They are not sending you, they are sending a company, a product or a bad day: 4 ways not to be afraid to call strangers

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Fear of phones is one of the many social phobias that make life in society very difficult for a person. The rhythm of modern life dictates certain rules and conditions to people. Now it is impossible to imagine our life without a mobile phone. But for a person with telephone phobia, the mere thought of talking on the phone leads to a state of panic.

Telephonephobia - fear of talking on the phone

In order to live a full life and not hide from the world, such a person needs qualified psychological help, as well as moral support from relatives or close friends. Sometimes it is impossible to do without drug treatment for a phobia.

What is telephone phobia

The fear of talking on the phone is called telephone phobia. It affects about 19% of the world's population. A person experiences panicky, obsessive fear not only from talking on the phone, but also when he sees the device itself. Even the sound of a bell causes fear in him, and picking up the phone and making a call on his own is very difficult for him.

Causes

The starting point for the development of telephone phobia is some kind of emotional shock or fear associated with a telephone or talking on it. This phobia is relatively new and has begun to progress significantly with the development of mobile communications. The fear is associated not with the device itself, but with what can be expected from conversations on it. Telephone anxiety involves the expectation that a person will hear bad news or learn over the phone about the loss of a loved one.

The reasons for fear most often come from childhood. A small child may observe how one of the parents or relatives swears on the phone or how the information he hears greatly upsets an adult.

Often the child is afraid that mom or dad will be called to work and they will have to leave. Such mixed feelings remain in the memory for a long time, and later settle in the subconscious.

A person may not even remember these incidents from his childhood, but the anxiety associated with the need to talk through this means of communication remains in him. Shock can occur not only in childhood, but also in adulthood. The reasons do not change.

Symptoms

Like any phobia, fear of the phone has a number of typical symptoms. They occur at the somatic level and are controlled by hormones produced by the endocrine glands. Symptoms may include:

• cardiopalmus;
• increased blood pressure;
• pulsation in temples;
• headache:
• dizziness;
• increased sweating;
• nausea;
• weakness;
• drowsiness or insomnia.

All symptoms indicate that the object of fear provokes all defense mechanisms in the patient’s body. Panic attacks and excessive aggressiveness towards others are also possible.

In people suffering from telephone phobia, atypical symptoms can also be distinguished. They are characteristic only of this phobia and are not observed in other phobias. First of all, these are a person’s attempts to avoid visiting places where one can see a telephone or hear its call.

Today it is quite difficult to do this, so a person is forced to stay in what he thinks is a safe place for most of his life: they sit at home, closing themselves off from the world and people.

Sometimes the phobia takes on a milder form and the person is afraid to talk only to strangers. In this case, the phobia practically does not need treatment and the person is able to cope with it on his own.

Rapid heartbeat is a symptom of phobia

Method 3: start your working day by calling somewhere where you definitely won’t be rude

Here's another piece of advice from Leonid Klimenko on how to overcome fear: start the working day not from the position of a seller, but on the other side of the barricades - from the position of a buyer.

— You can start by calling those places where they cannot be rude and refuse a priori: banks, insurance companies, large online stores and other places where every telephone call is monitored by management (or at least punished for rudeness).

You can also call several online stores and talk to a consultant about the technical characteristics of a smartphone. The main thing is to relax and ask questions.

Your task is to conduct a telephone conversation for more than three minutes and make at least three calls. Thus, in 10-12 minutes you will simply start talking on the phone.

You can learn more ways to teach your team how to work with “cold sales” in Ilya Reinish’s “Sales Director” course from LABA.

How does a phobia progress?

If the phobia is not treated and the fear is driven deeper and deeper, this will only worsen the situation. Telephone phobia can develop with related fears such as: social phobia - fear of people and society, agnosophobia - fear of the unknown, agoraphobia - fear of public places. They not only complicate the treatment process, but also significantly delay it, because the specialist will have to examine each of the phobias separately.

A constant feeling of anxiety leads to emotional exhaustion, and the prolonged stress that a person experiences from every encounter with the phone, in many cases leads to prolonged depression. Depressive disorder pushes the patient to act rashly - suicide, aggression towards others, etc.

Fear of the phone leads to emotional exhaustion

Work specifics

Today, many managers hire experienced negotiators to achieve their goals through telephone calls. What should a cold calling specialist be able to do?

The employee must:

1. Collect as much information as possible about your interlocutor . Before calling, you should get as much information as possible about your client: age, education, place of work and hobbies. If you are making an offer for a company, you should know how long it has been on the market, the exact number of employees and what difficulties or successes it has had recently. It is not for nothing that they say that whoever owns information owns the whole world.
2. Deal with objections . Half the success depends on how you respond to the client's objections. It is better to use special sales scripts in your work.
3. Bypass the secretary . In large enterprises, telephone calls are answered by secretaries who collect all the information. It would seem that it is almost impossible to get through to the manager. Not for a cold calling specialist. There are numerous tricks to bypass a secretary, and everyone should use them perfectly.

How to deal with telephone phobia

In order to get rid of annoying fear and start living a full life, people with a severe form of telephone phobia are recommended to consult a specialist. An experienced psychotherapist will not only be able to identify the cause of fear, but will also select the correct treatment depending on the patient’s mental state.

Psychotherapy

If we talk about telephone phobia as an escape from the problems of the real world, then it is important to show the patient that because of such an escape, problems do not disappear, but are only temporarily hidden. The patient is conveyed the idea that ignorance is much worse than the truth, even the most bitter one. There are several methods to combat the fear of phone calls:

1. Cognitive method. Direct meeting with the irritant helps to overcome fear. The doctor suggests making short calls to your family members. To reinforce the behavioral reaction, the interlocutors should tell the patient only good and joyful news.
2. The imaginary interlocutor method is suitable for those who are afraid to communicate on the phone with strangers. The psychotherapist teaches his patient how to distinguish an ordinary person from an ill-wisher by the timbre of his voice, the manner of presenting information and intonation. Having this information makes a person more confident. Some experts recommend looking at pleasant pictures or photos during a call. This calms and relaxes a person.
3. Rationalization of fear - used only for minor anxiety-phobic disorder or as additional therapy. Conversations are held with the patient that the call itself is not dangerous and if there is an ill-wisher at the other end of the line, then the call can be quickly and easily terminated.
4. Hypnosis - at a subconscious level, concepts and reactions associated with the phone are replaced.
5. Psychoanalysis copes well with any degree of phobia, but requires a long time. During the session, the doctor finds out the traumatic factor that became the “anchor” for the development of the phobia.

Only experienced specialists are able to make the correct diagnosis and find ways to combat it. Self-medication, especially in severe forms of phobia, can greatly aggravate the situation.

Drug treatment

In severe forms of anxiety-phobic disorder, the patient may be prescribed sedatives. This is especially true in cases of severe stress. A psychotherapist can prescribe medications from the following groups:

• tranquilizers;
• nootropics;
• antidepressants.

They reduce the activity of the nervous system and have a hypnotic effect. This may affect work or school. Modern tranquilizers do not cause such side effects, but they are also much more expensive.

Tranquilizers are most often taken when there is an urgent need to call someone. They are taken a few hours before. But it also happens that you need to talk on the phone and answer questions from a stranger right now and there is no time for the pills to take effect. In this case, nootropics are taken for some time, most often in courses of two weeks with a week break.

Antidepressants are rather a concomitant drug aimed at improving the general psychophysical condition of a person. In this case, patients recover faster.

Medicines are prescribed for acute forms of the disease

Phytotherapy

For those who cannot take medications for medical reasons, herbal treatment is prescribed. Special soothing mixtures are available in the form of herbs, disposable sachets for brewing, tablets, syrups, and tinctures. The most effective are:

• flowers of chamomile, linden and St. John's wort;
• lily of the valley and valerian root;
• motherwort and St. John's wort herbs;
• leaves and shoots of mint and lemon balm.

Women during pregnancy and young children can take a decoction of these herbs without harming their health. The only disadvantage of herbal medicine is the cumulative nature of its action. This means that you need to take the medication for at least three to four weeks to see visible results. You should not use herbal medicine if a person has an individual intolerance to the components or problems with the liver, kidneys and joints. Before starting treatment, you should consult your doctor.

Peppermint tea is a natural sedative

Method 1: Call strangers and ask them to send you

Ilya Reinish, sales director and lecturer at LABA, advised a simple but effective way to get rid of the fear of sales calls:

— It is recognized that fear of calling is one of the most common phobias after fear of public speaking and fear of death. It's normal that we are afraid to call.

The essence of the method is simple: take the phone, dial any unknown number from your head and say something like this: “Good afternoon, my name is Ilya, today is my first day working as a sales manager and I’m very afraid to call. Can you please send me to make it easier for me?”

In most cases, everyone will simply laugh in response to your request. What does it mean? That when you call your potential clients and offer them something they need, the likelihood that one of them will rudely send you away is very small.

And even if one out of ten says “Screw you,” it’s not scary. If suddenly someone sent you, understand one simple truth: they are not sending you, they are sending a company, a product or a bad day.

If this happens to your subordinate, ask: “Okay, you were sent. How are you feeling? Were you able to survive it? Didn't you get depressed? Most likely, he himself will find it funny. A few calls like this and the fear goes away.

You can learn more about how to prepare a team for “cold sales” in Ilya Reinish’s “Sales Director” course from LABA.

Fear that no one needs the product

I’ll tell you an example of a story from my practice. Imagine, I’m at the combat post of a business trainer in a call center, looking with a menacing gaze at the work of the employees entrusted to me by my client. I notice how the new manager is puffing like a teapot and trying to prepare for the call, writing out phrases and it would seem that he’s about to make a sale. You just need to pick up the phone and start calling. But here a sticky fear creeps in that all the clients have already bought everything, they have everything and no one needs anything. He begins to convince himself that his product is not needed by the buyer. Now there is a false confidence that he is “selling the goods.” The mood is disrupted, and the call is postponed for a little while, then not for long and you guess. Professional burnout occurs when motivation falls below the plinth.

In this case, you need to reconsider your personal attitude and attitude towards work. You need to better study the characteristics and benefits of the product being sold. Approach the buyer from a position of assistance and advice in purchasing a useful service. The voice will change and those on the other end of the line will appreciate your beautiful and “tasty” presentation in rubles. Everyone likes confident and positive salespeople.

Fear of Rejection

One of the most common fears in cold calling. It manifests itself due to the fact that sellers take excuses, objections and rude refusals to heart. Fear is associated with the release of a large amount of emotions from the manager. These emotions are often negative in nature and force the manager to think whether he is doing the job at all or giving up everything. Why listen to all this? To free yourself from negative thoughts, you need to understand that you need to separate your personal attitude and work. During the call, stop focusing on the customer’s emotions and attitude towards you. Often, refusals do not occur in your direction personally, but because a lot of spam is showered on clients every day. Nobody wants to offend you or send you away. Turn off unnecessary emotions and work according to the script, then there will be nothing to be afraid of.

Why there is a fear of cold calling

In practice, many employees are afraid to make calls for one simple reason - fear of the unknown. This can be compared to a dark alley that you need to go into at night and there is no one nearby. The fear that you don't know who might meet you there.

That’s why it’s called a cold call, because the client is not waiting for him at all.

Fears that managers have:

1. The unknown.

Many managers are frightened by the fact that they do not know how a potential client will react to their phone call. Of course, you can call him at the most inopportune moment and listen to a lot of negativity addressed to you. After such a refusal, it will be extremely difficult to get together and continue calling clients.

It is best to call clients after completing special training to overcome your fear and learn how to conduct a conversation with a complete stranger.

Novice sellers, due to the lack of special skills, may make offers with uncertainty. This absolutely should not happen, since you should always be “on horseback”.

1. Fear of being rejected.

Receiving refusals is always unpleasant. It is also worth understanding that each person reacts differently to a phone call. Therefore, you should not react sharply to the negative “no” you receive, because after several refusals you will definitely hear the long-awaited “yes”.

1. Inability to communicate or lack of self-confidence.

This fear usually occurs among beginners. Lack of necessary information or experience creates fear because salespeople cannot provide answers to all the questions the client may have.

1. The difference is in the position.

Also, many are afraid to make calls due to the difference in status. For example, when it is necessary to make a cold call to the director of a large company, the employee may have the opinion “who am I, and who is he.” Status and inequality in position breed uncertainty and fear.

1. Teamwork.

This is the last fear to note. Many employees are afraid to make a call to a client when there are other colleagues in the office and there is so-called “deafening silence.” Fear that they will listen carefully to the entire telephone conversation and discuss how and what you offer.

Method of getting rid of the fear of calling in 5 steps

I have been building sales systems in call centers for many years and have developed my own methodology, which is guaranteed to remove fear from ringers:

1. Constantly monitor the quality of communication between your managers. This is done either by the ROP itself or by the quality controller, who is an experienced manager. Divide calls into high-quality and low-quality, sorting them according to the call evaluation checklist you should have. You listen to these recordings, good and bad, and discuss them with managers, showing that there is nothing wrong with telephone conversations.
2. Show from your own experience how to make a call (demonstrative) and then analyze it in front of everyone. Show in detail what sales techniques you used. This motivates and inspires to follow such ROP in any telephone battles.
3. Conduct mini-sales training for managers. During the trainings, conduct a variety of practical exercises that will help you relax and relieve stress from the very fact of making a call. Exercise scenarios should be different. I often used the following exercises to improve my cold calling skills: I had to call a new company, go through the secretary and ask the decision maker to refuse as strongly and harshly as possible. Start the conversation directly with this, so that they immediately refuse. Clients themselves are stupefied by such a request and do not want to refuse, because they see no reason for this. The conversation ends with a presentation or humor. Thanks to this, managers see that no one wants to refuse them and does not prepare dirty tricks in advance. The tension subsided, a positive mood immediately rose, and after such a shake-up my managers simply cut off clients over the phone.
4. Form in your mind that you are not “selling” anything, but are consulting and helping customers solve problems.
5. Present a positive picture of what you will receive and why you are making your calls. While working as a bell ringer, I set myself pictures printed from the Internet that I liked depicting the desired purchases. For example, on the desktop there was a screensaver of the desired car, and also a photo of the sea and the beach was printed and hung behind the monitor. And when I called, I looked at these pictures and how a locomotive went towards its dreams.

Apply these techniques to get rid of fears and you will become a telephone sales professional. Dream and work on yourself, then the result will come. Good luck!

Read the article on how to increase sales over the phone