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Making the Phone to Ring

Written by: James Chan

Article Overview: A source of anxiety for most self-employed professionals is that the phone does not ring enough. And it rings, it may not be from potential clients and customers.

Making the Phone to Ring

The great fear of the entrepreneur is to be forgotten. It~{!/~}s bad enough when people know about you, but don~{!/~}t need you. It~{!/~}s worse to feel that nobody is thinking about you at all. You feel like a gadget left neglected in the back of the drawer, still useful, but utterly forgotten. You just want to scream ~{!0~}Get me out of here!~{!1~}

For me, the most powerful trigger for this particular terror is a silent telephone. There are days when I~{!/~}m extremely busy, juggling the work of three or four clients with scarcely a moment to spare, and telephone calls are likely to be a distraction, if not a nuisance. But even on such busy, money-making days, I feel I need a little action from the outside world. If the phone doesn~{!/~}t ring, at least there could be a fax. Where is the UPS lady? The Fedex guy? ~{!0~}Sorry, you have no email messages.~{!1~} How dare you! Doesn~{!/~}t anyone on earth care about me? Then the phone rings, and it~{!/~}s someone who wants to talk about my long-distance calling plan. That interruption only makes the silence more unbearable.

Nevertheless silence, and often a deadly feeling of loneliness, are the frequent companions of the self-employed. It can be just as insidious in good times as bad because a silent office seems to portend lean times ahead. The entrepreneur is never home free.

The phone that rings regularly seems to be an indicator of well-being, akin to a proper pulse rate or a healthy complexion. The phone needs to ring to keep my spirits up, but how do you make it happen?

As a longtime user of direct mail and faxing campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s and now e-mail campaigns, I know that even when I drag sacks full of letters to the post box, there~{!/~}s no guarantee that the telephone will ring. Besides, the first one to call is likely to be a competitor trying to check you out, or a middle manager who responds merely in an attempt to look busy to his superiors. These are troublesome calls that I~{!/~}m happy to do without. Yet even such insidious or exasperating calls often feel better than silence.

It took me close to a decade to discover something that ought to be obvious. The people who will make your telephone ring are people you already know. For me, they can be people I~{!/~}ve met at professional gatherings. They can be people who have attended my seminars, with whom I~{!/~}ve established a rapport. They can be former clients who have moved into other jobs where they don~{!/~}t need my services, but still are happy to talk about their own situations. They can be personal friends I haven~{!/~}t seen in a while.

I used to be reluctant to call such people without an agenda, but I~{!/~}ve discovered that ~{!0~}We haven~{!/~}t talked in a while, and I want to stay in touch~{!1~} works for most people. (Obviously, you can~{!/~}t use it on the same person too often.) Such people nearly always return my calls, and that means that when the telephone rings, there~{!/~}s often someone at the other end I~{!/~}d like to hear from.

Not too surprisingly, these calls sometimes turn out to be useful. On a couple of admittedly rare occasions they have brought me new work. More often, those I~{!/~}ve called have been willing to share information that has proven useful to me. But it~{!/~}s unrealistic to think that making such calls will ~{!0~}pay off~{!1~} in any immediate and quantifiable way.

What they offer is something that the entrepreneur sorely needs, a sense of perspective. They let me get a take on the world from someone else~{!/~}s point of view. They offer a taste of the workplace sociability that is often what those of us who work independently miss most. Having the benefit of others~{!/~} perspectives has a long-term business benefit. It helps me craft promotions to which others might respond. Explaining yourself to someone sympathetic is good practice for making a pitch to someone skeptical. And hearing what others are talking about gives insight into the culture as a whole, which is an antidote to letting the business absorb all our attention.

But I never look to an immediate profit from staying in touch with lots of people. The reassurance of having the telephone jingle on a day when the office feels like a mausoleum is payoff enough.

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Article Tags: complexion, direct mail, distraction, e mail, earth care, email messages, faxing, fedex, fedex guy, frequent companions, lean times, loneliness, long distance calling plan, longtime user, mail campaigns, nuisance, phone rings, pulse rate, sacks, ups



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How do i answer the phone? - I learned this technique from a successful businessman who earns over a million dollars a year. He just uses his name like this... Phone rings... " This is Dwayne..." It kind of throws people off who have a preplanned script and gets right into it. Phone rings... " This is Dwayne..." No Hello, no good morning/afternoon/evening Phone rings... "This is Dwayne..."
Making Money in 2011 - Hello forum members! As we draw closer to the new year I thought it would be appropriate to change the title of our forum category "Making Money in 2010" to "Making Money in 2011" - I'm looking forward to some interesting discussions and wish everyone a prosperous New Year!
Re: Can you read body language and convert it into a sale? - I can definitely read their mood by how they speak on the phone. You can usually also tell by the way they respond to the things you are saying. Phone sales aren't as easy as when you see them in person, but I still believe their tone can tell a lot.
Re: Can you read body language and convert it into a sale? - [quote="mbrand2222":3738chdj]I can definitely read their mood by how they speak on the phone. You can usually also tell by the way they respond to the things you are saying. Phone sales aren't as easy as when you see them in person, but I still believe their tone can tell a lot.[/quote:3738chdj] Hi Mary, Would you have a specific example you could share with us on how you cab turn an unfriendly tone (from a client) into a positive one or even a sale?
Re: Essential Leadership skills - Vision Values Mission Strategic Thinking Decision Making Communication Team Bonding People Development Coaching / Mentoring / Guiding / Grooming Presentation Thanks Robert


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