The less information you have the better.

Aug '23 in Content.

Inside your subconscious mind you will have a number of biases and beliefs.

These can cause an issue when you're prospecting on the phone.

For some people it could be seeing that a company is a household name and you're thinking, they'll never buy from us.

It could be seeing someones job title makes you question whether you should call them. What are you going to say to a CEO?

Or it could be seeing previous call notes. Perhaps someone hung up on you and you're reluctant to call them back in case they get a bit shirty.

All of these are irrational.

You don't know whether someone will need your product/service, regardless of company size, or whether someone will be pissed off that you called, until you speak to them.

Very rarely does someone get pissed off that I've called.

When I call someone back 90% of the time they never remember me. Now, you're special. But they won't remember you either.

All of these thoughts are completely irrational.

And this is why you should have as little information in-front of you as possible.

Now you're not going to solve all of these but you can prevent other biases seeping into your thoughts by limiting the information you have in front of you.

I use a spreadsheet with their name, title, company name, date of last contact & phone number in front of me.If I've spoken to them before I'll group all the follow ups together and they will each have one small note.

The notes don't vary that much:

🗒 happy with existing supplier.

🗒 call back in 3 months.

🗒 looking at this in 2 months - [event that is happening at the company].

Too much information and that unconscious bias can filter in.

I'll leave you with one last story on this.

When I first started cold calling most of the prospects on my list were men. One day a woman was on my list, I thought nothing of it.

I called them up and to say they were pissed off was an understatement.

That experience scarred me.

After that I thought all women were going to be like this. For a while I avoided them, it was easy to, there weren't many on my list.

Then I realised how stupid this all was and the only I was going to get over this was to call up another woman.

And so I did. They didn't get pissed off with me for calling.