Let me ask you a few questions:
- Does it scare you to call people you don’t know?
- Do you try to block out time to prospect but always find something else to do?
- Do you wonder if you’ll know what to say?
- Do you prospect in an inconsistent manner?
If you answered yes to even one of these questions, you most likely suffer from cold call reluctance. This is projecting a negative outcome on an event that has not yet occurred.
The reason we do this is usually outside of our awareness. Even though you want to grow your business and generate leads, there are many self-limiting beliefs, often hidden in your blind spot, which stop you from doing what you want to do.
Most success minded professionals have one or more of these beliefs:
- If I call people I’m bothering them.
- If I call people I’ll be rejected.
- If I call people I won’t know what to say.
- If I call people my conversation will sound scripted and unnatural.
- If I call people I will be seen as a pushy salesperson.
These beliefs may seem real. But they are not real, they are just beliefs. You may have carried these beliefs for several decades, but here’s the good news: the power to change a belief is in the present moment. Since these beliefs no longer serve you, the best thing to do is find out where they came from, how you can release them and how you can replace them with updated empowered beliefs.
Take the first one: If I call people I’ll be bothering them. That’s only true if you believe it to be true. That may sound paradoxical. The truth is that our beliefs create our reality. If you believe you’ll be bothering people, then you will experience that they are being bothered.
The first two beliefs are very similar. Whether you believe that you’ll be bothering people or whether you believe that you will be rejected, the origin to that belief goes back to childhood.
Even if you had well-meaning parents, and we are not trying to blame anyone, you may not have been encouraged to speak up. In fact asking for something or spontaneously expressing yourself often resulted in being criticized or judged.
As a child you wanted to share everything with and to connect to your parents. However, your parent’s situation was very different. They were probably worn out, stressed and exhausted and just needed some peace and quiet. When you were a little kid, the most important thing that you needed and wanted was your parents’ love and approval. What you wanted to avoid at all cost was your parents’ judgments and criticisms.
Therefore, you formed self-limiting beliefs such as:
- It’s not safe to reach out.
- It’s not safe to speak up.
- My opinions don’t matter.
- I’m not that important.
See how those beliefs have been causing you to hold back and avoid picking up the phone? The next step would be to release the old belief and install updated empowered beliefs such as:
- The more I speak up, the more I attract an abundance of my ideal clients.
- It is now safe for me to reach out to others.
- My opinions matter very much.
- I have a valuable service to offer that is important to my clients and they are happy to hear from me.
Your subconscious mind is always trying to protect you. If you put a program in your subconscious mind when you were very young that reaching out wasn’t safe, unless you reprogram that old program, it will keep running and stopping you from fulfilling your full potential.
One of the misconceptions people have about prospecting is that they are “asking for the business end.” Maybe you’ve had that misconception and it’s made you feel very uncomfortable. After all, who wants to go on the phone and talk to a total stranger and ask them for business? The answer is no one.
The important thing to realize is that you are actually the giver in any lead generation situation. Imagine that you are Santa Claus and you have a big bag of gifts over your shoulders. The gifts represent your valuable expertise and you have an abundance of these gifts. All you’re doing when you call people is you are acting as Santa Claus and offering to give your gifts to people who need them. There is no such thing as rejection, it’s either a match or it’s not a match.
Another misconception that you probably have is that you tell yourself, “I don’t have time for prospecting; I’m too busy servicing my current clients.” It’s best to aim for consistency even if you can only start off with half an hour every day in the morning. I think it’s important to start with what you can do and then move up.
Your goal is to get to two hours a day, consistently.
If you are doing very little prospecting and you tell yourself that you need to do two hours a day, then you really will be overwhelming yourself and probably won’t do any prospecting at all.
Make it manageable in your mind and take baby steps. When you feel confident doing half an hour a day, then move up to an hour a day and so forth. This seems to work a lot better than jumping from 0 to 100.
It is so important that you reframe your mindset to the truth about the situation, which is that you are calling prospective clients to offer a valuable service. What is your valuable service? Your expertise. Remember you studied the subject of real estate and you have years of experience behind you. The truth is that if you feel good about yourself as a real estate agent, then people are lucky to hear from you.
Maya Bailey, Ph.D. is known as the Mindset Business coach for real estate agents and other success minded entrepreneurs who want to achieve a “Multiple 6 Figure Income in 12 months or less”. For a complimentary “Business Breakthrough” coaching session, visit 90daystomoreclients.com
