The Doomsayer
November 2003
Does fear of failure keep you from picking
up the phone to make a sales call? Does the prospect of cold calling make you
break out into a cold sweat? Are you convinced of failure before even taking
hte first step? If so, then you could be suffering from "The Doomsayer" Sales
Call Reluctance. While this is a major problem for salespeople, there are ways
to recognize and deal with it.
by Frank Lee
Sales Academy,
Inc.
Doomsayers are ordinary people with built-in alarm systems. Constantly on
high alert, they pick up danger signals quickly. In reality, they look for them
and are always protecting themselves against things that can go wrong. More
often than not, they protect themselves against fictional dangers since most
of the dangers they perceive are only in their minds.
Fearing failure, they avoid situations that could produce this failure. This
affects their ability to initiate contact with people who could be potential
clients. They tend to overanalyze situations in case they miss something that
could cause failure. Since, to them, normal prospecting is a high-risk adventure,
doomsayers make poor prospectors.
Generally, there are very few doomsayers in sales—they simply don’t show
up for the second interview. Whenever one does find a salesperson who is also
a doomsayer, this person usually came into sales through a back door. Perhaps
he had been in a service-oriented job and his supervisor had convinced him to
become a salesperson. When this happens, the doomsayer can be an effective salesperson
if he gives himself the chance. However, in many cases, he just does not make
enough calls or avoids prospecting situations altogether.
Die without Life Insurance!
My first encounter with a doomsayer type came in my very first job as a life
insurance salesperson. My branch manager, Big Bill the Basher—honest, that’s
what he called himself—used to delight in telling us the story of a salesperson
he once managed. We didn’t know about doomsayers back then but this person would
have fit the mold perfectly.
Johnny, the salesperson that I never met, apparently was so morose that he
would give up before the client did. Big Bill told us about the night he and
Johnny made a first call on someone who had agreed to an appointment. Johnny
parked his car on the street and they had to walk quite a distance up the driveway
to the house. All along the walk, Johnny was telling Bill why the person would
probably not buy from them. It became a monologue. He cited one objection after
another and was getting more and more worked up about the call.
When they finally got to the house and the person opened the door, Johnny
blurted out, “Just die without insurance! See if I care!” and turned and stormed
back down the driveway!
Big Bill, a person never short of words, was left speechless. So was the
prospect. He apologized and went after Johnny who had run to the car and driven
off, leaving him stranded. He fired him the next day.
I don’t know how true this was because Big Bill was known to make up a story
or two, but it left an impression on my mind and, I’m sure, the minds of many
other salespeople who worked for Bill. Maybe he was trying to teach us to think
positively and not negatively. I don’t know. Many years later, when I learned
about doomsayers, this story jumped into my mind.
Enter George W. Dudley
I don’t think I met another doomsayer until I came across George W. Dudley,
one of the two pioneers of the sales call reluctance program. I knew from the
first time I spoke to him that he was brilliant. I later found out that he was
also a doomsayer. So was his partner, Shannon L. Goodson.
I worked for them for 3 1/2 years as their vice president for International
Sales and Marketing. I got to see doomsayers up close and personal. I learned
more about doomsayers from working with them than from their book or teaching
their workshop.
Two highly successful entrepreneurs and behavioral scientists, they taught
me that brilliant ideas also had to have substance and well-defined practicality.
They questioned everything I tried to do to make money for them. It was frustrating.
It took me a while to learn that I had to think through every brilliant idea
to its logical conclusion and beyond before I presented it to them. Even then,
they would ask questions that no sane business person would ask. I found out
that selling to a doomsayer is not easy.
To begin with, they do not trust salespeople. They think that salespeople
only tell them what they want to hear. I learned that when selling to a doomsayer,
you should present both the good and the bad sides of an issue. Never minimize
the bad side. When you sell to them in this way, they are more inclined to assign
some measure of credibility to what you say. You’re talking their doomsayer
language. When you don’t, they listen with only one, very skeptical ear.
Scientists Who Sell!
Mr. Dudley and Ms. Goodson knew they had doomsayer call reluctance, and they
knew that it would prevent them from ever earning what they were worth. So they
used the same techniques they had been teaching other people, overcame their
doomsayer call reluctance, and went on to become very wealthy with a business
that does not seem to want to stop growing.
Interestingly, they seem to have managed their call reluctance in one area
only—their business. In their private lives, they are still the two shyest people
I know. They avoid social contacts and prefer, like most doomsayers, computers
to people. Yet in their business lives, they are tigers. They compete eyeball
to eyeball, belly button to belly button with the best in the world and they
come away victorious most of the time. They do not miss opportunities to promote
themselves and their work. Before overcoming their call reluctance, they had
avoided those same opportunities.
While they were frustrating to work for because of their over-caution, they
taught me that you don’t have to change your principles, beliefs, or personality
in order to earn what you’re worth. All you have to do is change one small aspect
of your behavior, and you can earn big money.
I have enormous admiration, affection, and respect for two scientists who
taught me everything I know about call reluctance and a great deal about selling
and business.
These Are Not Pessimists
Because they always seem to look three times before doing anything, people
often assume doomsayers are pessimists. There is a big difference. A pessimist
is someone who thinks something will go wrong. Doomsayers know.
Faced with a situation that could possibly go wrong, they assume it will
and begin immediately preparing themselves for this worst-case scenario. This
takes a tremendous amount of their energy and time. In this heightened sense
of alertness, they are tense and not very effective in a sales environment.
Selling becomes an ordeal and they are forced to work much harder than everyone
else just to keep up. I knew a doomsayer salesperson who told me that getting
out of bed in the morning was the most difficult part of his day. He dreaded
so much the stress he was going to endure that he had to force himself out of
bed every single morning. I asked if his day was ever as bad as he imagined
it would be. His answer: “Not yet!”
Does this mean you should not be in sales if you are a doomsayer? No. It
means that you should get help. You should learn to manage the call reluctance
the same way you would manage any other call reluctance. It’s not difficult
to do. Like all the call reluctances, if you do not learn to manage them, they
will eventually drive you out of a very lucrative profession. When doomsayer
call reluctance gets out of control, it does not take long to send the salesperson
looking for a safer job.
Sinutab to the Rescue
One of the oddest things Mr. Dudley discovered in his research is that doomsayer
call reluctance can actually be caused by inner ear problems. This only sounds
strange until you think about it. The inner ear is responsible for balance.
If it is infected or damaged, balance is disturbed. When you are constantly
off balance, your body tends to compensate for it. You tend to become extra
cautious not only when walking but in doing many other simple things. If you
want to find out what this feels like, try covering one eye for a day and see
how you function and how eventually your body and mind start to make adjustments.
This extra caution eventually translates into caution about contacting people.
That’s when it becomes call reluctance. So, if you remove the core problem,
you can more easily contain the call reluctance.
Not all doomsayer call reluctance is caused by an inner ear disturbance but,
when it is, a simple antihistamine could help!
Other Sales Call Reluctance articles include the following:
Call Reluctance, the Fear-Free
Prospecting and Self-Promotion Workshop and all related terms are copyrights
and/or registered trademarks of Behavioral Sciences Research Press, Dallas,
Texas. Sales Academy, Inc. is an Advanced Authorized Dealer for the Call Reluctance®
Program. Frank Lee is an international expert on Call Reluctance®. He can be
reached at 1-800-898-3743 or at franklee@sales-academy.com. He welcomes calls or emails from sales people
and sales managers even if just to chat about call reluctance issues.
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