Do Business Well

First, let’s address the subject of rejection. All over the world when I speak to groups I ask, ‘Put up your hands if you have ever had a second call from a sales person to whom you first said no.’ About 10 to 15 per cent of hands are raised. Then I ask, ‘Keep your hands up if you have ever had a third call from a sales person to whom you have said no twice.’ Virtually all the hands go down.

Yet we know that it is in the fifth cycle of three-monthly or less call backs that we really get the appointments. ‘So why this fear of calling back?’ I asked myself. Remember as children how you never took no for answer; you simply nagged until you got what you wanted — be it an ice-cream, a skateboard or whatever the ‘in’ thing was at the time.

I now call this the ‘Ice-cream theory’. You ask for an ice-cream and the answer is ‘No’. You nag and keep on nagging and 10 years later you have had 1 000 or more ice-creams. So when did we start believing that ‘No’ meant no forever? When did rejection start to hurt so much?

I thought back to my early teenage years when I first discovered that ‘No’ was forever. Excited to be going to my first high- school social, I was all dressed up and ready to dance with my first boyfriend, all night.

Only he danced with someone else all night and I was left standing alone leaning against the wall. For the first time I knew the meaning of total rejection — the awful fear of not being wanted.

When I ask if this has ever happened to anyone else, everyone in the group agrees that they have had a similar experience and it too made them afraid of ‘No’. One person even said his first rejection was so terrifying that he can’t even remember it!

In new-business prospecting we have to revert to childhood, when ‘No’ was simply the signal to bide our time until the answer became ‘Yes.’

Now that we know why we fear rejection, let’s accept (again) that it is alright for people to say ‘No, not now’, and set out to get some ‘Yes’ answers by staying in touch until we do. Good phonecalls are great one-act plays, so use all these following techniques t_o please your prospect or client and entertain yourself:

• Dress well to feel good. This really makes a difference. Those of us who have a home office will readily agree that we feel and sound much more empowered when we take a phone call in our power suits on the way to a meeting than we do when we have just arrived from walking the dogs.
• Stand up to sound powerful; smile to sound happy; pace your delivery to match that of the person to whom you are speaking. Look for clues as to his or her personality style — is he an Aspirer, Enquirer, Admirer or Inspirer? Adapt to his style and make his day a happier one for having heard from you.
• Think back to when you were a child and knew instinctivelywhat sort of mood the adults were in. You had only to walk into the room or hear their voices to know whether it was a good day or a bad one for them. The same thing can be picked up on the phone, usually by the way in which people say hello. There may be a certain tightness in their voices. Regardless of whether you pick up that clue, always ask people at every level of the organisation if it is a good time for them to speak to you. I usually say, ‘Good morning, Paul, it’s Wendy Evans speaking. Can you talk now or have I caught you at a bad time?’ or, if I know the person better, ‘Hi Ros, it’s Wendy… Is it okay for youto speak now?’

In my whole phone-answering life only one person has ever consistently asked me that question — and am I grateful. That person is Stephen Hickmore of The Search Advantage in Johannesburg. Stephen specialises in finding staff for the hospitality industry and has my undying respect for this simple courtesy. It reminds me to do it more often!

The reason is that not everyone has a gatekeeper and not every gatekeeper is at her desk when you phone. People can often be in meetings in their offices when you ring, and they can just as easily have their cell phones with them in someone else’s office and have forgotten to turn them off. The simple courtesy of checking if it is convenient to ’speak now’ will always win you points. You will readily be given another time to call back if you ask quickly but politely. You could say something like, ‘Just give me a time that is convenient and I’ll call back then.’

Write notes as you talk and make sure that, as details or decisions change during the conversation, you update the notes. Ifyour notes are clear and you confirm the key points, you do not have to struggle to remember them at a later date. A click of the stapler and you have a good rough record of the conversation foryour file.

When you note an appointment in your diary, fill in all the details, including the address and phone number of the person and company you are going to see.

Then if you are running late, you have one source that always contains the correct details: your diary. A flip of the page and you can make that quick call to notify the person of the delay. It is also useful to flip back through your diary to remind yourself of the follow-up calls you need to make, and to make them then and there.

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