Predicting the Hang Up: How Sales Fear Fulfills Itself | Donald C. Kelly - 2046

The phone rings, they pick up, and before you've said a single word, you've already decided how this call is going to go. In this solo episode, I break down a pattern I see constantly in sales reps, including myself in the past. We walk into calls expecting rejection, and that expectation changes our behavior enough to actually cause it. The Prospect Isn't Reacting to Your Offer; They're Reacting to You Sociologist Robert K. Merton gave this phenomenon a name, "the self-fulfilling prophecy," a false belief that causes the exact behavior that makes the belief come true. Your expectation shapes how you act, and the other person responds to how you act, not to your actual intention or your offer. When a rep assumes a prospect is annoyed or uninterested based on nothing more than a hunch, that assumption changes their tone, their pace, and their confidence, and the prospect picks up on all of it. Where This Shows Up Most in a Sales Call Pricing is a major one. A rep starts offering a discount before the buyer has said a word about cost, which quietly signals the product isn't worth the full price in the first place. Email openers are another. Starting with "sorry to bother you" or "I know you're busy" trains the prospect to treat you like an interruption instead of someone trying to solve a real problem for them. Discovery calls suffer the same way. Reps skip the deeper questions because they assume the buyer won't want to answer them, and those deeper questions are usually exactly where the real insight lives. Follow-Up and Demos Take the Hit Too Some reps don't even book the follow-up call because they've already decided the prospect is going to ghost them, which kills the deal before it ever had a real chance. During demos, the same fear shows up as rushing through slides because a rep assumes the buyer is bored, when in most cases that assumption is just wrong. I had this happen recently on a client call. I assumed the prospects weren't engaged, but they were actually just muting themselves out of courtesy while discussing something privately on their end. Why We Do This to Ourselves Predicting rejection in advance is a defense mechanism. It hurts less when the rejection actually happens because some part of you already expected it. A bad call or two can quietly overgeneralize onto every prospect after it, even when the next person has nothing to do with what happened before. A lack of preparation makes this worse. Showing up to a call without enough research or practice leaves a rep feeling shaky, and that shakiness gets mistaken for a sign the call is doomed. How to Break the Pattern Separate the data from the story. Ask yourself what the prospect has actually said or done so far, and if the honest answer is "nothing yet," you're reacting to a story you made up, not to reality. If a prospect sounds off on the call, don't assume the worst. You can simply ask whether now is a bad time and offer a short version of your pitch instead, which hands control of the conversation back to you. Slow down on purpose. A calm opener earns far more attention than a rushed one, because rushing signals inexperience, while a steady pace signals quiet confidence. Prepare Like the Outcome Depends on It, Because It Does Know your opener and your first two questions so well that nerves never get the chance to take over, and practice them out loud until they feel automatic. Walk into every call expecting the best-case scenario instead of the worst, treating each prospect like they could become your best client, because that energy is genuinely palpable through the phone. Your prospect will often meet you at your own level of confidence, so the energy you bring into the call tends to come right back at you. The Five-Call Challenge On your next five calls, write down the negative outcome you're expecting before you dial, then write down what actually happens afterward. Most reps who try this find the gap between what they feared and what actually happened is much bigger than they expected. Once you can see that gap clearly, it gets a lot harder to keep walking into calls assuming the worst. "Stop writing the rejection, and start writing the progress." — Donald C. Kelly Resources Have a story about catching yourself in this pattern? Send me a message on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldckelly and let me know how it worked out. Want coaching on building a repeatable opener and call process? Check out our Sales Mastermind https://thesalesevangelist.com/sales-mastermind/. Sponsorship Offers This episode is brought to you in part by Hubspot. With HubSpot sales hubs, your data tools and teams join a single platform to close deals and turn prospects into pipelines. Try it for yourself at hubspot.com/sales https://www.hubspot.com/products/sales. This episode is brought to you in part by LinkedIn. Are you tired of prospective clients not responding to your emails? Sign up for a free 60-day trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator at linkedin.com/tse https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/cx/20/09/sales-navigator-podcast?src=re-pod&trk=tse&veh=tse&mcid=6897323946090332160. This episode is brought to you in part by the TSE Sales Foundation. Improve your connection on LinkedIn and land three or five appointments with our LinkedIn prospecting course. Go to the salesevangelist.com/linkedin https://tsesales.typeform.com/to/UCMfjZbX. Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey http://thesalesevangelist.com/survey. https://tsesales.typeform.com/to/lc5yAa8P We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sales-evangelist/id788738885, Google Podcast https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3RoZXNhbGVzZXZhbmdlbGlzdC5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Jzcw?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj5kaXI3Pj2AhVKcjABHW5PDVwQ9sEGegQIARAC, Stitcher https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-sales-evangelist-sales-trainingspeakingbusiness-marketingdonald, or Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/1NjzsFjQwVrgboUfDvbzd5?si=LdQOJDc1T-WBPMxr1h3RsA. Audio provided by Free SFX, https://freesfx.co.uk/ Soundstripe https://soundstripe.com/, and Bensound http://www.bensound.com/. Other songs used in the episodes are as follows: The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and produced by Brightseed and Hill.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you in part by the following TSC sponsors.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  You don't become the world's most valuable women's sports franchise by accident. Angel City Football Club did it with a little help from HubSpot. When they started, data was housed across multiple system. HubSpot unified their website, email, and fan experience in one platform. This allowed their small team of three to build an entire website in just three days. Three days. The results, nearly 350 new signups a week and 300% database growth in just two years. Visit hubspot.com to hear how HubSpot can help your team grow better.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  LinkedIn Sales Navigator is just plain awesome. Think about everything you need help with in sales. Finding the right buyers, prioritizing the right accounts, reaching out with the right message at the right time. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is built to help with AI-powered recommendations and real-time account insight. It helps you spend less time searching and more time selling with focus and confidence, all powered by LinkedIn's network of over 1.2 billion professionals. It is the most dynamic buyer network. Accelerate your sales with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Try it free for 60 days at LinkedIn.com/sell. Terms apply.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you in part by Blue Mango Studios. Imagine using a podcast as a lead generation source, not only attracting your ideal customer, but entertaining them and getting qualified leads. To find out more, go to bluemangostudios.com.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  So here's a problem that I find oftentimes is the sales rep you call a prospect. You tell yourself a story in your head before they even pick up. You anticipate they're going to hang up on you. And then all of a sudden, things just start falling apart. You start speeding up, you start getting nervous and you skip over context. The pitch doesn't make sense anymore. And then the prospect clicks and hangs up on you and you tell yourself, you see? They don't want to talk to me. They hung up. The pitch is not the issue. The prospects do want to talk to you. The problem is it's you in your own head. And I'm going to give you a process of how you can get past it and fix that. Check this out.

• 2:36Speaker 00

  Hey, hey, hey, everyone. Welcome to another great episode of the Sales Evangelist Podcast. I'm your host, Donald C. Kelly, the Sales Evangelist. And I'm so excited for another great episode. I'm so excited to be here with you today. And on this episode, we're going to be talking about what you do when you find yourself in a situation, a conundrum like this, where you're reaching out to the prospect. You're anticipating what they're going to say. And unfortunately, that anticipation is focusing on the negative things and that leads to your behavior. I'm going to give you some ideas of how you can get past that. But if this is your first time listening to our podcast, thank you so much. In each of our episodes, my goal, very simple. I want you to be able to learn principles and strategies that can help you to close more deals, build stronger pipeline and to be a happier camper.

• 3:20Speaker 00

  Now, if you have been listening for a minute, I appreciate that. Take this episode and share it with one other person. But let's dive into this thing. Let's go straight in because this is a lot to unpack, especially with this one today. So here's the first thing that I find when it comes with salespeople. There's a, this is, it's something that I have done. So I know exactly what we're talking about. And this is a phenomenon that I see with a client that I'm working with right now. So sociologist, Robert Merton calls it the self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a false belief that causes behavior that makes the belief come true. Psychologists calls the two-person version behavioral confirmation. So here's their explanation about this. Your expectation shapes how you act, which we know that.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  And the other person responds to how you act, not to your intention. So the key here is that you need to understand the prospect wasn't reacting to your offer. They were reacting to your energy. And don't come and tell me, well, this is not, this is hocus pocus or this stuff ain't true. It is true because I've seen it firsthand with sellers. They called a prospect in their minds, the last two calls, the prospect may have just, you know, been in a bad mood or whatnot. So they said, the prospects are not listening. They don't want to hear the offer. So what starts to happen is that they rush. They start skipping over words, start skipping over processes. And then all of a sudden, the deals fall apart. I had this. I had it personally myself and it was almost felt self-fulfilling.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  But then when I realized I needed to calm down, I need to follow the context, follow the messaging. And literally it made a difference. The prospect weren't all in a hurry. And if they were, I calmed them down by me taking my time and not anticipating that the deal was going to go, that the things were going to go wrong. So where reps find this happen oftentimes, it's usually with pricing. So you start discounting before the buyer even ever says anything about discount. But because you anticipate that they're not going to like the price or whatnot, you start giving them, telling them that you can get a discount, which treat them, that tells them that this is not worth it, which tells them that they need to treat you like you're bothering them. Now, where you see this sometimes is throughout the sales process, but in particular, when it comes to pricing.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  So discounting specifically, before the buyer, every even gives an objection, the salesperson is like, but before they even know it, starts saying, well, I think it's too expensive in their heads. So they start telling the buyer, you know, we can give you a discount.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  Mistakes That Made Me, hosted by Iman Ismail, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Mistakes That Made Me is the podcast that asks extraordinary business owners to share their biggest business mistakes. So you know what not to do on your road to success. Join Iman Ismail as she chats with some of the smartest minds in business about how to push through failure and accept it as an important and necessary part of building a business. Because it turns out your biggest business mistakes often lead to your biggest lessons and then your biggest blessings. One of the latest episodes that just totally resonated was ignoring my cash flow. Almost cost me my business and many of us can relate to that.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  If you run a business, sometimes you kind of not focus on the most important thing. The guest was Sandra Booker. Iman has amazing insights and amazing guests, and I highly recommend you check out the podcast. Listen to Mistakes That Made Me wherever you get your podcasts.

• 6:51Speaker 00

  Email is also a big one where I see this as well, where the opening line starts with some kind of apologetic crap like, I'm sorry to bother you, or I know you're busy, which tells a prospect that they need to treat you like you're bothering them. No, I am trying to help you solve a problem, the business problem that you have. Now the discovery is where we see this again, they skip over deeper questions because they assume that the buyers won't want to answer them. So they don't even ask that. That's where the money is at. When you ask those questions, that's where the prospect divulge and give you more insights and information that you sometimes are missing. So you can't do it. You can't make a decision for the buyer and take away their agency. Because oftentimes, your behavior is a false outcome and it's not what the buyer would do.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  Two more areas where we see this is a follow-up. Not following up because they assume the prospect's going to ghost us. I'm not even going to book the appointment because they're going to ghost us. So I'm not even going to actually do it. So the deal dies before you even get started. You see how this ridiculous this is? Now, when you talk about it out loud, how dumb it sounds, but it happens to all of us. And I don't care who you are, in our head, we go through this motion. Now, the last one is the demo. So you rush through the slides because you think they're bored. I had a situation where this was recent. I was working with, again, this client and I was on one of their calls with their prospect. And I anticipated that the deal was going to go, the person weren't paying attention, that they didn't necessarily care. Turns out, they just didn't want to bother, want to be too loud because they're muting me

• 8:17Speaker 00

  as they were talking about, muting themselves as they were talking to each other about the situation when I shared a point. So when I, you know, when we stopped for breathing and then I asked them a question, they were able to respond and explain what was happening on their side. But if I anticipate that they're not paying attention and just rush through it, I would have missed over some of the vital things. Don't ever make the assumption for the buyer. You need to make sure, don't ever assume. We talked about this on past episode. Get them to share it. So here's why we do it. This protects our ego as a salesperson. If we predict rejection, it hurts less than when it actually does come. So then when our mind, this is going to go wrong. So then it does go wrong and then we say it's true. You saw that it went wrong.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  Bad, past bad calls. And this get overgeneralized onto the next person who did nothing wrong. So the, and I had a sales trainer that told me once, he always used to tell us, your past call has no bearing on the next one. And we see the same thing in sports. Sometimes you have kids that have a really bad game or really bad inning. And then all of a sudden, they think the next one is going to be bad. My soccer coach used to always say, it's zero, zero. Always start off with zero, zero. And the same thing with a prospect. When you come with a new prospect, you can't come with that anticipation that same situation is happening here because it's totally different scenarios. And you need to not take away people's agency or their opportunities. Lack of preparation. So you show up with lack of confidence. And that's where you see this often is where I may not have done enough research

• 9:47Speaker 00

  and there's no excuse with AI now, where I didn't come to the call prepared. And now I feel like this is not going to go right. Or you just like feel overall that it's, you have a bad day. So because you have a bad That you feel that all your prospects are having a bad day. And that's not the case oftentimes. It's stuff that you need to fix. It's going on between your own head. So here's how you stop it. So one of the things I want to tell you to separate the data from the story. So what does this mean? What did the prospect actually say? Or what do they actually do? If the answer is nothing yet, you're reacting to a story. And that's a simple thing that you can look at. So if they do answer a phone and they're like sighing like, or they feel like there is a negative energy. Still, dude, you're in charge here.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  Calm down, just do, just keep going. Sis, you got this. You're a professional. You've done this before, sis. Just keep calm down and calm the prospect down. You can ask them. And if they tell you that it's not, if you anticipate it, you can ask them if they validate that. Yeah, it's, you know, it's not a good time. Say, can I tell you in 30 seconds what we do? And you can decide if we should have another call. And that takes, you get control back of the situation at that point. And I find that to work oftentimes. But just breathe, stay calm and go through the process. You have a process, I assume. And if you don't, feel free to reach out to us at the Sales Evangelist and our team can coach you on helping you. You can join our next sales mastermind where we can guide and help sellers with their focus and their, their plans. So they can be successful.

• 11:18Speaker 00

  Ask, don't assume. So this one is, I just kind of mentioned this. Did I catch you at a bad time? Or do you have 27 seconds for me to share why I called? Let them tell you instead of you deciding that it's them. Like that makes the change of the game.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  Think about all the things you wish you had help with in sales. Finding the right buyers, knowing which account to prioritize, reaching out with the right message at the right time. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is built to help with exactly that. It uses AI-powered recommendation to surface leads and accounts that match your goals. So you spend less time searching and more time selling. You get real-time account insights that help you grow your pipeline, personalize outreach, and stay informed about buyer activities. It can't replace the work of selling, but it gives you the data and visibility to sell with more focus and confidence. That's what we need. All of this is powered by LinkedIn's network of over 1.2 billion professionals.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  The most dynamic buyer network working just for you. Accelerate your sales with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Try LinkedIn Sales Navigator now with a free 60-day trial at LinkedIn.com/sell. That's LinkedIn.com/sell. Terms and conditions apply. Since 2013, we launched this podcast. The goal of the podcast was to share wealth of information and I feel that we've successfully done so. As a natural byproduct, listeners like you would reach out and ask, could I coach them? Could I train their team? Could I come and speak in an S K O? Could I consult for them? And that is how we gain the majority of our business and still to this day.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  So in 2019, one of our clients saw what we did and asked, could we do that for them? We experimented with it and we started a podcast production agency. Now we create podcasts for some of the biggest brands in the world and it's amazing. I would love to show you and your team how we can create podcasts for you and use it as an entertaining source, but also educational and a lead generation. If you're interested, go to blumangostudios.com. Again, blumangostudios.com and our team can show you exactly what we did. It's amazing.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  The other one that I love to tell sellers is slow down. Just slow down, pace signals. Like that gives confidence. Like when I first started doing my speaking career and got a lot of coaching, one of the things I learned was the value of effective pacing and also the value of silence. Like you saw how that felt, right? Like you can use silence. So, but I don't want you to use silence when you're doing an opener or you're doing a cold outreach opener. But I want you to just be calm and I want you to, to, to use that calming, slow down on purpose because that can help you. A calm opener earns much more time than a rushed one. Because if you're rushing, they feel like you're either brand new. You don't know what you're talking about. If you're calm, it's that quiet confidence that helps them.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  The next one is to earn the right with preparation. Know your opener and your first two questions so well. So the nerves never hit you. You practice that opener again and again and again and again and again. And you speak to it with confidence. And if you do this in over and over in different scenarios, it makes it so much more easier. When you do have to call that it, you land your messaging so much more effectively that the buyer feels like, I at least got to listen, right? The next thing I want to tell you, expect the best case scenario. So don't go with this worst case scenario. Expect what's going to happen. And if you think like this, we've talked about this on many different episodes and you've seen this on in just in, in the world, in so many different areas of our lives. Like you gotta behave the way that you want it to come out, the outcome.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  So you anticipate that it's going to do well. Expect the best scenario. So you're walking, assuming they could be the next great client and you act like that. You treat them like they're the number one client and you behave like that. And next thing you know, they feed off of that energy and they start behaving like that. Is that going to happen every single time? No. Is it just like some hogwash? No, it is true. They feel that energy because of the way that you're speaking, your tonality and so forth. That's, that's palpable. So you want to make sure you go in like a best case scenario. This is my best client. Think as if you're talking to one of your best clients and just talk to them. So here's my takeaway. Your prospects will often meet you where you are.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  They'll meet your level of confidence and the confidence you bring is going to be reflective in their behavior oftentimes. So stop writing the rejection for them and start writing that proposal that they're actually becoming the positive. They're an actual client that you can solve their challenges. Oftentimes there is an issue that there is a reason why you're reaching out to this person. So you can go forth and help them. They need what you have to offer. So just go with confidence and do that. So here's a challenge that I'm going to give you. So for your next five calls, what I want you to do, I want you to think about a positive outcome happening from that call. And I want you to see the difference between that and the calls that you had when you went in with that negative bias, that it's not going to work. I promise you, when you go with a positive thinking, it changes the game. I've seen it in myself.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  I've seen it with my clients, but you do have to have a plan though. You must know your opener. And we have episodes to talk about openers and this for permission-based openers and then focusing on value. We have different concepts and ideas and I want you to listen to some of our past episodes so you can see that. And I have some of them linked here. But listen, I want you to thrive. I want you to succeed. I want you to raise your level of thinking, but most importantly, I want you to go out. And if you're watching on, listening to the audio, go onto our YouTube so you can see some more of our videos. And if you're listening on, if you're watching on YouTube, download the audio so you can listen to this. So when you go on your run as well, I want you to thrive. I want you to succeed, but most importantly, I want you to go out and do big things. See you on the next one.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  The Sales Evangelist Podcast is created by the Sales Evangelist Sales Training Organization. It is produced by TSC Studios. Our podcast production manager is Nancy Paul. Our audio engineer is Jershun Obayal. Our video engineer is Dusan Kunado. Guest management is done by Jill Vito and Kristi Virtus. Our content writer is Carlisa Galberith. Our graphic designer is Yurvis Savalia. And I'm your host and executive producer, Donald C. Kelly.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  Sales Podcast Network.