MLM and Phone-Phobia.

With so much advice on the internet it’s very difficult to see the wood from the trees.

There are auto lead machines ranging from Twitter to PPC, the social networks like

Facebook and Myspace not to mention the video YouTube & Metacafe
and also not forgetting “Magnetic Sponsoring”

All these and many more when used properly create leads for your business

But what is a lead? (clue:- we are all leads to someone)

A lead is a real live person,
And people have to be spoken to if you want them to join your team

You will have heard the term “people join people” and it’s so true.

This really good interview with Mark Weisser and Mike Dillard explains this far
better than I could and if you have not seen it then you are missing a few insights into MLM.

In the last two minutes of this interview they both admit to initially
not being comfortable on the phone Mike even says that his Phone Fear,
stalled his business for four years.

Mikes advice now is, get on the phone and burn though a thousand leads.
But Mike actually overcame his Phone Fear by getting a job recruiting
surgeons where he had to make 300 calls a day.

But if you don’t have a thousand leads to burn through or the option of changing your job,
may be Mark’s advice would suit you better.

“Be willing to grow a little bit”
Buy books “think and grow rich” is a good one to start with,
there are classes and courses that you can take, Dale Carnegie and things like that.

With all due respect to Mark but I’ve looked on the internet for classes and courses
for overcoming fear of the phone but with no luck at all and the nearest
Dale Carnegie training course I could find was
Getting Rid of the Fear and Horror of Public Speaking $1595 .
(great title)

Which leads me nicely into

My Story

I know all about fear of the telephone I was a real Phone Phobic when it
came to business cold calls.

Those that do suffer from Phone Fear know that it’s real.
(How many tens of thousands of quality leads generated by Magnetic Sponsoring have gone uncalled?)

Many years ago I worked for a company called Hambro Life Assurance
and as well as working your warm market and centres of influence

Yes we had to make cold telephone calls to get appointments

But presented with a list of people and told 
“just give these a ring and see if they want any  insurance today”

I froze!!

I remember my manager taking me into his office for some private tuition

Ok Steve let me show you how it’s done, so he  got my list,
dials the first number and bang he’s off,

Hello my name is Ian Sinclair and I am calling you today to
arrange an appointment etc etc

Five calls later he had made two appointments; he gave me the list back

Saying, there you are Steve that’s the way to do it. 

Was he more intelligent than me--No?
Was he better educated than me---No?
Was he more ambitious than me---No?

What he had was the confidence,
that at that time only came from experience. 

Did his lesson help me? Absolutely not!

It made me feel inferior and angry with myself.

To the very few this confidence comes naturally

I stayed with this company for a while but only because I was able
to bring in business via personal contacts and referrals. 

I was still pushed to make the cold phone calls,
did I? well yes I did

But very very few. 

My telephone technique was along the lines of—

I am just calling to confirm that you don’t want to see me do you,
with this introduction you are guaranteed not to be rejected.

You are also guaranteed not to make any money.

During my time with this company I remember being sent on two telephone training courses.

Both where for a Phone Phobic, things that nightmares are made from.
They were of similar formats,

Learn a script.
Split the class into two groups,
one group going to another training room.

A tutor with each group and we took it in turns to make calls to the other group. 

Did this work for me?

I was in a group that knew exactly what I was meant to be saying
calling a person that knew exactly what I was meant to be saying
and being over looked by a tutor as well. 

What do you think?

I even remember being videoed on one course!! 

So there I was back in the office with my list.

I quit the job.

The Happy Ending

Two years later I was part of a small team of consultants that was brought
into a large company to see what improvements could be made.

One area for improvement that was identified was inter departmental communication
and that became my project.

Now that’s a good illustration of British logic, put a phone phobic in charge
of improving communications.

You have probable guessed already what the problem was, people did not like using the phone.

Every desk had a phone every supervisor had a phone there was a phone on the loading dock
a phone at the end of every production line the internal telephone directory was pages thick
but people where used to sending internal memo’s and only picked the phone up and talked
to people they already knew.

So the Phone Phobic leapt to the rescue with the wonderful idea of getting
everybody used to using the phone.

I expect that I was the correct person for this task because

I don’t come from the “just tell them to make the calls and their fear will go away” school of thinking.

I come from:- “tell me to make calls that I don’t want to
and I’ll quite this job and find another one” school of thinking.

So I set up a little course where everybody in the company had to call
10 people that they had never spoken to before and introduce them selves
they all had a check sheet and had to enter comments about how their call was received
and the person receiving the call also had to make a couple of notes about the call.

This actually turned into a lot of fun the only person excluded from receiving calls was the M.D/CEO
but he in fact made over 100 calls introducing himself
to cleaners/janitors, loading bay staff, staff in the computer room just people all around the company.
Also some of the Directors/VP’s received more than their fair share of calls,
well you can understand that, you can just see Bill in maintenance being dared by his work mates
to call the Director of Finance and then coming off the call and saying
“he was very nice really he spoke to me just like a normal person”

So what had I done?

I had removed the fear of rejection

I gave them a couple of opening lines, such as:-

Hello Mr XXX I’m “Bill” from “Maintenance” and I have been working here for “10” years

For the Five days we ran this, things did get a little chaotic but it was a lot fun
and yes some of the Directors
and a few girls in accounts did seem to receive more than their fair share of calls.

But the outcome was that three weeks after the exercise was over
interdepartmental telephone communication had increased and the amount of memos had decreased.

This was not just a case of people calling the same people that they had during
the exercise but having found out that people are inherently friendly
I had removed their fear of the phone

The lesson I had learnt was that when in a controlled environment getting people to call strangers
is easy and when the control is removed the confidence to be able to call strangers remains.

As I had developed the course I had a duty to take part in it and
I do recall the first two or three calls did feel a bit strange but
after that it was just fine no one could reject me, that wasn’t in the rules.

And from that day to this I am free of Phone-Phobia

all the books, tapes and videos in the world are no substitute for making this discovery for yourself

I guess this where I should apologize to Mike Dillard and the rest of you
that have struggled with Phone-Phobia or as Mike calls it phone fear.

Because I designed and ran this course in 1982 

and until last year it was not thought of again now I have breathed life
back into it and it has been reborn as Phone-Phobia training now a lot more
sophisticated than my 1982 version but with the same aims.

To get people over their Phone-Phobia so that they can move on and make their dreams come true.

Thanks for reading my little story

Steve Vale

Phone-Phobia.com