Pick Up The Phone and Sell

CHAPTER 5WHY 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 ...