Call reluctance is one of the common things that happen in the sales industry. It doesn’t matter if you’re a veteran or newbie in the industry; one time or the other, you might have faced a call reluctance. How does that happen? And how can you overcome it? A study by Behavioral Science Research Press stated that 40% of salespeople could experience call reluctance, despite having years of experience and product knowledge. 

And it’s not difficult to overcome call reluctance. Sometimes, fear of rejection leads to a call reluctance. With the right attitude, enthusiasm, perseverance and determination, and by using conversational intelligence tools like Salesken you can easily overcome call reluctance while prospecting as it shows the cue cards when you face objections while talking to prospects. 

What exactly is a call reluctance? 

Call reluctance can be defined as a salespeople’s feelings, thoughts and avoidance behavior that prevent them from taking any action. It’s essential to overcome call reluctance as if you let it go; then it can cause trouble to your income and livelihood.

Call reluctance starts with your feelings for a particular sales or marketing activity. Maybe you don’t like that activity, or you’re not good at it. Whatever the reason is, if your feelings are strong, then it will cause you to react negatively. These actions can lead you to have a headache, feel nervous, anxious or sweaty.

As stated earlier, call reluctance can happen to anyone despite their years of experience and skills most commonly it happens during the conversation about price. When it happens, it can cause a stop to certain activities. Some of these activities are:

• Asking for referrals
• Cold calling
• Calling existing clients (when communicating bad news)
• Public speaking
• Negotiating
• Closing deals
• Asking follow up questions during a sales call

If you want to see what your comfort level is in each of these activities, then go over each one of these tasks and give yourself a score from 1-10 on each one.

What are the types of call reluctance? 

There are several different types of fear which can be classified as fear of call reluctance. 

• You always imagine the worst-case scenario. You don’t take risks and always prepare yourself for an unwanted situation. 
• You always spend a lot of time preparing yourself. Because of that, you don’t participate in sales opportunities. 
• You always try to leave a first good impression and show prospects how awesome and relaxed you are. 
• You don’t participate in group activities or any public speaking events. 
• You prefer to see yourself as a consultant or product advisor rather than in sales. 
• You are difficult to train and coach. You put on a defense mode whenever you’re challenged or criticised. 
• You never ask for referrals or constantly look for the right time to ask for one. 
• You don’t like talking on the phone. 

There are can other different types of call reluctance. Hence, it’s important to get to the root cause of the problem and solve it.

Fear of rejection never leaves you

Everyone faces the fear of rejection. And this is something that never goes away. Salespeople have to face fear every day constantly. It becomes more real when they actually have to face the situation. When the sacredness gets out of control, it becomes overwhelming, which you don’t even realize. 

But when it goes out of control, call reluctance can become a medical condition—a situation where salespeople do not want to pick up the call or do the sales call. 

Why are salespeople constantly scared of getting rejected? Because they are afraid to listen no. They are afraid that the prospects will not listen to them and will hang up during the call. This is something that can’t go away overnight. But constant practice and facing your anxieties surely minimizes your fears. 

Learning why one is afraid of rejection

The following points can help you to understand the fear of rejection:

• They take rejection as a personal failure. In the sales profession, you have to put yourself on the line to do the work. When it comes to rejection, they blame it on the price, which can take many forms. Like, “They didn’t want to buy anything.”, ” They were just checking around.”, etc… This seems to be a natural process to shift the responsibility on someone else’s shoulder. It’s a temporary solution, but it subsidizes the pain. But it didn’t work in the long run. The permanent solution is to find real reasons and deal with them. 
• Ignoring the fear of rejection. What many people do is ignore that something is troubling them. Instead of dealing with them, they ignore it and avoid it. Sometimes it happens unconsciously, but the person becomes less aggressive, less effective and less adventurous. 
• Want to deal with rejection of fear? Face it. Yes, there’s no hardcore rule but actually to deal with it. There’s no shortcut to success. You’ll have to learn how to control this fear of rejection. Doing correctly, this fear of rejection can urge you to face the challenges. 

How to deal with rejection?

The following tips will help you to deal with rejection:

• Qualify every prospect before getting on a call. Sorting out the leads and talking with only the most qualified ones will give you confidence, and you’ll be able to overcome with call reluctance.  Hence, spend some time researching your leads so you can talk with the best ones. 
• Rehearse and prepare before getting on a call. This will ease some of your nervousness because you are already prepared and know what you have to talk about. Doing your homework beforehand about your prospect’s business and problems and how you can solve that will prove valuable to clients.
• Start the conversation by talking about the prospect’s needs. Speaking about your client’s problems and letting them speak will give you some idea of what they need and what you can actually give. This will let you know beforehand if you can solve their problems or whether you have to deal with rejection.
• Let your prospects know why the offered price is best. You don’t have any control over price, but you have full control over how you present the price and the benefits they will have. They will be willing to try out the price as long as you justify the values and benefits offered. 
• Bring out the features and benefits that your competitors don’t offer. Show it to your prospects what makes you different and why you’re the best. 
• Avoid talking about negative things and focus on the positive ones. Negative things lead to rejection which can be overwhelming. Instead, focus on the positive ones and have some confidence in yourself. 
• Be consistent in your work. Just because you get rejected, it doesn’t mean that you should stop talking with prospects or procrastinate your work. That isn’t a solution and doesn’t lead anywhere.