The Cold Calling Monster

The challenge

On an NLP Practitioner programme I ran around 2005, Jackie (one of the students) mentioned that she did not like cold calling. She was a successful business consultant offering a leading-edge product, and could have been even more successful had she been able to cold call.

The effect

Although it wasn’t a major issue, Jackie was frustrated at not being able to take her business to the next level. She just felt really uncomfortable making cold calls.

Solution

We were on the section of the course covering ‘Submodalities’. Changing the submodalities of an experience or situation will change the way we feel about it and respond to it. One of the students was doing a submodalities exercise with Jackie, and guided her to think about a work call that she felt comfortable making and then change the cold-calling pictures/sounds/feelings to be the same as those of the ‘comfortable’ call. The process typically takes 10 minutes, including the set up and follow up.

Result

After the NLP exercise, Jackie called herself a ‘cold-calling’ monster, and was able to call large multi-national companies and win 6-figure contracts. This changed the nature of her business, and made the cost of the NLP Practitioner course insignificant.