Customer Reviews

The Psychology of Sales Call Reluctance: Earning What You're Worth in Sales

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It would be extremely interesting to know the exact percentage of people who have purchased this book, read it cover to cover, identified the source(s) of their sales call reluctance, took the authors' recommendations, put them into consistent and determined practice, and achieved a breakthrough.

This book is a whopping 433 pages long. The most significant aspect to you, the salesperson, is the subtitle: "Earning What You're Worth In Sales." The modern wave of sales gurus are leaning hard on accountability. The days of placing blame on a weak economy or stubborn customers are gone. The reality is that if you don;t have what you want, it's because you haven't made it happen. Period.

This is a heavy, exhaustive work on the root causes commonly associated with people who know exactly what they should be doing and simply do not do it.

The first four chapters / 160 pages lay out the nature of the beast. The final eight chapters (page 161-343) provide you with a wide range of tools to change your behavior, to...once again, the subtitle..."earn what you're worth in sales." The remainder of the book (pages 348-419) covers the research that went into developing the book.

Salespeople who lean toward the "quick fix, read in one sitting" books on red hot cold calling and guaranteed sales closes will get a few pages into this book and toss it out the window.

Passion is a prerequisite. You need to be passionate about your success. You need to be passionate about being a modern, professional salesperson.

If you have that passion, this is the book for you. If you don't, you'll buy it to feel good about yourself for "taking action," and that will last about as long as it takes for you to read the front and back covers and place it on your bookshelf.

Make the commitment to buy it and use it or save your money.

When I read this book in 1994, I remember chucking it across the room out of pure frustration -- because it hit home on exactly what my sales problem was. . . call reluctance, the fear of prospecting. I suffered from telephobia and social self-consciousness -- 2 of the 12 types. Telephobia was easy to overcome from the sensory injection prescription in the book -- this prescription, by the way, is backed by two Americans who won a Nobel Peace Prize on their research of the connection between the brain and our sense of smell. The solutions for call reluctance are in this book. Thought realignment -- if someone is willing to take responsibility for the thoughts they are choosing -- they can overcome their fear of prospecting. Anybody who must prospect consistently or they will fail, must read this book. Managers at all levels will do their teams a favor to read this book. Call reluctance need not be solved by a manager saying "just pick up the phone." There is a more sustainable way to get into the rhythm of prospecting consistently.

Quite the opposite -actual science to guide the seller and his manager through difficult and complex subject matters. And despite the complexity and the scientific/academic back bone, the book actually is a relatively easy read.

It is of course impossible to judge the effectiveness of all the remedies for the different symptoms and the imposters by just reading a book. Important is to recognize that there are many different faces of call reluctance and unless properly handled the remedy for one may be a facilitator for another. This knowledge is vital to the sales manager who wants to be an effective coach, especially in the early phase of the Selling Process (Identification, Approach , Engagement). The insights of this book are mandatory for every serious seller and sales manager.

If you are in business, you promote yourself. If you are in sales, you prospect. If you aren't making enough prospecting attempts to give you the income that you want, then your problem is likely "call reluctance." I've tried many other methods but this book is by far the best because the methods attack the problem at a fundamental level. The book goes to the root of our learned "fear" of self promotion and then lays out a simple plan to help you vanquish that fear.

Don't make the mistake of thinking that this book is some kind of fluffy "self help" book. The practical solutions are powerful, effective, and begin to work within days.

In sum, I recommend this book whole-heartedly and without reservation.

As a business coach and psychologist, I picked up this book because I'm always interested in the intersection between psychology and business. And I almost put the book right back down again after reading the first sentence: "The pulsating beat of modern industry does not easily yield the time that is necessary to monitor advances in the behavioral sciences." The book includes quite a bit of that kind of college-paper style of writing, blended periodically with a mocking tone. When describing other researchers, for example, they wrote, "More light would have been shed on the subject had they accidently bumped their heads together and produced a small spark."

If you can get past the style and tone, the book does offer some very useful ideas about the power that our thoughts have in either propelling us to success or keeping us at a standstill. For example, it's very difficult to risk rejection if you believe that you *must* be liked by everyone. And salespeople will struggle to routinely ask new customers for referrals if they believe it shows ingratitude. Different thoughts can lead to different feelings of fear, guilt, etc., all of which stand in the way of a successful sales career. (Dr. Albert Ellis' "A Guide to Rational Living" is a great source on this idea.)

Furthermore, those self-limiting thoughts are contagious. Prior to being hired, for example, salespeople often show little call reluctance. But when hired into a setting with a sales manager or sales trainer who has call reluctance, the newly hired salespeople often develop call reluctance too. The authors wisely advised, "If you're in sales, watch who you let near your mind. If you're in sales management, watch who you let near the mind of your salespeople."

Some of the ideas about the sales profession itself have become pretty outdated since the book's original publication date of 1986. And I think the final chapter on "experimental" and "controversial" Supplemental Countermeasures is probably unhelpful for most readers in the 21st century. But the book does a good job describing some of the thoughts that can limit a sales career and some techniques to help people overcome them.

I bought this book last year and just got around to reading it. My mistake! Had I burned thru the first 100 pages like I normally do, I would have read on page 65 "This book is specifically dedicated to correcting authentic call reluctance. It would not be manageable if we also included corrective measures for impostors." Reading that, I would have returned this to the bookstore and got my money back. To be "authentic", you practically have to be in therapy and if you are "authentically" reluctant, you just should not be in sales. I have read more than 150 books on sales and this book takes the cake for waiting 65 pages before you find out it has nothing to offer. If anything, this book belongs in a college bookstore in the social/psychology section because it sure doesn't help anyone in the real world.