Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog

Calling High fear: does social class play a role?

  

  

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I write frequently on the importance of Calling High, and yes, I've put it in caps for a very good reason. Without constantly making an attempt to reach the highest level executive responsible for your product area, you'll be losing out to your competitors that do call high. It's absolutely critical to becoming a superior sales performer. I just finished doing another of my telesales training courses, this time in Europe with a team selling into the EMEA space. Calling High works just as well there as it does in the United States (it works in Asia, too --- I've tested it). But several of the salespeople in my classes wanted me to drill down a bit on the psychological factors behind the fear of calling high. So I did, and I'm convinced it's got to do with a perception of class structure and "place" in society.

In every class, I ask my students about their backgrounds. Over the years, I can tell you that comparatively few came from an upper class (or upper income) family background. While most were middle class, many came from families that struggled financially. As I've written before, people who had poor financial childhoods often make very good reps, because they've got something to prove. But there's also a psychological issue common to many of the reps that don't come from wealthy families. As children and adolescents, they never associated with CXOs socially as part of their family dynamic. In many cases, their blue collar parents didn't associate with them at work, either, as there was generally a middle management intermediary as a social and business buffer. Talk around the dinner table referred to CXOs as "high mucky-mucks" or other like verbiage, further separating, from a perception basis, the relative social status of the worker vs. the executive. This perception of social separation got passed down to the children (here I'm reminded of Dr. Don Rose's old radio program where he told loads of jokes about "The Boss"). And if any of these children we're discussing became inside sales people, this innate feeling about social separation might have served as a foundation for their resistance to talk to high level executives, and flavored their language in deferential terms ("Is this a good time to talk?") when they did speak to them. The overall result is that many telesales reps have an aversion to calling executives because they perceive that they haven't earned the "right" to call high.

The reality of what goes into making an executive is quite often different than the perception. Most executives I know weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Most of them went to college, but many didn't earn scholarships. They worked their way through school by washing dishes, delivering pizzas, painting apartments, and working at fast-food counters. In other words, they had the same crappy jobs that everyone else had (the jobs that our parents told us "build character"). Because they worked their way up, they have an affinity for others doing the same. And in their own companies, these CXOs have inside sales people doing the exact same job as the reps that are calling them. With a very few exceptions, I've found the higher in the organization the individual is, the nicer he or she is.

So all in all, the inability to successfully call high rests on two issues, lack of technique, and perceived difference in social standing. Training can correct the former, but the latter can only be changed from within. And unless the perception is changed, the opportunity to use those "calling high" techniques will never be put to use. It's all about "breaking the chains." If you recognize yourself in this story, here's a simple exercise I'd like you to try. Next time you're at a company offsite event or meeting, you'll probably have a company-wide social hour or two at a bar. Instead of just hanging out with your friends, walk up to your CEO, introduce yourself and what you do, and offer to buy the exec beer so you can tell him or her why you enjoy working for the company. You might be surprised that he or she will be happy to break away with the exec group for 5 or 10 minutes to talk to you. Team Communication is important to every exec, and they all like knowing what's going on at the prospect-interface level. Talk a little bit about why you like the company, and give one or two concrete examples of what the company is doing right. Keep it positive, keep it light, and take no more than 10 minutes. By talking socially to execs in your own company, you'll often see they're just like you. And you'll be remembered, too. It's a good habit to get into, and you can carry the memory of that conversation right into the next call you make to a CXO. Make it a point to get to know your own company's execs, and add this intra-company social skill to your Best Practices Playbook.