My 17 year old daughter refuses to answer our landline. It’s so odd; she’s as bright as a button, great company (most of the time…) but when it comes to picking up a call, she runs a mile. “I don’t know what to say” “What if they ask me something I don’t know” and other similar excuses. It’s been useful for me to see this fear in action whilst I wrote the content for a 2 hr training workshop I recently ran for a local business networking group called ‘Phone Frights – how to overcome them, perfect your pitch and win more business’.
It can be all too easy to become complacent when you’re someone like me who’s lived and breathed telemarketing and has worked on the phone all her career. You can forget that for many, the fear of rejection, of getting it wrong, of saying something daft means they simply avoid the phone. Even though it’s the most direct and simplest way of introducing your business to another business.
So, my first couple of tips to those facing the phone and about to make some cold calls are:
1. breath slowly, talk more slowly than you think you need to and 2. when you ask a question -shut up and let them answer!
More to follow…
