Overcoming call reluctance
If you want to win awards and bring in those big commission paydays, you've got to win the call-reluctance battle. This guide will show you how.
One of the biggest barriers to progress in any real estate career is call reluctance - that inner resistance in all of us which stops us from picking up the phone as often as we should.
We all know we should make more phone calls. We understand that if we want to be successful it's imperative we proactively connect with potential clients. We all want to ring our database, our past appraisals, neighbours near our current listing, past open home visitors and owners in our farm area. There is an endless list of people we could call. But at the end of the day, that inner resistance is a powerful force.
Whatever the internal logic behind your inner resistance: Fear of rejection, not wanting to bother people, shame at not being in touch sooner, fear they won't remember who you are, or concern they'll be pissed off, the end result is always the same: not making enough calls. And when we don't make the calls we know we need to make, it jeopardizes our chances of reaching our income goals.
So how do we overcome call reluctance?
First, you need to understand that you are not alone. Everyone experiences call reluctance on some level. It's human nature to procrastinate and find any distraction to help us avoid doing what we know we should do when that task doesn't have a fixed deadline and when it involves going outside our comfort zone.
Action step: Accept that call reluctance is normal and natural, and it doesn't make you weak, or ill-suited to real estate.
In fact, the more empathetic you are as a person, the more likely you are to experience call reluctance. Why? Because you're thinking ahead to how the person on the other end of the phone call is going to feel before you ring. But remember, empathy is a good quality. It makes you better at understanding your client's needs and supporting them through a highly stressful period of their lives. You just need to make sure that empathy doesn't stop you from achieving your goals!
Secondly, we need to understand the nature of the beast:
Overcoming call reluctance is a battle we need to fight (and re-fight) every single day.
One good day of making calls is great, but as we all know, it's easy to fall off the wagon quickly and return to our normal operating mode - which is to avoid stepping out of our comfort zone at all costs.
If you want to smash it in real estate. If you want to be winning awards and bringing in those big commission paydays, you gotta win the call-resistance battle more days than not.
You don't have to be perfect, and you don't have to win every single day. But you do need to show up consistently and be ready to fight.
So now, let's go through specific tips to help you overcome call reluctance. Print these off and post them above your desk - somewhere you will see them every day.
Don't miss tip no.11 which contains opening line scripts for different types of contacts (neighbour, past client, open home visitor etc.).