Mention the fear of cold calling and you’re hitting on a problem many recruiters face at some point in their careers. Sales call reluctance, or perhaps more apt: ‘recruiting’ call reluctance; often stems from deep inside the person’s psyche and can be a serious headwind to any recruiter’s career – especially if they don’t acknowledge they have a problem and thus do nothing to overcome it.

Of course these recruiters have excuses at the ready:

“It’s a waste of time calling on companies when no one is hiring!”

“There’s no sense calling software engineering candidates when everyone else is calling them.”

The truth is there are big billers in every market and when asked how they do it, they inevitably say; “I make a lot of calls”. How many? Danny Cahill suggests 60-80 a day.

Sourcing candidates has become easier than ever and reversely, engaging with ‘in demand’ candidates is harder than ever.

Sought after candidates find themselves inundated by; InMails, emails and tweets and as a result seem to ‘repel’ any recruiters attempting to reach out to them. Get them on the phone however and you have a fighting chance. Suddenly it is one human being engaging directly with another. It’s where the metal meets the meat. Now all recruiters need to sell and sell over the phone and that includes in-house or corporate recruiters as well.

In his recent ERE.net article; The End of Sourcing Is Near … the Remaining Recruiting Challenge Is... Dr. John Sullivan puts it this way: “The time is rapidly approaching where nearly every professional and working individual in the developed world can be found by a recruiting function.” and yet “despite the obvious importance of selling, many … recruiters … are not very good at it.”

The ability to ‘effectively’ sell over the phone has become one of the most important skills any recruiter (in-house or agency) can possess. So the ever curious team at RecruitLoot.com decided to speak with Connie Kadansky, an expert in helping people overcome call reluctance. This article and the video at the end of the article are the result.

For over 14 years, Connie has been helping people who must prospect to succeed, learn how to prospect consistently and comfortably. She is often called upon to speak as well as offering training, coaching and performance improvement services specifically addressing Sales Call Reluctance. She has a proven track record with diverse businesses, from entrepreneurs to Fortune 50 companies, nationally and internationally.

Connie describes call reluctance as:

“The emotional hesitation to prospect and self-promote”

She says it doesn’t have to be a problem. In fact most people can overcome their cold call avoidance by looking into what she calls their ‘inner recruiter’. She says the common causes of sales call reluctance are; the fear of self-promotion and not feeling truly connected to the value we provide.

As she assesses a recruiter, she helps them look deep inside at their ‘inner recruiter’ self to search out where their call reluctance is really stemming from. As Connie puts it; “It’s not prospecting that increases their anxiety. It’s their thoughts about it’. Once they get that, they can move on to really dealing with it effectively.

When Connie is working with someone with call reluctance, she gets them to really think about what they bring to the party. She gets them to become deeply rooted in the benefits their prospect gets by dealing with them - financially, emotionally, physically, and even spiritually. She says, once you are truly and deeply convinced of your value, you can’t wait to pick up the phone and be of value to the person you’re calling.

As Connie puts it; “you need to be in alignment with your value.”

According to Connie, most people that are experiencing performance issues are being really negative and hard on themselves - inside their own heads. It is that negative cognition that you need to change if you want to perform better. In other words, dealing with call reluctance is “an inside job”. Changing our behavior by taking control of the little voice we all have deep down inside.

She helps you develop better emotional intelligence so you can change that inner voice into something positive. As she puts it: “No one’s business is going to get better until they change the way they value themselves!”

But how can you change something so deeply engrained inside our inner self?

That’s where Connie really shines.

Coming from a basis in both behavioral science and a fervent belief in the power of the positive, Connie tackles call reluctance by helping people increase their emotional intelligence by learning to speak to themselves in a more positive, encouraging and constructive way.

If you’ve ever been lucky enough to attend one of her awesome webinars, you’ll know she has an arsenal of tools and techniques at her disposal. Inspired by Aaron Helmsley, who used psychological techniques to improve the performance of three US Olympic teams, Connie gets her students to do introspective exercises, consistently.

One of her techniques is to get you to keep a journal. In it she’ll have you do exercises such as keeping a daily record of whenever you see yourself doing something well AND to record the great results that you created.

Connie puts it this way; “Most people are not ready to recognize their achievements unless it’s a major home run. But to make a home run you first need to get to first base. We all need to learn to recognize ALL of our achievements along the way, not just the home runs.”

When you make a call to a hiring manager and they say, “Sorry not interested”, and you overcome their objection and get them to engage in a conversation – you make a note of that in your journal. You celebrate and record that you did really well on that call. Then every day onward you record what you are accomplishing.

Remember, the goal is to increase your emotional intelligence by learning to speak to yourself in a more positive, encouraging and constructive way. After a while you start to gain confidence and the inner voice begins to change.

So like the title suggests; sales or recruiting call reluctance is nothing to be embarrassed about. Living with it is. You too can overcome this obstacle to success and be happier as a result.

Signup at RecruitLoot for a special price for Connie’s upcoming Call Reluctance Workshop and Webinar in May, exclusively at RecruitLoot.com: The HR and Recruiting Store.

The author: Jeff Wood, is a veteran recruiter and Chief Deal Curator at RecruitLoot.com: The HR and Recruiting Store.