Have you ever made a call on the phone or in person and asked the person you were calling on “Did I catch you at a good time?”

What response did you get? If you were like me before I learned this new skill to communicate, the majority of the time the person hesitated cautiously and said “It depends.” What if there was a better way to improve your response rate to people wanting to know why you were calling? That’s what I’m going to share with you on this blog today.

Have you ever heard of “Mismatching” before? The majority of communicators have never heard about this and it happens naturally everyday when we talk to someone.

Mismatching is an emotional knee jerk reflex that is a form of disagreement (resistance). It causes people to push back or disagree and take the opposite viewpoint of the communicator. There are different types of “Mismatching” and today I’m going to talk about the one for making calls.

Mismatching could be good or bad depending on the context of your communication.

Mismatching is good when you are carrying on a regular non-sales conversation because the other person you’re talking to wants to add value and contribute something (self-actualize) to the conversation. Imagine if you were talking to someone and they agreed with you on everything. All they said was “Yes, I agree.” You would quickly get tired of them and want to move on to someone who had their own opinion.

In a sales function, “Mismatching” is bad. It drives people away from agreement and that’s what makes sales happen. So knowing that people have a tendency to mismatch, let’s use this in our favor when making calls.

Instead of calling on someone and asking them “Did I catch you at a good time?” (old school technique), ask them  “Did I catch you at a bad time?” and see what happens.

When I started doing this, I was shocked how many more people wanted to know the reason why I was calling. If you want to know more about this subject, read the book “Secrets of Question Based Selling – 2nd Edition” by Thomas Freese. This author will give you the edge when it comes to sales skills for todays economy.

Sheldon