Fear and Trembling at the Cold Call

One of my first experiences coaching professionals with no sales experience in business development involved a former chief financial officer who was working for a consulting company. The company brought me in to help this former CFO and others bring in business.

I gave him what I thought would be a simple assignment. All I wanted was for him to call one of the firm’s former clients, introduce himself, ask whether the company had any need for the firm’s services again and if not, could the former client could refer him to someone else.

Now you could have guessed by now that this former CFO was not some 20-something straight out of college. He’s been out in the world for going on 30 years, accomplished in his field, but when I gave him his assignment he looked at me with panic on his face and drew a chart that showed his heart rate increasing with each step in the assignment.

The first phone call alone was going to increase his heart rate way above normal levels, and as the phone call progressed he imagined his heart rate rising exponentially with each task, quickly rising off the chart.

Until then, no one had ever articulated for me the apprehension about making a sales call.
“So what you’re saying is, if you do these things you’re going to flat line on me, have a heart attack and die,” I asked him.

Earlier in our coaching session he’d told me how deep-sea fishing made him seasick. Another fear. With that in mind I thought of a way to make the cold call I wanted him to make seem less overwhelming.

“Imagine a lake on a clear day, no waves, no wind,” I told him. “Could you go out on a large, steady boat for half an hour?”

Yes, he could.

“So let’s do the same thing with cold-calling,” I said. “I’d like you to call someone you’ve done business with before who you enjoy talking to and ask him for a referral.”

That was the day’s assignment for the former CFO. About an hour later he sent me an email.

“I did it,” he wrote. “I did it. I made the call. I got the referral and it wasn’t so bad.”

“Not so bad” is a good place to start, though my hope when coaching professionals with no sales experience is that they come to see business development as a rewarding part of their work.