in the customer service business.

And you're world-class at it.

Really, who takes care of customers better than you?

They've been with you so long because you're so good at taking care of them.

Plus, when they call, you cannot say, “I'm sorry, I'm in my proactive selling window right now; please call me back when I'm being reactive again.”

Customers call you on the weekends, at night, and even when you're on vacation with your family.

You take those calls.

You help your customers.

All day.

You write up quotes your customers ask for.

You reply to email, because goodness knows customers email you a lot.

Sometimes, if you manufacture or distribute something, and your customer has an urgent need, you even get in your car and drive it over to them.

Reacting to the incoming requests of your customers – and fixing their problems – keeps you incredibly busy all day.

When there is a respite, and the phone stops ringing, you sit and breathe for a minute.

You check in with your family.

You check the scores and the news (that's allowed!).

You're super crazy busy.

And it's hard to find time to do anything else.

The Good News Is: You can make five proactive calls in 15 minutes or less, so you don't need a lot of time. In fact, because you're usually going to be leaving a message, you can often move through five calls in 5 minutes. So, of course you're busy, but you have 5 to 15 minutes a day, right? Because that's all you need here.

The Customers Who Call Are Usually Upset, and Who Wants More of That?

Customers don't call you when they're happy, do they?

They rarely pick up the phone to give you positive feedback, compliments, or congratulations.

Those reasons aren't urgent enough to pick up the phone.

When customers call, there is almost always a problem.

Or they need something.

There is stress.

They are under pressure.

It's quite possible that somebody is yelling at them.

So what do they do?

They pick up the phone and bring that stress, pressure, and yelling to you.

“Here are my problems – fix them now!”

Perhaps not in those words, but that's the general feeling, right?

And so, you only talk to customers when they bring you a problem or urgency.

“You sent the wrong parts!”

“You didn't send me enough!”

“Where is it?! How do I not have this yet?!”

“I need this now! Send it immediately!” Never mind that they waited until the last possible moment to call you to make their purchase. You have to drop what you're doing and do as they ask. There isn't really a choice, is there?

This is what happens when customers call you, which takes up most of your day, day after day.

They're rarely happy.

They're usually stressed out.

There's almost always a problem.

And when you drop what you're doing to help them, they proceed to beat you up on price.

So you almost never have positive emotions when you talk to customers who call in.

So who wants to make proactive calls for even more negativity?

Many salespeople might think, I've got enough angry customers hounding me already, buddy, so no thanks – I'm not going to call them so they can scream at me some more.

This is completely understandable.

You're human.

And you want to minimize the negativity that makes up the majority of your incoming customer interactions.

The Good News Is: The incoming calls are full of problems and frustrations, but you make proactive calls to customers and prospects when nothing is wrong. You're showing up when there isn't a problem. And, after briefly catching up, you're asking what they need help with. Their reaction will be the opposite of the emotion on your incoming calls. These customers and prospects will be grateful, pleasantly surprised, relieved, and looking for ways to thank you.

As a Result, You Don't Like the Phone

Let's review.

You're super busy.

The phone rings all day, presenting perpetual problems that must be handled immediately.

Customers who call are often frustrated, flustered, or downright angry.

And all of these reactive joys of being a salesperson come to you courtesy of …

The phone!

So who could blame you if your view of the phone isn't particularly positive?

And who could blame you if your instinct is to avoid using the phone?

The phone is a major source of daily work stress. It brings you anger, negativity, and condescension.

Me: “Use the phone! Make proactive calls!”

You: “No thanks, I'm good.”

A few months ago, I was doing an interview with a client's salesperson.

She told me that although she has to make phone calls as part of her job, she hates the phone – to the point that when she leaves voice messages, she does not give her phone number.

Rather, she asks that people return her call with an email.

Can you believe that?

Her voicemail asks the customer to email her back!

The Good News Is: The wins come quickly in this work. It doesn't take long to have a good, positive, warm, successful conversation. This will give you the energy and enthusiasm to make the next call. And the next. And suddenly, the phone will be actively making you money. It will be predictably growing your sales. You will find your dislike for phone calls lifting like a spent storm cloud.

You Simply Don't Have a System for Using the Phone Proactively

This is probably the simplest reason of all:

 Nobody has ever armed you with a process for making proactive calls.

 How do you make them?

 When?

 How many is enough?

 Especially when the customer doesn't call back.

 Who should you call?

 What do you say?

 What about voicemail?

 What about cold calls?

 What if you don't have cell phone numbers?

 What about Zoom? And texting? And email?

The phone-selling books from the 1970s and 1980s don't apply to today, because now the phone is one tool in a much larger digital communication ecosystem. And as discussed in Chapter 1, it's not like there are lot of phone-selling systems and processes at your disposal.

Unless they are working with me, your company probably is not training you how to properly use the phone to grow your sales.

So, the most obvious reason you're not making proactive calls is that you don't have a program for doing so.

And nobody has ever taught you how.

The Good News Is: You have a system now: it's the book you're holding in your hands. The system is to make a few proactive calls a day, every day – and your sales, opportunities, and pipeline will quickly grow.

MINDSET ISSUES FOR WHY WE DON'T PICK UP THE PHONE

We will dive deeply into these issues in Part 2, but the mindset blocks that keep us from picking up the phone have one common characteristic:

They are our discomfort, not the customers'.

It is our discomfort with the phone that keeps us from making proactive calls systematically.

It is not the discomfort of your customers and prospects. They want to hear from you.

It may be our projection of our discomfort onto our customers. That is, we believe our customers don't want us to call, for all the reasons we do not like making calls.

Here are just some of the thoughts that keep us from picking up the phone proactively:

 I don't want to bother my customer.

 If she wants it, she'll call me, like everyone else.

 I don't want to waste their time.

 I don't want to make the customer angry or upset with me.

 If they get upset, I might lose the customer. And I've worked so hard to win them and then keep them.

 Does this feel like thinking that's conducive to selling with the phone?

 That's because it isn't.

The Good News Is: Ninety percent of salespeople, in my experience, have these thoughts and fears and discomforts. That means as soon as you can overcome these discomforts, you will instantly vault yourself into the top 10% of all salespeople.

That's why I wrote this book:

To arm you with a simple process for making proactive calls to grow your sales.

To show you that it's easy.

To show you that it doesn't take a lot of time.

To show you that your customers will be happy to hear from you, which is the opposite of what you fear.

To show you that they want you to call them.

And when you do it, it will give them what they want and make them happy.

You will be one of the only ones showing up for them this way.

And then they will thank you with their money.

Because they will appreciate that you care so much that you pick up the phone when nothing is wrong, and ask about their family, and ask what they need help with because you'd like to help them – they will hold on tight, and they will never let go.

You will develop one customer-for-life after another.

All of this happens when you make proactive calls, systematically, to customers and prospects.

Ready to pick up the phone and sell?