Kevin Price, Host of the Price of Business on Business Talk 1110 AM KTEK (on Bloomberg’s home in Houston) recently interviewed Connie Kadansk.
About the interviewee
Connie Kadansky is the President of Exceptional Sales Performance, an international sales training and coaching practice. She is a recognized expert in identifying and eliminating Sales Call Reluctance. Connie has a proven track record in diverse industries. She is a unique speaker that is fun and inspires her audiences.
Connie has coached 1800+ private clients and over 5000 clients in groups on how to Overcome Sales Call Reluctance. Because of her expertise, Connie earned a solo article in the Wall Street Journal. Thanks to a cold call she was paid to do a radio commercial for American Express. She was recently interviewed by Inc. Magazine. Connie has either coached or trained salespeople throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Trinidad West Indies.
Connie helps salespeople get their “ask” in gear.
Tell me about your firm (number of employees, location, type of companies you work with, etc.).
I am an entrepreneur who has two virtual assistants and a web/marketing assistant. Based out of Phoenix, Arizona.
What type and size of companies do you have as clients?
Industries I serve: Financial services, insurance, commercial and residential real estate, executive recruiting, software, consultants, – industries where the salespeople must prospect consistently or they will be very sad and miserable.
What comes to mind when you see this topic?
The primary role and responsibility of any salesperson, financial advisor, consultant, entrepreneur is to create opportunities. If they have to make “cold calls” so be it. It works for the salespeople who believe it works. Many salespeople suffer from Sales Call Reluctance, which is the emotional hesitation to prospect.
In our culture, it’s not the hardest working, the best prepared or the smartest salesperson that gets the business. It is the one who is most willing to prospect.
Making highly-targeted direct prospecting calls flat out works for those salespeople who have strategy/structure and who execute.
When someone tries to tell people that Cold Calling does not work, they are probably attempting to sell them on a marketing system so that they don’t have to make prospecting calls because of their Call Reluctance. It is harming people to tell them that cold calling doesn’t work. Salespeople are responsible for their goals and their families are expecting them to support them.
Sales Call Reluctance is nothing to be embarrassed about, living with it needlessly is.
What are the best practices when it comes to this issue?
There are four steps to Overcoming Sales Call Reluctance: 1) Awareness: best way to ascertain if you are experiencing Sales Call Reluctance is to check your wallet and your bank account. That is where it shows up first; 2) Assess, take the diagnostic assessment that measures the 12 types of Call Reluctance to come to grips with your fear 3) Admit, this is usually the hardest because it requires humility to admit. However, be humble now or you’ll be real humble when you lose your job or your business; 4) Apply proven techniques to Overcome Sales Call Reluctance.
The mindset that I recommend for salespeople is that they are a “professional lead generator who happens to sell (insurance, software, etc.).” When a salesperson can comes to grips with that fact, their prospecting becomes an adventure. It is not prospecting that causes their anxiety. It is their thought about prospecting that is throwing them down the self-doubt spiral.
Contact information:
www.exceptionalsales.com
