How to Quit Worrying and Love the Phone

I'm not gonna lie: I hate the phone. Maybe it's because I'm Gen Y--we're used to emailing and texting, but see phone calls as inefficient. And maybe that's what gets to the heart of it for me; I've spent an hour on the phone before trying to get information from someone that it could have taken ten minutes to gather, if I could only get the person on the other end to quit going off on tangents. I also hate the high-pressure feeling of a phone call. When you email someone, you can think out what you want to say, revise, and make sure your message is really coming across like it should. In a phone call, it's a lot more difficult to control your message.

But still--a lot of clients love the phone. And if you're not readily accessible by phone, it could lose you business. Here are a few things that help when it comes to getting yourself to quit worrying and love the phone.

Get a business line. I don't have a business line now, but I used to--and let me tell you, it made client phone time so much easier. When the business line rang, I knew it was a client--I didn't have to worry about whether I should answer with "Catalyst Writing Services, this is Jennifer" or a plain "Hello" when the phone rang. There's something to be said for being mentally prepared to pick up when the phone rings--and if you don't know whether or not it's a client calling, that can be difficult.

Script it out. Whenever I need to call someone for business purposes, I take a quick minute to write out what I'm going to say and read it aloud. This way I ensure I don't suddenly blank on my own phone number when leaving a message. Trust me, it's happened.

Call when nobody's home. Peter Bowerman advocates a sales cycle that starts with cold calling. Really, I'd rather have my toes bitten off by wild beavers than cold-call anyone. I know my strengths, and phone sales is not one of them.

However, at that 15-Second Pitch seminar I can't quit talking about, the instructor told a story that really struck me--she taught a client of hers who also hated phone sales (a photographer--huh, maybe phone phobia is a creative-person thing) to call at odd hours when she knew nobody was going to answer the phone, then leave her pitch on the answering machine. Not surprisingly, she got a ton of business this way.

I'm still going to communicate more by email than by phone. But hopefully as my business grows, I can find ways to be more comfortable on the phone. Maybe it's not my ideal method of communication--but it's not worth losing business over.