1. “When you advised me to check out the new farm,
you could have told me it was a wind farm.”
. .
Information is only useful when you have a clear understanding of the implications. Especially when it
comes to changes in the insurance marketplace.Your clients deserve to be fully informed and so do you.
Shouldn’t you expect more from your insurance partner?
therightwholesaler.com
leader’sedgeseptember2012
leader’s edge
september2012
Call
WaitingResearchersFindaRemedyforProspect-CallingReluctance
3. Call Reluctance By Mike Patten
LeadersEdgeMagazine.com 38
of motivated, talented, educated salespeople,
relatively few rise to become successful on a
consistent basis. They analyzed the behav-
ioral tendencies of salespeople, doing exit
interviews with those who were successful
and those who were not. They interviewed top
executives, senior managers and middle man-
agers. They did cognitive and physiological
studies, hooking up salespeople to biomedical
instruments to test their reactions to different
situations.
They discovered that people who weren’t
successful were hesitant to initiate sales con-
tacts on a consistent basis. Successful prospect-
ing includes the ability to make cold calls, call
referral leads, ask clients for new lines of busi-
ness, ask for referrals and initiate contact at net-
working events. They identified 12 behavioral
patterns associated with what is technically
called Inhibited Social Contact Initiation Syn-
drome—or sales call reluctance.
BSRP described the 12 patterns this way:
ROLE REJECTION is prevalent in the insurance
agent in particular. This refers to salespeople
who have a secret shame or discomfort in iden-
tifying with the sales role. To compensate, they
tend to use various types of deflective titles:
consultant, advisor, etc. They will tell you,
point-blank, that they’re not selling but just pro-
viding advice.
DOOMSAYERS habitually worry about what
could go wrong with a contact and conse-
quently avoid making contacts.
OVER-PREPARERS tend to spend an excessive
amount of time getting prepared to make a con-
tact instead of actually making the contact.
HYPER PROS are so concerned about their pro-
fessional image that they spend too much time
crafting an image they feel people will interpret
as being successful instead of rolling up their
sleeves and getting the work done. They are
more concerned with style than substance.
STAGE FRIGHT describes salespeople who are
uncomfortable in a group situation, giving
a presentation. That level of discomfort will
cause them to avoid opportunities to give group
presentations.
YIELDERS feel they will be perceived as too
pushy or too intrusive and don’t want to engage
in behavior they feel other people will perceive
as disagreeable. They tend to avoid prospect-
ing because they’re always looking for the right
time to do so; only the right time never comes.
SOCIAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS describes
salespeople who are intimidated by up-market
clientele. It could be based on their perception
of a client’s superior social standing, wealth,
influence or education. They would much pre-
fer to give a presentation to an administrative
assistant than a decision-maker.
SEPARATIONISTS are uncomfortable network-
ing or selling to friends. It doesn’t matter if their
friends could use their products or services.
They think it’s unprofessional to mix business
with friendship.
UN-EMANCIPATED believe it’s inappropriate to
network through family, even though their fam-
ily might be an excellent resource.
REFERRAL AVERSION refers to those who think
it’s unprofessional to ask for a referral. It’s OK
for a customer to offer a referral, but somehow
you are being disrespectful or opportunistic if
you ask for a referral from a satisfied client.
TELEPHOBIA describes those who tell you
that they just need to make eye contact to feel
comfortable. They might drive 10 or 20 miles or
more to meet with a client face to face when a
simple phone call would suffice.
OPPOSITIONAL REFLEX involves those who
tend to reflexively oppose training, manage-
ment advice and supervision. They tend to
engage in falsifying, blaming and criticizing. It
can be challenging to manage salespeople with
this type of call reluctance because it’s difficult
to help them improve. They tend to slap the
hand that’s trying to support them.
It’s Not Just About Sales Calls
Trelitha Bryant, BSRP executive vice president
for field-testing and research, says the behaviors
that cause call reluctance can spill over into
other parts of life.
“All of us are in sales,” Bryant says. “Some of
us direct sales. But whenever you are advocat-
‘The thing I learned from this whole experience is that
call reluctance is a self-developed thing.’
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
335%outbound
prospecting activity
increase
PRE-WORKSHOP FOUR WEEK AVERAGE
350
WEEKLYACTIVITY
Fear Free & Self Promotion Workshop
Pre and Post Prospecting Activity Data
April 2012
4. Call Reluctance By Mike Patten
37 September 2012 Leader’s Edge
It was a puzzling question for the leaders at BancorpSouth Insurance. “We
• l
uNearly40%of
experiencedsalespeople
experienceafearof
prospecting.
uBehavioralSciences
ResearchPress
identified12behavioral
patternsassociatedwith
InhibitedSocialContact
InitiationSyndrome.
uABSRPtrainingprogram
helpedgeneratea335%
increaseinthenumber
ofprospectingattempts
madebyBancorpSouth
salespeople.
Fast focus
Hiring sales people who will, in fact, sell is
one of the most important tasks for a sales man-
ager. Some 80% of all salespeople hired don’t
last a year. And while the most effective way to
generate business involves calling on new cus-
tomers, also known as prospecting, it turns out
that nearly 40% of even experienced salespeo-
ple experience a fear of prospecting known as
sales call reluctance. This reluctance limits the
number of prospecting attempts —and potential
sales—that even top producers make.
For answers, BancorpSouth turned to Behav-
ioral Sciences Research Press (BSRP), a Dallas,
Texas, firm founded by George Dudley and
Shannon Goodson, pioneers in the field of pre-
dicting, diagnosing and correcting sales call
reluctance. BancorpSouth sent one of its sales
divisions through BSRP’s day-and-a-half Fear-
Free Prospecting & Self-Promotion Workshop,
followed by four weeks of follow-up coaching
to see if that would increase prospecting. The
early returns are promising. BSRP helped gener-
ate a 335% increase in the number of prospect-
ing attempts in the weeks after the training, to
an average of 283 a week from an average of 65
a week.
“The thing I learned from this whole experi-
ence is that call reluctance is a self-developed
thing,” Lensing says. “The thing that I was not
convinced of, but now believe, is those charac-
teristics can be overcome.”
BSRP sales director Jacqueline Calder says
call reluctance is not fear of rejection or a lack of
training and knowledge, but an emotional con-
dition that can be treated.
“It’s not that people don’t know the script,”
she says. “It’s not that they don’t know what
to do. Basically, they have all the content and
knowledge they need to succeed, but when they
have all that information and still can’t do it,
that’s an emotional issue.”
Lensing says it’s easy to spot the producers
who don’t prospect.
“A lot of it is management by walking
around,” Lensing says. “You can tell just by the
activity or lack thereof. Ultimately, you just
kind of know who is hanging back and who is
going full bore.”
Calder says those people hanging back can be
rescued.
“The underlying principle is that there are
behavioral modification techniques that allow
the salesperson to regain emotional control over
how they feel about doing the prospecting. It is
how they feel about prospecting that’s causing
the problem. This allows them to identify, man-
age and control what they would typically refer
to as a fear of rejection.
“It’s the emotion that’s the problem. Most
people have had enough good sales training
to know how to prospect. It’s almost like they
choke on actually prospecting.”
For Lensing, the results don’t lie.
“What probably was the most telling indica-
tion was the tremendous jump in outbound call-
ing,” Lensing says. That jump told him that the
sales staff got the message that they needed to
prospect and that they had the training to over-
come call reluctance.
“The increase in prospecting activity is the
best indication of the improvement made since
the workshop,” Lensing says. “It is too early to
be able to identify sales successes related to the
increased activity at this time, but logic says it
will translate into more and better opportuni-
ties.”
Dissecting the Syndrome
Dudley and Goodson, working as psycholo-
gists for a major insurance firm, pioneered
research in call reluctance in the 1970s. They
were charged with figuring out why, in a group
as agency managers were always baffled why some producers are successful from
the start while others struggle to make it,” says Ron Lensing, an executive vice pres-
ident and corporate sales leader at BancorpSouth. “We provide technical training,
sales training and resources to help our producers differentiate themselves from the
typical vendor sales approach but do not see meaningful results with the producers
who struggle.”
