I Called 100 People to Get Over My Fear of Cold Calling

Hello, and welcome to Sales as a Spiritual Practice. I’m thrilled you’re here. I know the path to success can be filled with obstacles– but it is also filled with secret portals to abundant support. Nothing matters more to me than showing you the way. 

When I was first starting out, my coach David Neagle challenged me to cold call 100 people. 

I was so scared. 

I was afraid that 100 out of 100 people would hang up on me and never speak to me again, and I procrastinated on this assignment longer than any other assignment I’ve had. 

Is cold calling even important? Read on to find out!

Coming from a long line of People Pleasers, I felt ill prepared to face any kind of rejection. 

Why did this feel so risky?

1. From a very young age, we are taught to not talk to strangers. 
2. We’re taught to not talk about money.
3. We think of sales as something we do to people, and we think that is bad. 

But I came to believe that I couldn’t let any of this hold me back. I believe good sales is about being yourself and trusting in an authentic exchange! 

I had to get around this fear. 

For the first time, I really had to confront: do I care what people think of me? Or do I care about doing this service that I know I’ve been called to do? Which is more important?

So, how did calling 100 people go for me?

Many of them were not interested. They entertained the phone call, but I could tell it wasn’t their favorite conversation (BUT they didn’t hang up on me!).

Maybe half of them were somewhere between neutral and positive, but didn’t want to do any work together. 

And out of the 100 people that I talked to, a few of those people were deeply touched and hired me.

And then, there was one person, a friend, who asked me point blank, “are you trying to sell me something?”

This was my worst case scenario– being directly called out for what I was trying to do! I replied, “I don’t know yet!” 

Genuinely, I wasn’t sure! I wasn’t as comfortable then as I am now to say that “YES, I am.”

We talked for about ten minutes, and do you know how I felt after all of this? 

LIBERATED. 

Not that this experience was fun or even pleasant. 

But I got off the phone and realized: I didn’t die. I'm just fine. The scariest thing for me JUST HAPPENED, and I am okay. 

And I don’t need to be afraid of this anymore. 

I realized that a negative reaction was not about me. It’s not personal, and other peoples’ thoughts of us are not the truth of what we are. Business is a numbers game. 

The no’s are what will bring the yes’s. 

We can’t think of sales as something we do to people. If we put our results and livelihood on the person we're speaking with, we aren't operating in sales as service, as a sacred offering. Let them off the hook. Don't bring in codependency and make them responsible for your outcome.

If a spiritual practice is about being the truth of who we are on the deepest level, then I believe sales is the same. What is the truth of who you are? We must be that in a sales conversation. And that requires that we care not one bit about whether we get the yes or the no. 

From this clunky exchange with my friend, my subconscious would have me believe we would never speak again. 

But quite conversely, this friend actually ended up hiring me. 

Together, we doubled his income, and he believes that hiring me was the best choice he’s ever made. 

But of course, all of this is easier said than done. How do we show up and persevere, even when we are absolutely sick with dread?

Celebrate. 

Celebrate your potential client for reaching clarity, or having courage in their decision making, no matter the outcome. Just because we unplug ourselves from being motivated by outcome, it doesn’t mean we unplug from the people we’re engaging with in our service. We can protect our hearts by not taking outcomes personally, and by pivoting to celebrating the no’s, we can lower our defenses. We can deepen relationships to be of the utmost service to others, and those relationships can be held close to our heart. 

And we have to be more dedicated to other peoples’ growth and success than we are to our own discomfort.   

So yes. Cold calling is important! Besides building resiliency and giving you the chance to build and practice your authentic, radically true self, cold calling is a skill that you can use at any time to bring in money.

What has stopped you from cold calling? What would happen if you devoted yourself to the “No’s” as a transformational tool? What do you think it would feel like to greet “no” with enthusiasm and gratitude?  What if you said “hell yes” to the “no’s”? I’d love to read your musings in the comments. 

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