How to Make a Phone Call if You're Nervous

Growing up I was a shy person, and it was a challenge to me when I started needing to make business phone calls for my jobs and later my own business. In this article, I want to share some things that helped me overcome the anxiety of making phone calls.

1) First, try to narrow down why you feel nervous about making phone calls.

Is it that you feel unprepared? Is it a sales situation, and you're wondering how people are going to respond? Knowing the source of the situation will help you develop a plan to overcome it.

2) When you need to prepare, it's best that you either put your main points on a sheet of paper or develop a type of script (in your own words).

This will help you stay on track without sounding like you're a robot. Over time, you'll need this outline less and less and you'll begin to sound very natural. This works best if you're making the same type of phone calls every day.

3) If you're new to sales and hate the idea of people saying "no," realize that in most cases it's a numbers game.

For example, if on average only 1 out of 10 people end up buying a product based on the phone call, you can figure out you need to call about 100 people to get 10 sales. If you think of what you're doing more as a filtering process, it takes a lot of the pressure off because you're still getting ahead no matter what the response. As your confidence goes up, your numbers tend to get better as a percentage.

4) Lastly, realize that practice is the best cure for this situation.

At first you may have to force yourself to make calls, but over time it does get easier. Your skills with develop and help you as well.

More Tips:

• If you have a problem of your throat feeling dry while you're trying to talk, keep a glass of room temperature water at your desk. This will help you from a speaking standpoint more than cold water. I learned this from a public speaker.
• Smile when you talk. Even though the person on the other end can't see you, this automatically makes you sound more upbeat and happy.