Breaking the Sales Call barrier

I started making sales calls this week. My goal was to make ten sales calls. What am I selling and to whom? For my current promo campaign I am targeting wedding photographers. I am selling partnership. I am offering my services as a video editor to any wedding photographer who would like to offload their post-production work so that they can spend their time behind their camera instead of their computer.

I have collated a list of almost 500 photography businesses in GTA and have identified that 168 of those claim (or once claimed) to do wedding photography. In theory, if I call each of those 168 businesses I should find someone who will want to do business with me, yes?

I used some of the tricks I learned at my weekend with Tony Robbins (see Walking on fire) to get myself in the right frame of mind. Change my physiology to change my state - sit up straight, don't slouch; smile, look up and not down.

The first call I made was a wrong number and the second call went to an answering machine and it didn't sound like a business. I didn't leave a message. What if my whole list was garbage? What if I spent the time calling each of the 168 prospects and they all turn out to be wrong numbers? Discouragement started creeping up on me.

Well forget that. Next!

On call number three, the guy I spoke with said, "Yeah, we might be interested in outsourcing when we get busy." Great! Now what's my next step?

Do I sound like I was a little under-prepared? Yes. But I needed to start building momentum. I needed to start building my sales muscle. That's why my initial goal was to make only 10 calls out of 168. What did I learn? I felt as much hesitation before making call #10 as I did before making call #1. I thought it was supposed to get easier with practice. So far it hasn't.

Maybe I need to continue building my muscle.