emendatio

Learn how to speak to strangers.

15. Jan. 2009 von Robert Günther in Verbesserung

Part of job being is a Sales rep is a very uncomfortable thing called hunting. It’s so unpleasent for me because it means picking up the phone, dialing a number and talking to a complete stranger. When I started in Sales this seemed to me completely undoable, I was in deep fear of rejection, of not finding the rights word and finally making a fool out of myself. Over time I realized I had to get into the ring and win the fight, either against my ego/ fear or against my boss. I realized that it might be easier to conquer my fear and started looking for a solution.

© Matthey Hains, published at sxc.hu

I noticed that I the entire idea of being rejected or of losing a deal was just an issue in my head, a consequence of a different problem: I felt uncomfortable talking to strangers. And I realized something else: it was quite easy to overcome once identified. As always your good old friend, the internet, held a great collection of tips and guides. This is a summary of what I’ve collected so far, but I bet there is tons of other stuff I missed so far:

A great place to start is wikiHow, the talented people over there wrote some great articles on How to start a conversation and How to talk to strangers; they even explained How to go from introvert to extrovert and How to look approachable.

David Funk vom accociatecontent.com wrote a good article on How to Talk to Strangers in Business. The Socyberty blog explains 7 Reasons Why You Should Talk to Strangers.

Scott H. Young explains How to Meet New People, How to Improve your Social Skills and goes even further to explain How to Overcame Fear in general.

Finally, set a bit apart from the original topic, there’s a great article in the Freakonomics blog which has been published just a few days ago. In it Stephen J. Dubner talks about The Cost of Fearing Strangers and it’s definitely worth reading.

What is your experience on this topic? Are you a natural or did you learn how to speak to strangers?

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Tags: Communication, strangers, talking, Verbesserung