“Fear has two meanings: Forget Everything And Run, or Face Everything And Rise. The choice is yours.” — Zig Ziglar
I coached an agent — John — with 1,200 contacts sitting in his database and a phone he somehow never quite got around to picking up. He had the list. He had the training. What he didn’t have was a reason strong enough to override the fear sitting underneath it.
Robert Louis Stevenson said “everybody lives by selling something” — and if that’s true, then everybody, at some point, lives with the fear of doing it badly.
What’s actually stopping you from making the call — the script, or the fear underneath it?
What’s Really Going On
Dudley and Goodson’s decades-long study of over 500,000 sales and non-sales professionals found something most agents never admit out loud: at the heart of call reluctance is the fear of promoting themselves or making themselves visible. It’s not a phone problem. It’s a self-promotion problem wearing a phone-shaped disguise. Author Rory Vaden calls the resulting delay “diminished intent” — the gap between deciding to call and actually doing it, where motivation quietly leaks away.
Feeling this one? You don’t have to figure it out alone — book a free High Performance Call and let’s talk through where you’re at.
Why Agents Freeze
- Fear of being pushy or intrusive.
- Fear of rejection, conflict or judgement.
- Poor management of their own visibility.
- Simply not knowing what to say when the call connects.
Six Ways to Beat It
- Get honest about the cost of not calling versus the (much smaller) cost of calling.
- Prepare properly — set the time, the place, the script and how you’ll measure it.
- Reframe rejection as information, not judgement.
- Get into a strong physical and emotional state before you start.
- Call early in the day, before resistance has time to build.
- Start with your easiest calls first to build momentum.
Take action: Tomorrow morning, before anything else, make your five easiest calls first. Momentum solves what motivation can’t.
This is High Performance in its most literal form — the fear doesn’t have to disappear before you act, you just have to act while it’s still there. Diminished intent only wins if you let it.
If you’re ready to pick up the phone with confidence, book a free High Performance Call.
About Jet Xavier
Jet Xavier is a High Performance mindset and accountability coach who works with real estate agents, principals and team leaders to build sustainable, high-performing careers. Learn more about Jet.
This piece began as a column for Elite Agent — you can read the original here.
