Last week, I had a conversation with Les, a 25-year veteran CFP. He admitted that he’d struggled with Sales Call Reluctance for the first few years of his career. Because he kept taking action and doing his best to serve his clients well, Les slowly developed notoriety in his market and enjoyed a reputation as a trusted advisor.

In reviewing his goals for the next three to five years, Les finally allowed himself to admit that his clients were aging, their children had moved away, and he needed to get back into aggressive, proactive business-building mode in order to sustain and grow his business. He asked about the steps involved in getting into proactive prospecting mode because he was once again experiencing Sales Call Reluctance.

Before reviewing the individual steps, a couple points must be highlighted. First, the key to overcoming the fear of prospecting is to fully accept the fact that it is NOT prospecting that causes your anxiety – it is your thoughts about prospecting that cause your anxiety. Breathe and let that settle in.

Secondly, a shift in mindset is required to overcome Sales Call Reluctance and make consistent prospecting part of your daily success plan. This shift occurs through awareness, choice and trust.

Step 1. Awareness begins with answering some questions: What do you want? What are your performance goals? I’m sure everyone reading this article is acutely aware of their 2011 performance goals and has written them down. If you have not written your goals down and are not reading them every day, commit to making this part of your daily routine. You will thank me later!

Step 2. Now that you have written down your goals, it’s time to examine the “why” behind what you want to accomplish. If you truly want to achieve your goals this year, set aside some time this week for this next step. I recommend that you isolate yourself in a quiet, safe, warm place with a blank notebook. At the top of the first page, write “Why?” Then begin recording all the reasons you want to achieve your goals. What is important about each of them? Keep in mind that your first answer is rarely the real answer. Continue writing, and do not stop until you are in tears. Yes, I mean literal tears. That is what I recommend: write until you have evoked deep emotional response regarding what is important to you. This is one of the most powerful exercises you can perform.

Listen to all the excuses you that come up for you, e.g., “I’m not an emotional type,” or “I have taught myself to be emotionally disconnected from my production.” I hear different variations on these from time to time. However, distancing yourself from your emotions is merely a coping mechanism that disconnects you from what is most important to you. Top producers are deeply rooted in their “why.” Every day, FAs are subject to potentially discouraging events and relationship challenges. When you are emotionally rooted in your “why,” you will quickly bounce back, experiencing greater resilience. The only way you are going to shift out of Sales Call Reluctance mode is to get deeply committed and emotionally connected to your “why.”

When most people sit down to start this exercise, they are tempted to answer the wrong question. Rather than “Why?” they tend to focus on “How?” Resist the temptation to get caught up in the “how.” Put the “how” aside. The “how” is the easy part. Horsesmouth archives and current articles are full of the best answers to “how” that you can find anywhere. Ignore the “how,” for now.

Stay on track with identifying your “why” and be as specific as you can be. Whatever comes up for you is the right answer, as long as it’s emotionally honest. It’s perfectly fine to want to be recognized by your company, your broker and/or your peers as a top producer, to have your dream home, or to enjoy luxurious vacations. I recommend that you type up your “whys” and read them every day, along with your goals. From your list, make a book or poster of images that represent your goals. It is important that the pictures resonate with you and depict exactly what you want. If you are tempted to dismiss this as a silly exercise, you do not understand how your brain works. What you think about, you bring about; what you focus on, you create. A top producing FA revealed that he has a private book with pictures of everything he wants in it. He reviews it daily. He has a dream business that grows more and more profitable every year.

Timothy Gallwey, author of The Inner Game of Work, defines awareness as getting the clearest possible picture of current reality. FAs have empirical knowledge of this, because you cannot move forward with a prospect until they have fully disclosed their current financial situation. Now it’s time to admit your current reality. Where are you right now with respect to your mega-priority performance goal? Wherever you are is fine. Breathe and be ruthlessly honest.

Step 3. Write down all the good things you have in place, e.g., your current AUM, and be deeply grateful for clients who believe in you. What about your assistant? Write down all the reasons you appreciate your assistant. What about your manager? Your firm? Your office? Acknowledge your referral sources who generously introduce you to prospects. Write only the positive aspects and allow yourself to recognize the good. As Barbara Fredrickson states in her book, Positivity, “It is the sparkle of good things that awakens your motivation to change.”

Step 4. Write down your strengths. Why are you good at what you do? Are you an excellent communicator? How does your education benefit you? Your certifications? Do clients highly respect you and listen to your advice? Are you smart? Enjoy finance? Do you love the process of walking people through their financial goals and helping them design their financial futures?  Your confidence breeds confidence in your prospects and clients.

Step 5. What is your unique value proposition? Knowing it is not enough; you must write it down. This is absolutely vital. If you do not know how you are unique, stop everything else you are doing and immediately get busy on this. Excuses are unacceptable. Work at it until you arrive at the thing that makes you unique. If any other FA can say the same thing, you have more work to do. Your laser-sharp value proposition is as unique as your fingerprint. Get together with your manager, a friend, mentor, mastermind partner, a coach – someone who will assist you with this important exercise. You need to confidently believe this statement with every fiber of your body. Once again, your confidence will breed confidence in your prospects. Most pitches I hear from struggling FAs are nonspecific, vague, ambiguous – they aren’t landing clients because they do not know why their prospects should retain them.

Step 6. Get into action. The baseball game does not begin until the pitcher throws the first ball.  You must start pitching in order to get the hits.  You may pitch a few foul balls and strike out from time to time, but you will not be in the game unless you are consistently pitching.  The more you pitch the more chances of a home run.  Do not kid yourself on this step. The “how” will come to you. You have resources galore. Get moving and put your daily strategy into place. Does your past experience prove that seminar selling works? How many strategic alliances do you have in place? How many prospects do you have on your top 20 list? This article is not about the “how” of prospecting because you already know how. If you don’t think you do, go back to steps 2 through 5 and your “how” will come to you.

Step 7. Now it’s time for you to proactively prospect and self-promote. The fear of self-promotion is the fear that underlies Sales Call Reluctance. What is your relationship with self promotion? What immediately comes up when you read the words “self-promote?” What perspective do you hold about self-promoters? Is it positive or negative? If it is negative, how might you shift it? What are alternative ways to interpret self-promotion? There are 12 fears FAs experience when they start self-promoting. For example, some think that prospects do not like to be called on the telephone. They make excuses like, “The telephone doesn’t work. All I get is voicemail, and no one ever returns my call.” Others convince themselves that high net worth prospects are already dealing with another FA. Some believe that prospects are tired of being prospected. Just know that you are projecting your fears, prejudices and self-doubt onto your prospecting calls and the fear, prejudice and self-doubt is reflecting back on you.  It is important that you allow yourself to identify your perspective on self-promotion and your negative intruders so that you can stop the negative and develop new neuronets in your brain around self-promotion.

Are you willing to shift your perspective? Remember: It’s not prospecting that causes your anxiety, it’s your thoughts about it.

Let’s reexamine the perspective of “All I get is voicemail and no one ever returns my call.” Is that statement really true? Has anyone ever returned your voicemail? Oh, yes admittedly some people do. I wonder if you need some work on your voicemail messaging? What resources are available on voicemail messaging? When was the last time you listened to one of the messages you left? Would you return your call?  Remember 73% of a voice message is your tonality.  Maybe if you left a more compelling message that proves you have done your homework, along with a request that they call you back at their earliest convenience, it might work.

Eavesdrop on yourself and observe any contradictions. You are crystal clear on your “why,” you have a reason to prospect, you know you have a compelling solution for your prospects; however, your thoughts (negative intruders) are sandbagging your efforts. Identify your negative intruders and write them down.

Now it’s time to discuss choice. Can anyone choose a thought for you? On any given day, you have anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 thoughts. When you are in prospecting mode, your habitual thoughts are like knee-jerk reactions – they come up automatically. The good news is that because habits are learned, you can unlearn them by becoming aware of them. Identify them, allow them to come forward, write them down. Now, what alternative perspective might you choose?

For example, a five-year CFP said to me today, “Nobody wants to talk to a financial planner. They don’t respect financial planners.” His negative perspective is costing him his career. He suffers from toxic role rejection Call Reluctance, meaning he is vastly uncomfortable in the role of a salesperson. He has some shifting to do, which might be difficult but is entirely possible for him as long as he’s willing to consider choosing alternative perspectives.

When you move through awareness, know you always have a choice, the most fantastic thing happens, you begin to trust the process and most important trusting yourself.  Self-trust is the foundation of any successful career.

The two CFPs referred to above are really no different from you. Each of you can have fantastic results if you work the steps, know your “why,” and deliberately challenge your negative interpretations/perspectives and choose alternative supportive thoughts that enable you to develop a positive perspective. The only shame in Sales Call Reluctance is living with it unnecessarily.

Connie Kadansky, MA, PCC is a coach, speaker and trainer specializing in Overcoming Sales Call Reluctance®.  She offers effective tools and training to diagnose call reluctance and assists salespeople in highly profitable prospecting.  Connie facilitates the Fear-Free Prospecting and Self-Promotion Workshop® globally.  For additional information, contact Connie at 602-997-1101 or visit her website at www.exceptionalsales.com.

Jerry, a financial advisor, was building a clientele of up-and-coming professionals.  He was always diligent about asking for referrals.  One day, one of his clients — an architect — offered to arrange a luncheon meeting to introduce Jerry to a prominent local attorney from one of the community’s oldest and wealthiest families.

Jerry’s initial surge of excitement and gratitude soon dissipated, replaced by a deep-seated feeling of dread.  Jerry had grown up on the “wrong” side of the tracks, and even though he’d been to college and become financially successful in his own right, he felt completely intimidated by old money and social standing.  Jerry has alluded to these feelings a few times in the past, but his manager always responded with the same pep talk:  “High-net-worth people put their pants on one leg at a time just like you and me.”

Paralyzed by imagined inferiority

Intellectually, Jerry knew what his manager said was true, but it didn’t help at all, because he was entrenched in something that we call “social self-consciousness.”  It’s one of the 12 types of Sales Call Reluctance that cause financial advisors to avoid prospects with wealth, prestige, power, education, or social status.

Financial advisors know that in order to succeed, they need to be prospecting and getting appointments with people who are the ultimate decision maker.  Often, though, financial advisors who come from blue-collar roots or have been indoctrinated into a psychological caste system have a tendency to elevate upscale individuals to exaggerated heights of superiority and influence.

Financial advisors with social self-consciousness excessively admire influential or very wealthy people and feel inferior to them, and when they are in the presence of such people, they regress into debilitating behaviors.  They swing between feeling admiration and feeling intimidated, conflicted, and even awestruck.  They may clam up or begin to fawn on the person, unable to find a healthy middle ground where they can prospect successfully.

Diagnosing the problem

What do you do if you fit this description?  All the intellectualizing in the world will not resolve this fear.  It needs to be addressed emotionally and behaviorally.

First, you must take responsibility for what you are experiencing.  This is not the most popular advice.  However, it is really the only way in order to overcome social self-consciousness.

Observe your behavior with service personnel or other people you may feel are inferior to you in some way.  Some people who experience social self-consciousness habitually intimidate those they perceive as below them on the social ladder.  They treat these people just as poorly and in just the same way as they believe their own social “betters” have treated them.

If you find that you are rude or even somewhat rude toward people that you rate lower in social standing than yourself, immediately start going out of your way to notice how they contribute to society.  Notice their value.  Everyone, even the homeless person on the street, contributes to society in some way.  (For instance, seeing a homeless person may trigger others to be more grateful or more compassionate.  This is a valuable contribution.)  Begin to treat everyone, regardless of their perceived social standing, with courtesy and respect.  Extend pleasantries to everyone you encounter.  You will be amazed at the result.

‘Zap’ to interrupt habitual thought

Now it’s time to work on the day-to-day thoughts and behaviors that are standing in the way of your success.

Step 1:  Document your negative thoughts. When you think about prospecting someone you view as upscale and find yourself feeling intimidated, write down the thought that is triggering the intimidation.  Perhaps it’s something like these:

• “People like her get prospected day in and day out by salespeople.”
• “He must already be working with a financial advisor he really likes.”
• “These people are well networked; calling on them is futile.  They only work with their friends.”

Notice the story you are making up that is keeping you from prospecting.  This awareness is vital.  It is not prospecting upscale clientele that is intimidating you.  It is your thoughts about prospecting upscale clientele that are intimidating you.

As simple as this may sound, it is very profound.  Once you recognize that making up stories is what is making you miserable and casting you into intimidation and self-doubt, you take back the power to stop feeling that way.  Your freedom from social self-consciousness begins with your willingness to write down these pessimistic thoughts, or what we call “negative intruders.”

Step 2:  Observe your emotions. Once you have identified a negative intruder, notice your emotional reaction.  Are you stammering?  Does your brain freeze?  Is your speech monotone or overly fawning or apologetic?  Become a scientist of your emotions and behavior.

Be careful:  Many financial advisors get angry at themselves at this point.  They brutally criticize and chastise themselves for having these feelings.  This is a trap of self-sabotage.  You must break the habit of self-criticism.  It is always destructive, never productive.  When you judge yourself, you lose the entire effect of the exercise.  So just notice, without judgment.

Step 3:  Zap your negative thoughts. Get a wide rubber band and put it on your wrist.  Every time you spot a negative intruder, zap yourself with a gentle snap of the rubber band.  This will interrupt the habitual thought that is holding you back.  Zap every single time you have thoughts of being inferior to or intimidated by someone of higher wealth or social standing than you.

The thought-zapper rubber band is not to be used for punishment. It does not need to hurt, just sting slightly.  The purpose is to add a physical component to changing your habits of mind, your thinking habits.

Make no mistakes:  Feeling intimidated by important people is a habit.  No one is born socially self-conscious.  It is entirely learned.  The zapper will actually work on rewiring the neural networks in your brain that have been hard-wired to make you believe that upscale prospects are intimidating and that you are not worthy of their business.  A habit’s worse enemy is interruption.

If you are the type that would use the thought zapper as painful punishment, you are advised to not employ this technique.  It would be counterproductive and actually cause more self-sabotage.  (Go back to Step 2 and try to work on being nonjudgmental with yourself and others.  This will help you move on.)

Step 4:  Neutralizing the negative. Now that you have zapped, replace the negative intruder with a neutral thought, such as:

• “He probably gets lots of calls.  That means timing is everything.  I will be the first to call him today.”
• “Even if she is working with someone else, she may be looking for a second opinion on that new tax law, and I can provide potentially valuable information prior to her filing income tax returns.”
• “As well-networked as some people are, they can be open to meeting new people who have something interesting to present.”

The more you zap the habitual thoughts that trigger negative feelings about prospecting influential or wealthy people, the more you’ll break the hard-wiring in your brain and replace it with new neural networks.

Step 5:  Change your behavior. When you do eventually make the call, remember that many high-net-worth people employ assistants, or gate openers.  Notice my choice of terms:  gate openers.  Many salespeople think of these assistants as “gatekeepers” and get into defense mode prior to making th  eir prospecting calls.

Instead, think of them as gate openersand treat them just as you would treat the high-net-worth client.  Tell them exactly who you are and the purpose of your call, using an engaging statement that piques their interest.  Don’t go off on an internal campaign about receptionists and administrative assistants and how rude they are to salespeople.  This is a great time to practice treating everyone with respect and noticing their value.

When you attend events of any kind, seek out the people in the spotlight, introduce yourself, and initiate a conversation.  You do not need to think of yourself as prospecting at this point.  You are simply conditioning yourself to meet the people who used to intimidate you.  And you just may find out that they are pretty cool people who are more open — and more human — than you thought!

Be patient

There is no overnight fix for social self-consciousness.  After all, it didn’t develop overnight.  It has been with you a long time.  But the sooner you start with these types and techniques — all of which have been proven to break the logjam of call reluctance — the more quickly you will start to feel comfortable with all types of people, regardless of their wealth or social standing.

As Rudyard Kipling reminds us in his famous poem “if”:

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none to much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And which is more you’ll be a Man, my son!

If you are experiencing Sales Call Reluctance, you have choices to solve your prospecting problem.
1) Hire someone else to make your prospecting calls. A small number of financial advisors have done this very successfully. They found the right person to make the calls. However, there are thousands of war stories about hiring one telemarketer after another that never produced any result.

2) Rely on your current clientele and network to refer business to you. A small number of savvy financial advisors have worked hard over the years and have been very successful. However, with the natural attrition of any business, most experienced veterans have found that this model is not enough to keep them ahead of the curve — especially in this current economic climate.

3) Settle for mediocre business and bump along the best you can.

4) Take on your Sales Call Reluctance issues intelligently, which starts with admitting that you are not prospecting. Then recognize that it is not prospecting that causes your anxiety and spins you into self-doubt. It’s your thought about prospecting that causes your anxiety that triggers self-doubt. Start watching your thoughts like a cat watches a mouse. Notice how you are projecting negativity onto the call before you even make it. This can be disconcerting to recognize at first. However, it is the start of disciplining your thoughts and can be absolutely transformational. For example, when you are ready to reach for the phone and you stop and start checking email for the 200th time for the day — immediately tune into what is it that you are choosing to think that is causing you to stop. Then immediately pivot to another thought, i.e. “I have clients who are confident in my abilities.” (you construct your own replacement thought) Sound a little complicated? It is and can be — however, it doesn’t have to be. It is entirely possible for you to overcome your Sales Call Reluctance and start earning what your are worth!

Connie Kadansky, MA, PCC

I help financial advisors get their “ask” in gear.

Here are some tips to help you right now:

1. Take a deep breath — it will slow down your mental processes that are overactive and chaotic, creating your anxiety. (Yes, it’s not prospecting calling that is causing your anxiety, it’s your thought about prospecting calling.)

2. Make sure that both of your feet are on the floor as you close your eyes and take a second deep breath.

3. Think of a current client who really believes in you and you are part of their inner circle. Keep thinking of them until a smile comes across your face.

4. What is the value you provide for this client? What do they say about your products/services? Be specific. Ease yourself into allowing yourself to recognize your value. Jot down the key points.

5. Pick up the phone with the thought of this client in your mind and that you are simply going to find your next client.
You can re-train your brain to prospect consistently.

Connie Kadansky, Exceptional Sales Performance, Sales Call Reluctance trainer/coach: 602-997-1101 www.exceptionalsales.com — connie@exceptionalsales.com

Jon has been in sales for nearly 12 years.  He has great customers, but he wants more!  He knows what he needs to do:  commit to prospect consistently, build better strategic alliances, and buckle down and close more sales.

So what’s the problem?  By analyzing his prospecting activity, Jon has come to the conclusion that he’s spending an inordinate amount of time volunteering and building relationships.  But the activities haven’t added enough new clients to justify his time and financial expenditures.

Jon isn’t the only salesperson who has difficulty transitioning from relationship-building to solid business-building.  He isn’t aware of it, but he exhibits a form of Sales Call Reluctance, and it’s interfering with his closing new business.

This type of call reluctance has been identified as “yielder” call reluctance.  It is common among financial advisors, who rarely recognize it.  You see, financial advisors with yielder call reluctance are people pleasers.  They are approval seekers who lack assertiveness, often much to their own detriment.

People pleasers don’t move forward unless someone gives them a crystal clear signal to proceed.  They don’t control the process of moving a prospect along the pipeline to becoming a client.  They let the prospect maintain control, and hence they just can’t seem to close a deal. 

Perhaps these financial advisors:

• Feel that the prospect would be offended by sales efforts
• Leave appointments without getting a firm commitment from the prospect for the next step
• Have many unanswered questions they are afraid to ask
• String out closing the sale

Does this sound familiar?  Do you lack assertiveness?  (When you think about it, prospecting is contact initiation – and that’s an assertive act.)  Pause for a moment and think about the relationship that you want to take one step closer to a bona fide customer.  If you aren’t turning networking opportunities and qualified prospects into new clients, perhaps it’s time to look a little deeper.

A word about relationships

In the book Hard Truth about Soft Selling, author George Dudley says:  “You can’t depend on relationship-building skills alone to make the sale for you.  Hone those skills and make them work for you, but don’t confuse making friends with making sales.  When is the last time your firm sent you a check for a friendship bonus?”

You know value-added customer service can be the deciding factor when a prospect chooses you over a competitor.  But financial advisors get their wires crossed when they believe that the buyer-seller relationship is more important than the sale.  There must be a balance.  In the end, relationships and friendships do not pay the bills.  Selling products and services pay the bills.

Don’t get me wrong, relationships are important.  But buyers primarily want you to fulfill their needs and provide solutions.  They want you to know your product.  They want you to care about them.  You can do this by taking action and keeping them moving forward.  Trying to gain their approval is a misspent effort.  Keep working on yourself, developing your skills, and doing the activity that puts you in front of people.  Your confidence will escalate.  Here are a few thought-provoking questions to ask yourself:

• Can you close a sale without developing rapport?
• Can you develop a relationship without closing a sale?
• Can you strike a balance between these two concepts?

A successful salesperson finds the middle ground.  He’s clear on goals and understands that it is okay to sell his services to meet his production goals.

It should be noted that yielder call reluctance is the most common and the most costly.  It has become more prevalent as sales training programs within organizations that promote soft selling approaches.  In fact, in some companies and some industries there are toxic levels of call reluctance throughout their sales force.

That’s great news for some financial advisors – at least for the non-yielders – because it gives them a huge advantage.  Every once in a while you may meet a salesperson who isn’t any more knowledgeable than you, yet they have a better business.  They aren’t really all that experienced or even as competent as you are, but they seem to always get new business.  Why?  They win the business because they’re assertive and consistent in their prospecting and self-promotion, and they close the business.

Understanding yielder call reluctance

The first step in overcoming yielder call reluctance is to understand what it is and how it could be affecting you.  The following questions will help you determine if you have this costly form of call reluctance:

• Are you not prospecting consistently because you have difficulty asserting yourself?
• Are you afraid to incite conflict by asking qualifier questions?
• Are you afraid you will appear pushy or intrusive?
• Are you afraid to bother the busy, disturb the indisposed, or interrupt the otherwise engaged?
• Are you sociable but not necessarily outgoing?
• Are you building a number of relationships but not meeting your production goals?
• Are you paying for lunches, dinners, and golf games but not breaking even?

If you answered “Yes” to three or more of the above questions, you may be suffering from yielder sales call reluctance.  Here are five steps to get you moving forward:

Step 1:  Awareness

Be acutely aware of the behavior.  When you find yourself yielding, simply observe your actions without getting angry with yourself.  Your recognition of the problem is a positive step.  If you judge and berate your actions, you are doing more harm than good.  If this happens, you must stop the exercise because it will take you backward instead of forward.  You must learn to become a scientist of your behavior.  Self-reflection is the capacity to exercise introspection and the willingness to learn more about you.  It is one of the best ways to self-correct.  It’s particularly helpful to reflect on your actions through writing.  After a meeting, prospecting session, networking event or similar effort, ask yourself the following four questions.  Don’t just do it mentally, write your answers down in a notebook.

• What did I do well?  Whatever you did right, embellish it. You might write:  I showed up. I had plenty of business cards.  I had a great elevator speech when someone asked me what I do for a living.  I asked qualifying questions.  You get the picture, right?
• What would I do differently next time?  Think about different choices you could have made.  Your reflection could say:  I would ask for an appointment.  I would create a sense of urgency about getting together. I would ask for their contact information.
• What would I never do again?  Dig deep.  Is there anything you would never do again?  You might promise yourself:  I will never pay for another thing, unless I get concrete commitment for action.  I will never walk away without asking for referrals.  I will never again not have an answer to, “Let me think it over.”
• What did I learn about myself as a salesperson from this event?  This is a key question.  Don’t give it short shrift.  You could reflect:  I learned that there is a real need for my services.  I learned that I am pretty good at answering tough objections.  I learned that my confidence spirals downward when I walk away without asking for the sale.  Allow yourself to be honest and candid both about what’s improving in your approach and what’s not working.

Step 2:  Assessment

Pinpoint the extent of the problem.  Here’s a great tip:  Record your prospecting calls – there’s no better way to self-correct.  Athletes watch the video of their games to improve their plays.  If athletes are so interested in the subtleties and intricacies of performance improvement, couldn’t the same type of scrutiny help you?

For $112 you can purchase a telephone recorder that you plug into the wall and into the phone line.  Or talk with Ryan Pitts at  www.newcallsolutions.com.  He can set you up with a temporary or permanent account to record your calls for training purposes.   If you use it only for instructional purposes and nothing else, nondisclosure should be OK legally.  However, it’s a good idea to speak with your compliance department or an attorney before you begin recording. Depends on what state you are in also.

First of all, listen to the general impression your voice is making on the phone.  When you make the calls, 73% of the communication is your tonality.  How do you sound?  Would you talk to you?  Second, listen for the opportunities you missed.  Third, you can pinpoint what you said and how you said it on the call that landed you the appointment.

Step3:  Admission

The hardest part of changing behavior is admitting that the behavior is costing you big bucks, not to mention your self-esteem and confidence.  Here’s an exercise to help you see how different personality types handle sales situations.

• Look up the following words in a dictionary: “aggressive,” “assertive,” and “passive.”  Then, with real scenarios in your day-to-day business, write out how an aggressive salesperson would handle the situation.  Next, write down how an assertive salesperson would handle it, and then a passive salesperson.  Sometimes yielders believe that assertive behavior is actually aggressive.  A major key to success is to distinguish the difference between these behaviors.
• Look up the words “like” and “respect” in a dictionary.  What’s the difference?  Would you rather be respected or liked?  Have you ever done business with a professional whom you respected but really didn’t like?  Also notice that when you do not follow your process and you let prospects control the process, and when you walk away without getting firm commitments, you do not like yourself.

Step 4:  Application

Now you can begin to use proven techniques and overcome the behavior.  For example, notice when you don’t ask a question or don’t say something because you become afraid.  Top financial advisors ask the tough questions when they are in front of their prospects.  Mediocre financial advisors ask the tough questions as they are driving away in their cars.

Step 5:  Analysis

Continue to examine and analyze your behavior so that you don’t relapse.  One way to do this is to always make a note of what makes you speechless.  Then you can take steps to get the response you need.  Here are some suggestions:

• Look to the experts.  Consult your manager, review training material, and dig deep to find the proper responses to situation that stymie you.  The answers are out there.  If you are a financial advisor, highly recommend www.horsesmouth.com.  When you find the right ideas, new behaviors will come easier to you and old habits will be easier to break.
• Role-play.  Find a motivated, goal-oriented person who will role-play key scenarios with you.  It’s fun if you find someone who will courageously throw you curve balls.  You can record your role-plays and analyze them just as you would a phone call.

Some final tips

Decide that you will control the process early on with clients.  Think about other professionals, such as lawyers, doctors, or accountants – they all control their process and wouldn’t allow a patient/client to change their methods.  Like you, they are experts and they know what works and what doesn’t.

Give people freedom to think about you how they want to think about you.  Be confident, be honest, have a high regard for people, and create a sense of entitlement when you are prospecting and meeting with clients.  Some of you have put in years of study and work to understand your business.  Stop projecting your fears onto your prospects.  You are the qualified professional to help them develop achieve their goals.

Remember, this will take some real work.  The desire to be liked above all else has probably been with you for a long time.  With some effort, you can gently become more assertive and take charge of your sales.  People will still like you.  The most important thing is that you’ll learn to like yourself.  And when you self-manage these issues, you will finally be earning what you are worth.

Picture this:  You’re in your office, concentrating hard on a proposal for a new client.  Your telephone rings.  Your focus is disrupted, you pick up the phone and half-heartedly greet your caller -‑ only to find yourself talking to a salesperson pitching a time management system.  Not only is he interrupting you, but he is awkward and unprofessional to boot.  He mispronounces your name and is obviously reading from a script.

You’re caught off guard and worse, you feel annoyed and resentful, maybe even angry.  You gruffly tell the salesperson you are “not interested” and hang up before they can utter another word.

Welcome to the world of prospecting and sales!

The negativity trap

How do you feel when a salesperson prospects you or solicits your business?

Come on, fess up — because your candid answer to that question may hold the key to whether or not you’ll become successful at prospecting and selling.

Do you feel irritated and annoyed when someone else prospects or attempts to sell to you?  If you do, you may have what’s been termed role rejection call reluctance.  This type of call reluctance is fueled by feelings of shame about selling or even outright denial that selling is part of your job.

When salespeople associate selling with negative emotions, that association can’t help but carry over into our own prospecting.  Why?  Because, when we view other salespeople in a bad light, some part of our brain (even if we’re not aware of it) projects that viewpoint onto others, including ourselves.

We become convinced that our own prospective clients must feel the same negative feelings we do about being prospected — and that subtle or even unconscious uncertainty stops us in our tracks.  After all, who wants to irritate or annoy people?  Who wants to be the very thing they themselves find annoying, irritating, or even downright offensive?  It’s only natural to want to avoid those feelings.  That causes us to procrastinate or avoid making calls — and that prevents our business from growing.

“Selling” really is part of the job

Some financial advisors want so badly to avoid these negative feelings that they actually deny to themselves and to others that they sell at all.  Only used-car salespeople, they insist adamantly, would sink so low as to sell.

In fact, the very title “salesperson”, while it captures an important part of our role, also makes it easier for financial advisors who suffer from role rejection to deny that selling is part of their job.

Let’s get real.  Being a salesperson does not mean pitching product.  Selling is simply a business process of exchanging goods and services for money.  Nothing happens (including your first appointment with a prospective client) until something gets sold.  Financial advisors do not make one red cent unless they sell their ideas, their expertise, and their services -‑and yes, in some cases, even some product.

Even if you are a fee-only salesperson working on an hourly basis, you must find prospective clients‑and when you get in front of them; you must sell yourself before they’re going to hire you.

Thoughts = destiny

Prospecting is a core competency of any salesperson.  Prospecting is vital.  It’s that simple.  If you’re going to be any good at prospecting and become consistently comfortable with it, you need to accept the truth that you are, at least in part, a salesperson.  You need to question and quite possibly change your own assumptions about sales and selling.

Oddly enough, one of the easiest ways to start the process of changing ourselves is by changing how we view others.  That’s because we tend to project our feelings about ourselves onto other people.

If you want relief from role rejection call reluctance, you can take a big step in the right direction by choosing to view financial advisors who prospect you from a different perspective.  Believe it or not, doing that will eventually transform your feelings about your own prospecting.

There’s an old aphorism that goes, “Your thought becomes your action, your action becomes your habit, your habit becomes your character, and your character becomes you destiny.”

It follows that if you can control your thoughts, you can control your destiny.  Learning to change your thought patterns is a first and vital part of overcoming role rejection.

Allowing yourself to feel resentment or contempt for other salespeople is a destructive habit that can only sabotage your success.

Note that I used the word “habit.”  That means you learned it — and you can unlearn it.

Shifting into neutral

But how do we do this?

Consider this:  It is not a situation that causes annoyance and irritation.  It is how you choose to think about that situation. 

It is not the salesperson on the other end of the phone (or in the office next to ours) that causes us to feel resentful, annoyed, or downright angry.  It is the thought we choose to think about that salesperson that triggers our negative emotions.

As simple as that sounds, it is very profound.  You may assume it’s only natural to think angry or contemptuous thoughts when someone tries to “sell” you.  In fact, though, there are many possible reactions to that experience.

Let’s go back to that earlier scenario of the salesperson interrupting your concentration, and look at some of the very different perspectives through which one could view a sales call.  Here are some different ways of thinking about the call — and the salesperson who made it.

• Annoyance:  These telemarketers are so frustrating.  They just have no respect for other people’s time.
• Contempt:  Why can’t these people get a real job and stop interrupting people who are trying to make an honest living?
• Neutrality:  He’s just an ordinary guy, maybe even an interesting guy with a decent product.  He’s obviously just new at the job and needs some pointers.
• Willingness:  He caught me at a bad time.  But maybe I’ll give him a call back later and give him a chance to tell me more about this time management thing — maybe it’s something I could use.
• Compassion:  The guy’s call was not well-timed, but he was just doing his job.  I’m sure he has a mother and children who love him and think he is a nice person.
• Peace:  Calling people is part of my job too, and I’m a nice, decent person who genuinely wants to help others — so maybe this guy is really interested in helping others too.  He reveals a side of me.  (This is probably how the Dalai Lama would view the prospecting call!)

I will not insult you by suggesting you should shift immediately from intense dislike of salespeople to loving it when someone tries to prospect you (although at some point in your career, you may actually find yourself feeling that way!).  You don’t need to make such an extreme change.  All you need to do is shift your thought process into neutral.

Take two

You’re in your office, concentrating hard on a proposal for a prospect.  Your telephone rings.  Your focus disrupted, you pick up the phone and half-heartedly greet your caller — and find yourself talking to a salesperson pitching a time management system.

You are caught off guard.  But you immediately remind yourself that this salesperson is doing exactly what you do to be successful:  prospecting.

You think to yourself, “He is doing his job.  He is seeking success, just like me.  He has children to support, just like me.  He has mortgage payments, just like me.  He is learning about prospecting, just like me.  He has feelings, just like me.  He makes mistakes, just like me.  He fumbles his words once in a while, just like me.  He mispronounces difficult names, just like me.  He is prospecting, and I respect that.”

You politely listen to his scripted message without judgment, and ascertain if you want to know more.  If not, you kindly thank him for calling, hang up the phone and get back to your work without any negative feelings.

Doesn’t that feel better than being annoyed or irritated?

Over time, as you practice this shift in your thought pattern and assumptions, you will start to notice a subtle shift in your feelings about prospecting, and its role in your business.

A side note:  many financial advisors say that they respect other salespeople who prospect them, as long as the salesperson is professional, engaging, and pronounces their name correctly.

This is a trap.  Avoid it.  Do not allow yourself to be judgmental.  You cannot afford to have negative feelings and resentment toward other salespeople, regardless of their level of competence.  The only purpose those feelings will serve is to undermine your own business development efforts.

Instead, work to achieve a stance of neutral observation that you can use to improve your own skill set.  “Wow, that salesperson really turned me off.  Why?  What was it about that call that did not engage me?  And what can I personally learn from that?”

Even if you encounter a salesperson who behaves in a questionable or unethical way, you can maintain this neutral stance.  This doesn’t mean you condone the behavior or seek to replicate it.  It means simply that you acknowledge what is inappropriate and learn from it.  You can even use the experience as a tool to fortify your own ethical position, perhaps as an inspiration to codify your core beliefs.

Will you commit to change?

Remember:  the only thing we can change is our perspective.  Are you willing to shift your thinking so that you can get more comfortable and consistent with prospecting?  Challenge yourself to make that change.  When you do, you will take a dramatic step toward success.

“Today, I’ll prospect.”

Mark drives to the office, feeling confident and ready to hit the phones.  The moment he arrives, his sales assistant accosts him – she’s having trouble with an important client’s account and is in urgent need of Mark’s assistance.  He spends 25 minutes hashing out a strategy.

Now it’s time for his morning coffee.  He walks into the lounge, noticing the empty coffeepot.  As he waits for his coffee to brew, he glances at the headlines of the New York Times.  He’s got to read this one story, because it is relevant to his business.

Coffee in hand, he proceeds to his office, where he sits down to check his e-mail – he has 27 new messages.  By the time he’s ready to prospect, it is 10:30 a.m. and he’s got to prepare for his luncheon meeting across town with a client.  Despite Mark’s best intentions, still another morning has passed without a single prospecting call.

What’s Mark’s story?  He is a veteran salesperson.  He knows how important prospecting is to his career.  Is this poor time management?  Lack of motivation?  Burnout?  Or could he be experiencing call reluctance?

Call reluctance destroys careers

Hesitation to make contact with prospective new clients causes more failures for salespeople than any other single factor.  Why?  Because if you don’t approach enough people, it makes little difference how thorough your expertise is.  Without a steady flow of prospects, your magnetic personality, credentials, product knowledge, and perfect presentations won’t make much impact.  Inactivity on the prospecting front nullifies your ability to engage these other strengths

Successful selling usually involves five steps:

• Identifying prospective clients (includes identifying referral sources)
• Initiating contact with prospective clients and referral sources
• Introducing yourself, your products, and your services
• Informing prospective clients of how you can help (giving your sales presentation)
• Influencing the prospect’s decision to retain you as a salesperson

Many advisors are uncomfortable with steps 2 and 3, initiating and introducing – but without them, informing and influencing can’t happen!  Ultra-professional presentation skills, dazzling rapport-building, detailed product knowledge and clever closes cannot and will not return a penny of profit if you don’t have enough prospects.  The math is simple:  Successful salespeople consistently initiate contact with more prospects than their less-than-successful counterparts.

Fear of initiating contact can become so great that it limits one’s ability to connect with potential new clients.  Many advisors find making that first contact so emotionally uncomfortable that they avoid it, delay it, or fake it with ineffective strategies like sending out colorful mailers, email blasts, deflecting the identify (”I’m not selling anything”) or calling on only limited, emotionally safe segments of the market.

All this hesitation falls under the category of call reluctance.  It’s common, but it’s potentially catastrophic to any career with a sales component.  Call reluctance can be present at the onset of a sales career, or it can strike suddenly in highly productive sales veterans.  Its origins are multiple and complex, and there is no single source to root out and destroy.

What causes call reluctance?

What causes the discrete pattern of escape and avoidance associated with establishing first contact?  Why do so many experienced salespeople with otherwise superlative skills and abilities develop escape routes to avoid prospecting?

For one thing, there is a fear of the unknown when you prospect.  You do not know how you are going to be received.  This uncertainty alone can be a powerful saboteur.  And of course, there is the fear that you will not be received well that you will get…gasp…rejected!

But there’s more than even a flat-out fear of rejection underlying the avoidance of prospecting.

Call reluctance springs from a combination of three sources:  personality predispositions, hereditary influences, and exposure to others with call reluctance.  In fact, in a surprising number of cases, highly contagious forms of call reluctance are often spread inadvertently by the sales training process itself.  It can also be spread by a sales manager/trainer who suffers from call reluctance.  A sales manager/trainer can actually contaminate the very people he/she intends to inspire.  Courageous managers do not hide behind the management veil.  They take on their call reluctance.  Those are the managers who truly can annihilate call reluctance from their sales force.

Several years ago at a prominent insurance company, I was brought in to facilitate the Fear-Free Prospecting and Self-Promotion workshop and to coach each agent for four weeks following the workshop.  One out of five of the sales managers actually participated in the one-day workshop and also went through the coaching.  The other four were too busy and preoccupied with being managers.  The manager who humbly went through the workshop – his team did far better in their prospecting following the workshop than the teams with “absent” managers.  Today, the manager who went through the workshop is a general manager at a thriving office and the four other managers are still – managers.

There are actually 12 distinct types of fear that can cause salespeople to avoid the prospecting.  It is vital to know which of the 12 types of call reluctance is holding your sales career hostage.  Do any of these sound familiar?

• Doomsayers will not take risks.  This type of call reluctance can be lethal to a sales career.
• Over preparers tend to overanalyze and avoid action.  They’re busy, busy, busy people busy with current clients, admin work, organizing files, studying the latest trends- which keeps them from meeting qualified prospects.
• Hyper-pro salespeople are obsessed with image, but when it comes to their presentation skills, they’re not better than the next salesperson.  They look good, but they confuse packaging with prospecting.
• Stage fright causes many salespeople to default on prospecting that would lead to opportunities to present before groups.
• Role rejection plagues those who are secretly ashamed of any kind of selling.  These are the salespeople who deflect any association with being a salesperson.  They tend to believe that society dislikes salespeople, and they themselves get irritated and annoyed when salespeople solicit them.
• Yielders fear intruding on others. They have a strong need to be liked and are habitually waiting for “just the right time” to make contact.  Of course, that time rarely arrives.
• Socially self-conscious salespeople are intimidated by up-market clients.  They feel inferior in terms of wealth, education, status, or prestige.
• Separationists are afraid to mix business and friends.
• Emotionally unemanciapted salespeople are afraid to mix business and family.
• Referral aversion affects those salespeople who selectively forget to ask for referrals out of fear of disturbing existing relationships.
• Telephobic salespeople are uncomfortable using the telephone for prospecting.
• The oppositional reflex characterizes salespeople who tend to criticize or blame others for what goes wrong with their careers.  Even though they are usually gifted, talented, and intelligent people, they don’t take responsibility for themselves and often don’t get ahead.

A solution for call reluctance

If you recognize yourself in any of these styles, you need not feel embarrassed or ashamed.  But at the same time, you don’t have to go on living with it.  Call reluctance is learned which means it can be unlearned.  Most cases can be arrested or even eliminated.  All can be improved.

The first, but often the most difficult, step in overcoming call reluctance is admitting that you are not prospecting consistently.  Once you’ve admitted that to yourself, you can look at changing your attitudes.  Call reluctance is simply a manifestation of a person’s negative beliefs about prospecting for new business – so overcoming it is all about learning to change your beliefs.

Thought realignment is a very effective tool for changing your thinking.  Look at it this way:  A belief is merely a thought you think over and over and over again.  What you think determines how you feel, which, in turn, determines what you do (or don’t do).  What you do everyday becomes your seemingly intractable habit.

To get past the habits that bind, then, we need to go back to their source – our thoughts.  The human brain is a meaning-making machine.  Before we’ve even reached for the phone to make a prospecting call, we can make up a story about why that person on the other end of the line will not take our call or why they’re not interested.  The key is to stop making up stories that only spiral you into self-doubt.

A very effective way to get started is to capture your self-critical inner voice on paper, in your own handwriting.  Do you recognize this voice, this internal saboteur that must be defused?  It says things like, “I don’t want to intrude,” or “they will just say no,” or “they are already using another salesperson.”

Once you capture these negative statements on paper, write realistic responses to your inner critic’s claims.  Engage the internal voice in written dialogue.

For instance, you might counter with, “The service I provide is valuable.  It is great to be able to assist people who need my expertise.”  “I have clients who believe in me.”  These prospects may not be happy with their current vendor.”  “This prospect may turn into a great referral source.”  Recognize the goal-obstructing statements and counter them with goal-supporting statements.

In the end, your success or failure as a salesperson depends on your willingness to meet enough new prospects to achieve your revenue goals.  If you want to succeed, you must commit to prospecting, and do so with a willingness to overcome any fear surrounding it.  If you want to alter what you do, modify what you feel by changing the way you think.  Create new neuronets around prospecting!  Retrain your brain, and watch your business grow.

Rick was recruited into his company by one of the best and brightest managers in the industry.  He was a qualified financial advisor and was highly motivated to build a strong business.  His manager made it clear that the majority of his time initially would be spent on prospecting activities.  Rick buckled down and did everything his manager recommended.

Rick had appointments with his centers of influence, friends, and family.  He asked for referrals on every appointment, spent hours networking with strategic alliances and even cold-walked from business to business.  Because he was driven and focused, he succeeded.

Fast forward six years…

Rick was at ease in his niche and very comfortable in his lifestyle when he learned that his major corporate client was being acquired by a multinational company.  The news sent him into shock and he eventually lost 60% of his business.  It took three miserable weeks to get the final “Thank you: you did a great job” talk.

What happened to Rick’s business?  Since he had stopped actively prospecting for new business at year four, he had no potential prospects in the pipeline to make up for the loss of this major client.  For the next several weeks, Rick went through mood swings, ricocheting from anxiety to optimism, hope to despair.  He was haunted by the question “How will I survive financially?”  He was fearful that he would never get the edge again, and panicked about his future.

At last Rick came to grips with his reality, enlisted his assistant, and created an action plan for prospecting.  But every time he started to pick up the phone, he would put it down, feeling incompetent and inadequate.  His mentor suggested that he may be experiencing call reluctance.  Holy smoke!  That had never occurred to Rick, because he never experienced it initially.  He was determined to push through and make the calls.  But the more he forced himself, the worse it got.

Rick’s lack of prospecting certainly hurt his ability to bounce back from the loss of a major client.  But why was this onetime rookie of the year having trouble getting back on track?  Did Rick have call reluctance, or were there other issues causing his slump?  All production slumps don’t necessarily point to call reluctance. Here are five different issues, including genuine call reluctance that can cause a salesperson to stop prospecting and slip into a production freefall.

1.  Call reluctance

Genuine call reluctance always results in low prospecting activity.  Call reluctance is an emotional hesitation to prospect.

To be successful, financial advisors must be self-energized.  They must have strong goal clarity around meaningful goals in order to build a solid business base.  To be diagnosed with genuine call reluctance, a salesperson must demonstrate sufficient motivation and meaningful goals but nevertheless be experiencing an emotional short-circuit around prospecting activity.  An emotional issue is interfering with his goals. Call reluctance is when the energy that is available for prospecting leaks out into unproductive activities and busy work.

That wasn’t what was happening for Rick.  So if a production slump is not really caused by call reluctance, what is the problem?  The next three items are call reluctance imposters that are often confused with true call reluctance but develop at the goal and motivation level.  They certainly can wreak havoc on your prospecting, but you need to develop different solutions for each one.

2.   Low motivation

Motivation is defined in this context as sufficient physical and psychological energy to productively work through any given work day.  To be an excellent sales producer, a salesperson needs to feel good physically — it is vital.  If someone is not taking care of himself physically through diet, exercise, and sleep, it eventually shows up in his performance.  Excessive drinking or smoking, workaholism, mental trauma, chronic stress, or physical disease can take a toll on your physical energy.  If you’re getting tripped up here, you need to look at what’s zapping your physical energy and rout it out.

3.   Low goal levels

It’s been proven that the higher the goal level, the better the performer.  Perhaps that’s because as you get closer to a goal, a higher level of responsibility is required to reach and then exceed it.  Of course, achieving goals and emotionally connecting to goals is far more important than simply setting them.  Financial advisors who are emotionally connected with meaningful goals will link action and effort with the goal and will overcome obstacles.  They have a dynamic point of action that keeps them focused on their target.

4.   Goal diffusion

Goal diffusion is when a salesperson is scattered and has multiple, competing goals – too many irons in the fire.  It has been proven that the more focused financial advisors are, the more productive they are, the more gratified they are in their careers.

Ironically, today’s modern lifestyle of 24-hour access to everything – not to mention the complicated personal lives many people lead – keeps the average person unfocused and unproductive.  Most advisors are attempting to sustain their production with overloaded circuits.  They aren’t prospecting because they simply have too many things pulling at their attention.

For example, many financial advisors are getting advanced degrees, working on certifications, minding their families, growing their businesses and keeping up with the latest in the market.  They aren’t’ consistently prospecting because they have lost the balance in their lives.  This doesn’t even include the chaos that ensues when divorce or another tumultuous family challenges crop up.  In this scenario, time management issues are really self-management issues.

5.   Integrity issues

Finally, as a coach, I occasionally have a client who finds no resolution to his career troubles even though we’ve scrutinized the obvious performance issues at hand.  It often becomes apparent that this salesperson may be “out of integrity” someplace in their life, i.e. extramarital affair, hiding uncomplimentary habit, etc.  It’s usually something that is on the edge of their value system, and their conscience will not allow them to move forward.  They have an internal battle going on that is costing them dearly.  If you suspect you’re having an integrity issue, you must dig deep and get honest with yourself.  Guide yourself back onto the path you consider right, and break free of the guilt.

The diagnoses

Rick knew he couldn’t pick up the phone but was surprised when he found out that he suffered not from call reluctance, but low goal level and low motivation.  First off, he came to terms with the fact that he had gained 33 pounds and was not taking care of himself.  While he was aware of some physical changes, Rick hadn’t thought about how detrimental his gradual loss of physical energy was to his prospecting performance.

Second, Rick admitted to himself that he had lost sight of the long-term goals that had sustained him during his first few years.  He let himself realize that his mother’s illness had taken a toll on his outlook.  He had also lost his long-term vision, because he was blinded by the day-to-day activities that sustained his current client base.

If you suspect that like Rick, you may be suffering from a lack of motivation or clearly defined goals, ask yourself these questions for a quick dose of self-awareness.

How do you know if you have low motivation, like Rick?

Low motivation shows itself in these behaviors:

• Satisfaction with the status quo
• No sense of urgency
• Rhetorical goal setting with little behavioral investment in follow-through
• Leaving assignments unfinished
• Letting your appearance go
• Frequently being late for appointments
• Coping with demands for improved productivity by ignoring the issue
• Changing companies
• Working hard but in short bursts
• Feeling drawn to short, sensational sales trainings with titles like “How to Read Your Client’s Mind in 20 Seconds”
• Being all talk and no action

How do you know if your goals are too low?

If your goals are inappropriate, you’ll find yourself doing these things:

• Talking long-term but acting short-term
• Working to achieve other people’s objectives but not your own
• Being more interested in the company’s social activities than daily sales performance
• Changing jobs frequently
• Failing to focus on one niche or product
• Hurrying around but having little to show for it
• Giving inadequate or inconsistent services after the sale
• Feeling all dressed up with nowhere to go

How do you know if your goals are diffused?

Here’s what goal diffusion looks like on a day-to-day basis:

• Having high energy but little focus
• Starting many projects but completing few
• Losing interest quickly
• Continually needing novelty, stimulation, and change
• Getting bored very easily
• Being superficially familiar with many products and subjects
• Having a good general overview but lacking substantial product knowledge
• Feeling a loss of control due to over commitment
• Self-starting but having poor follow-through

Look at yourself

If you recognize yourself here and know you are not prospecting consistently, maybe it’s time to have a “spirit talk” with yourself – before you end up on the rocks like Rick.  You must internalize the reality that new clients are the lifeblood of business.  After you’ve had a retreat with yourself, you may want to invest in a diagnostic tool to delve deeper into what is really going on.  You may also want to consider hiring a coach who will not only assist you in ascertaining the cause of your lack of prospecting but also help you design a plan of action so you can rejuvenate yourself and your career.

Be consistent but gentle – no criticizing, judging, or punishing yourself. Self-criticism builds a failure image in your mental sphere, will dominate your thinking and gradually makes you a failure.

Design a plan to take care of yourself with diet, exercise, and sleep.  Slow down and take time each day to simply reflect and think.

The good news is that after some serious soul searching, Rick is now working hard to get his new business development activities on track.  It’s amazing how productive you can become when you clean up those loose ends that are creating the chaos in your career.  Awareness in and of itself is a course correction that will bear fruit – if you follow it.