Have you ever gone to great lengths to avoid receiving a call? Sometimes, there’s no way around it – especially if you work in a business setting. If you dislike making phone calls, you’re not alone. Many people don’t like making or receiving phone calls, but if you suffer serious anxiety from it you may have a condition called telephobia.
Telephobia is the reluctance or fear of making or taking phone calls and affects up to 76% of millennials and 40% of baby boomers.
Read on to learn how to overcome telephobia, whether you suffer from it yourself or are a business leader seeking for methods to help your team improve their phone abilities.
Practice
In the modern age where text messaging has become more common than the standard phone call, you may just be out of practice! Giving yourself extra exposure to talking on the phone can help you gain the confidence you need to sustain an effective phone conversation.
Gain more phone confidence by making low-risk calls to happy clients or phone old friends or business partners to catch up.
Prepare
Just like practice makes perfect, so does preparation. When you’re apprehensive about a phone conversation, you’re likely to become muddled and forget a few essential things from your pitch or consultation. It’s critical to plan ahead of time before making a call and write down important notes for easy referencing.
Taking notes before, during, and after your phone calls can be extremely beneficial to you or potential clients. You might learn about a customer care staff that isn’t meeting expectations, a product issue or technical glitch that needs to be fixed, a new company initiative or opportunity, or even a collaboration with ROI potential.
Use this printable note sheet that will help keep your topics of discussion in order, making the conversations more efficient, focused, and meaningful.
Trick Your Brain
It’s common to urge yourself to “calm down” when your heart starts to race or you get those pre-call butterflies, but have you noticed it doesn’t really help?
A better strategy is to trick your brain into thinking it’s exciting. Feeling calm is a low-arousal state of mind while feeling nervous or anxious is associated with high arousal. The feeling of excitement is also associated with high arousal, so it’s easier to tell yourself you are excited rather than calm.
Individuals who reframed their anxiety as exhilaration felt more enthusiastic and performed better in a research conducted by the American Physiological Association than those who sought to calm down. All they had to do was employ simple tactics like stating “I am excited” out loud or writing messages to themselves like “Get excited” before the big event to trick their brains into feeling excited.
Start Smiling
If you have telephobia, you may experience a weak voice, loss of breath, or even stumble over your own words while performing a phone call. When things like this happen, it can make you sound and feel more nervous.
Since your tone of voice is essential for making a good impression, try smiling before making and receiving calls. Although it may appear silly, studies have proved that others can truly “hear” your smile. This can help you express a sense of friendliness to the person you’re speaking with, as well as the idea that you’re confident in what you’re saying.
Not only does smiling make you sound more confident, but it also makes you feel happy, according to research. When you’re happy, it’s easier to relax and concentrate on the task at hand.
Phone anxiety can impact you in both your personal and professional life, so it’s important to find ways to conquer your fear. Sometimes non-verbal communications such as live chat or text work best, but if phone calls are the only option, consider hiring a virtual receptionist to take on answering your calls so you can focus on other aspects of your business that your skills are better suited for.
To learn more about telephobia and ways to overcome it read this infographic below.
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