Cold Calling with NLP

by Peter Freeth

The other day, I received this email from a recruitment consultant:

"I would just like to say a BIG, BIG thanks, I feel totally transformed, my 'phone fear' has disappeared. Its really quite weird, but I don't hesitate to pick the phone and ring people, in the past 10 days I've picked up 4-5 briefs. When I see an opportunity I just grab it.

I've noticed a big difference in my day too, I just don't know where the hours go, and I wish there were longer hours in the day to fit everything in. This will make you laugh, the last few days I've had lots of admin work, and haven't been able to get on the phone, I actually heard myself saying that 'I wish I was on the phone more' can you believe it?"

What would it be like if you felt the same way about your sales calls? Now, in order for you to be succeeding at your job, you must already be making sales calls, so I'm not talking about teaching you the basics here. I'm presuming you already do make calls, but maybe you tidy your desk, answer your emails and make a cup of coffee before you get yourself into the right mood. Maybe you stop after ten calls instead of stopping when the clients have all gone home. Maybe you make it harder for yourself than it needs to be.

Maybe you already love sales calls and you're already getting great results, in which case – why are you reading this? Get on the phone!

So, I'm presuming that you're reading this because you'd like to get the same results as the person who wrote that email. The good news is that this can happen very quickly. The longest this has ever taken was about an hour, the shortest about 10 seconds.

But how? Well, the exact process varies from one person to the next because every person I've ever worked with creates this situation in a slightly different, unique way – and so will you. Having said that, there are some general principles and patterns that I can tell you about that you can use right away to improve your approach and therefore your results.

Firstly, stop cold calling. It's difficult, time consuming and produces poor results. Instead, spend some time each day calling people you haven't spoken to before and finding out how you can help them.

Secondly, At the moment you pick up the phone to dial, what picture pops into your head? What does the voice in your head say? Do you begin your call by apologising, or does your voice tone demonstrate the pride you take in your job? Just work through these simple steps, giving yourself time to think this through very carefully:

Imagine yourself sitting at your desk at the time you would begin making sales calls. As you imagine starting to dial, what picture pops into your head. Specifically, whose picture? If you find sales calls consistently difficult, I'm guessing the picture is of someone you don't have much in common with who doesn't look pleased to hear from you. If you find calls randomly difficult, I'm guessing there's no coherent picture. In either case, that's good news.

Next, imagine you're about to call your best friend or someone you like very, very much. You know exactly what I mean. As you dial, what picture pops into your mind? Now, stop and think about yourself – are you smiling? Are you sitting upright? Are you dialling eagerly? When you speak, does your tone of voice reflect this?

So, if you imagine someone who doesn't want to talk to you, simply imagine reaching out and grabbing the picture, screwing it into a ball and throwing it over your shoulder. Then simply draw a new picture of someone who looks like you, who you have something in common with and who looks pleased to hear from you, or at least open minded. Imagine calling that person and notice how your voice tone is different.

Practice this a few times, just repeating the process over and over. Imagine starting to dial, see the face of someone you want to talk to, hear your positive voice tone, notice how that feels nice to talk to someone who enjoys talking to you.

Thirdly, what do you say to yourself before, during and after the call? If it's in any way critical that's not helping. Often, the voice in your head has really valuable feedback but you don't hear it because it just sounds like nagging or criticism. Think again about sitting down to make your calls and this time pay attention to what you are saying to yourself. Change the voice tone to something more neutral, like a news reader, or to a voice that you like – even something sexy! Now, listen to what the voice tells you – is the information more useful? You can also ask questions back. If the voice is critical, say "Thankyou! Now, how does that information help me?" or "Thankyou! Now, what do you suggest I do differently?" Oddly enough, you'll find the same approach works very well with that person in the office who always offers you helpful criticism.

Last of all, you can't really control what happens during each call as you are not in control of the person at the other end. They might be busy or tired and you know the importance of respecting their state. So, no matter how each call goes, it's important to treat each call as if it's your first. There are many ways that you can quickly control your state, and the simplest for our purposes here is through your focus of attention. Think of a time in the past when you felt really confident and in control of yourself. Remember that time in all the detail you can, recalling what you saw, heard and felt. Maybe you even remember some smells and tastes. When you have all that, think of a word, colour or piece of music that seems to represent it. Repeat this a few times so that the trigger becomes associated with the feeling. Now, in between calls simply replay the trigger and your state will switch to the confident, in control state.

After you have practiced all this for a day and then slept on it, your brain will build it into an unconscious calling routine for you so you won't even have to think in order to get good results. What's this based on? The principle that you are already following an unconscious process which is working perfectly for you. The process is fine but the results need a little tweak. By taking conscious control over the process and making some slight adjustments, you'll find that you can get surprising results, very quickly. How quickly? You'll only find out by finding out!

Peter Freeth is Director of Communications In Action and Co-Trainer with PPI Business NLP. As a leading business coach, Peter helps people, teams and organisations get better results, faster.

www.ciauk.com

peter@ciauk.com

0870 1620802

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