Mindfulness Tips on Cold Calling
Guest Post by Jovan Vuksanovich
You’ve just completed a call, do your best to let it go by bringing your attention to the reality at hand; the private interval between calls. Ask yourself: “Where am I?”
Look around, scanning details of your environment, especially anything that stands out as just happening. This grounds you in the here and now. Time and thought, accompanying feelings and impressions, are interconnected. They all flow naturally together, spontaneously and ceaselessly. The next person you call is in the same situation. Remind yourself of the old saying: “I’m special, just like everyone else!”
Focus your attention on your breath. There’s a saying in Zen: “The breath sweeps the mind.”
Place the palms of both hands on your belly and feel your diaphragm rise and fall – where you breathed from as a child, not shallow adult breathing that usually sees the shoulders lift and slump, belly area tight and stressed.
While you breathe in, follow your in-breath from the beginning to the end, realizing mind is always present. Breathing in and out, be aware of your body. When your mind is with your body, you are well established in one integrated reality. You are fully alive. Breathe in freshness of the incoming unknown, breathe out whatever you’ve just accumulated, positive or negative. Buddha said: “The source of all suffering is clinging.”
Newly reset, gently remind yourself that calling someone you don’t know, or even someone you do, any familiarity breeds contempt. Completely still from being centered in mindfulness, your intuition will be free to respond to whatever reality greets you with at the other end of the call.
Clients and or prospects live busy lives with good days and bad days, the mixed bag of any business life. Through daily mindfulness practice, you’ll make contact with clients and prospects from a positive space, taking a compassionate leadership role.
All this will be immediately felt in the tone of your voice. Lagging in some cluttered past, no matter how recent, will be instantly perceived by whomever answers the phone. If you have doubt, fear, or hesitation as a result of not being fully present, your voice will betray you. Remember: dogs always bite the same people! A calm voice, as well as one broadcasting even subtle levels of hysteria, are known by everyone. There is no substitute for authenticity.
Listen and respond! Responsibility means “the ability to respond.” Be vigilant and intuitively sequence your information according to the emotional subtext of your listener. Being present is synonymous with being in touch with your totality, including your feelings and by extension feelings of “the Other.”
Visualize “the Other” as Yourself in another physical body. In other words, live by the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I guarantee “the Other” will feel this emanating from your intent.
Once an emotional contact is achieved, you’ll be heard out. I have learned from decades of direct experience selling mindfully, that everyone senses everything. When you strip away all your personal and impersonal narratives accumulated from birth, the childlike openness revealed, includes a marvelous, compassionate insight into all others.
We all start out as guileless children. It truly takes one to know one. The flow from that reliable fact makes selling not only more effortless, but also more efficient and fun! Energizing everyone! This is how you differentiate yourself from the vast majority of clever uninspired “fake it till you make it” manipulators muddling through.
If a call evokes some intense emotion (after you hang up) witness it dispassionately. All mindfulness is about being nonjudgmental and accepting to whatever we experience.
Whatever definition or description you habitually give the arising emotion, like fear, anxiety, depression, doubt; pause immediately, get into observing your breath and gently let go of the labelling.
Mindfulness is the gap between stimulus and response, a free space that can observe without instantly identifying with what can be years and years of conditioning. With practice, you’ll come to experience all these emotions as expressions of one underlying energy that we can simply call life force. Once this happens, you’ll return to a balanced, poised focus more quickly. Because mindfulness practice is also essentially concentration, you can later explore the genesis of what comes up, analyze it, and then set it free.
We take on a great deal involuntarily as we move through life, especially as children. Emotions based on unpleasant or even tragic events can adhere to us so intensely that we then replay them over and over in the theatre of our minds our whole lives. This is not necessary. Through daily practice of mindfulness, the neuroplasticity of the brain can transform destructive, negative patterns deemed permanent, into their opposite. Nothing is set in stone; the enormous benefit of mindfulness practice.
The aim of mindfulness is not quieting the mind, or attempting to achieve a state of eternal calm. The goal is simple: We’re focused on paying attention to the present moment without judgement. Make mental note of your narratives, then simply let them pass. Return to observing the present moment as it is. Our minds habitually get carried away in memories (usually negative ones) and their accompanying obsessing feelings and impressions; so return again and again to the present moment. Also, be kind to your wandering mind. Don’t judge yourself for whatever comes up, just gently bring it back.
There’s growing research showing that when you train your brain to be mindful, you’re actually remodeling the physical structure of your brain (neuroplasticity).
Mindfulness strengthens neural connections. We can build new neural pathways and networks in the brain, increasing concentration, flexibility, and awareness.
About Jovan Vuksanovich
Jovan is our Sales Mindfulness Master Coach. He has an expertise in cold calling that is unparalleled. For 14 years he called on high net worth individuals and filled a room with a minimum of 20 people every two weeks. Jovan also qualified them and turned people away who had less than a million dollars of investable assets. No one else was ever able to meet or beat his record. Jovan synthesizes his knowledge and practice of Yoga and Zen Meditation Techniques, Gestalt Therapy and Mindfulness into sales.
