ONE OF the biggest hurdles salespeople encounter is “call reluctance”–and all salespeople experience it. New producers are afraid they are not qualified to talk to anyone who might answer the telephone; after all, they do not know insurance. Experienced producers can tire of being told “No,” so why bother? Besides, they know a good prospect just by feel. They may not call on others for any number of reasons: They have called on them before without success; they know a producer who has called on them and failed; they know the producer and/or company that currently writes the account and they are invulnerable. The average producer becomes impatient at wading through the “No's” to get the “Yes.” No matter how you slice it, call reluctance stems from not wanting to be told “No.”

A friend of mine once remarked, “I could never be in sales because the rejection bothers me. Good salespeople don't mind.” I immediately told him that nothing could be further from the truth. When salespersons are told “No,” it directly affects their pocketbooks, their standing in their agencies and, in some unfortunate cases, their self-esteem. I assured him that no one minds being told “No” more than a salesperson. Most people outside our profession have the opposite, mistaken opinion. What they fail to understand is that there is a big difference between not minding being told “No” (the common misconception) and the ability to recover quickly from being told “No.”

All good salespeople should mind immensely being told “No.” Questions they should consider asking themselves are: “Why was I told 'No'? What can I do differently to prevent that happening again? How will my next call be different? What can I do to make certain it doesn't happen again for the same reason it happened this time?”