The authors do a great job of setting the tone of the book with real life examples of sales people who have experienced massive increases in performance by controlling their ability to prospect by overcoming sales call reluctance  either face to face or on the telephone.

They also make a great point of extending the scope of the book to get the reader to consider self promotion, or rather the lack of it as a type of call reluctance. In today’s business climate, they argue, it is the self promoters that will get the recognition and reward in sales and any other profession.

Self Promoters share three main common behaviours:

Positioning: Actively working contacts, social systems and developing new ones if necessary to get them to where they need to be.

Style: Self promoters know there is a crowd trying to get positioned so they shift their strategy from getting noticed to getting remembered.

Consistency: Staying in the spotlight is a way of life  not a grim necessity.

Foundations Of Call Reluctance:

The authors rightly stress that there are hundreds of reason for call reluctance and many are part of the wider psychological discussion point of human behaviour. Some reasons could be traumatic early sales experiences, ruthlessly high performance pressure situations and even the ironic fact that is taught by well meaning but unskilled sales trainers.

Our  behaviours, they argue, originate from one of three sources:

1. Heredity – Instincts, inclinations you were born with.
2. Exposure – A) mimic learning where we discovered by ourselves we could copy the actions of others. B) Passive Learning is habits and behavioural styles you unintentionally absorbed from people you regularly interact with. These can be repeatable, predictable behaviours picked up from parents, sales trainers, managers, consultants – “ without even knowing it. C) Education and training -  things purposefully taught. D) Synthesises learning  things we feel and think that can be a combination of the three previous influences.
3. Personality Predispositions

The Call Reluctance Imposters:

Firstly the definition of prospecting and low activity is discussed as the authors truly believe that genuine call reluctance results in low prospecting activity. To them low activity is defined as:

“Prospecting activity insufficient to sustain personal or corporate performance objectives”

This definition is important because the authors distinguish production slumps and call reluctance as two very different problems. And the solutions for one will not work with the other. Production slumps are associated with drops in motivational current as opposed to increased in personal fear. If you are experiencing a production slump the authors advocate slowing down, engaging in lower risk activities and engaging in planning – until your body and mind is charged up again.

To me this is the first area of the book that is light on content and rationale. Getting over production slumps can deserve a whole book itself. But hey, that’s not the focus of the authors expertise.

The Four Great Impostors:

• Low Motivation

Simply put this is where people are not prospecting because they don’t want to due to lack of motivation. The source of this can be physical or emotional and the outlook to solving this problem can be good. If it is emotional it is usually displayed through apathetic disinterest and if this is recognised and acknowledged corrective action can take place. If physical then serious lifestyle changes need to take place to provide the energy needed to change behaviours.

Recognised By:

• Satisfied with status Quo
• No sense of urgency
• Unbothered by poor performance
• Ignores the issue for as long as possible and them changes companies

• High Motivation and Too Many Goals

In this impostor situation there is a high degree of energy but little focus on anything specific. There are no targets, no strategy and no prospecting because it can’t hope to compete with “other interesting things to do”. With this impostor people start many things but finish little and be interested in everything and master nothing.

In this situation the possibilities in the salespersons mind are endless with life being seen as an adventure and commitments a bore and life is about emotional and intellectual sensation seeking.

Recognised By:

• High Energy little focus
• Loses interest quickly
• Continuous need for novelty, stimulation and change

• High Motivation and Low Goals

Highly energetic but with no where to go. This could be an apt description for people with this third impostor. Sales people suffering from this tend to borrow goals from others that appear to be working. Whilst they may work for others they are unlikely to work for these salespeople because they are not their goals. Prospecting levels may even appear to be adequate but they are well below what the sales person is capable of.

Sales people with high motivation and low goals can no longer answer the question “what am I prospecting for”.

The majority of low goal impostors just never learned how to define their goals, select them and set about making plans on how to achieve them and therefore are deficient in this area. Often resulting in blindly latching on to the goals of others.

Recognised by:

• Grass is greener syndrome
• Initial great performance followed by a lesser fixed level
• In ability to provide own initiative to the attainment of goals – as they don’t exist
• Production not increased by the same incentives that are reasonably effective for other people

• High motivation, high goals and low training

Motivated, goal directed sales people hesitate to make contact because they believe they have not been sufficiently trained to ethically represent their product or services. Can be seen very often in low quality organisations who employ a high quality sales person. The company concentrates on the short term profits and doesn’t expect people to hang around whilst the salesperson expect and need more long termism.

Recognised By:

• Makes frequent requests for more training
• Has little respect for the management
• Was recruited with highly emotional claims instead of the factual evidence surrounding the company, its training and its sales materials.

The bottom line with all four of these is that no one can be call reluctant unless they are motivated and committed as you can’t be reluctant to get something you didn’t want in the first place.

The reality is, however, that there are motivated employees who do have genuine commitment and they feel the pain of their call reluctance. It is this section of sales people who can be identified and helped to become a top salesperson in your company.

Dudley and Goodson have identified 12 faces of call reluctance and give some fantastic descriptions, reason, and solutions to these twelve faces.

Look out for Blog Post 2 for a continuation of this Video Book Review……