5 Steps to Overcoming Cold Call Telephobia

Most of us can relate to at least some of the most common top-ten fears: public speaking, heights, insects, financial problems, deep water, sickness, death, flying, loneliness, and dogs… in that order, where death takes a backseat to bugs. Go figure.

There is one item conspicuously absent if you're a services executive charged with drumming up new clients and you're new (or even not so new) to selling: picking up the telephone. The thought of picking up the telephone, dialing a complete stranger, and selling yourself and your services to a prospect with as-of-yet undetermined interest in what you have to say creates much angst. To top it all off, the prospect may very well hang up before you have a chance to say anything.

Even after having made tens of thousands of introductory telephone calls for the purpose of selling professional services to senior-level executives, I still suffer from occasional call reluctance. But with a lot of experience comes a little bit of wisdom.