An amazing technique for getting over the fear of Cold Calling!

This post might make me sound a bit of a weirdo, but I'm cool with that, because I am

A few nights ago I read about a weird technique to overcome procrastination and that feeling of being afraid to make mistakes, and feeling really self conscious.

As i know a lot of offline warriors, or would be offliners, have a fear of cold calling or just making the initial move to speak to a business owners, I thought I would share this amazing technique.

I honestly couldn't understand why on earth this technique would work, so,

I did some reseach...

Sure enough, this strange technique has supposedley helped hundreds of people feel more in control of their lives. And I am willing to bet it will help all the warriors who fear picking up the phone to make a call to a shop owner.

So I thought I would try it myself...

A few nights ago I walked into a newsagents, to buy a pack of chewing gum.

I laid the chewing gum on the counter, the rest of the conversation went like this:

Shopowner: "Would you like anything else?"
Me: "Yeah, actually, can I get a 42 inch TV." (straightfaced, and my heart pounding)
Shopowner: "What?"
Me: "can I get a 42 inch TV?" (A little more indignant)
Shopowner: "You're in a newsagents mate!"
Me: "You don't sell 42 inch TVs, what about a 37 inch TV?"
Shopowner: starts to laugh, "We don't sell TVs, we're a newsagents,
we sell newspapers."
Me: "Ah, okay, I'll just take the chewing gum then."

When I walked out of the shop I felt great, it was like a power surge. I don't know why, I just did.

Apparantly you are meant to try it three times within a few days to get the maximum effect.

Why does it work?

The technique was used to get someone over procrastinating about
doing his PhD thesis and was written about in the book called 'Change'
(by Watzlawick, Weakland & Fisch) and now it's spreading out to the NLP
community. I read about it from a guy called Jamie Smart who calls it "The Pizzawalk Experience"

Here is Jamie Smart's reasons why it works:

"Our central nervous system is set up to protect us from dangerous situations. Many of us have been heavily conditioned against making mistakes (by teachers, parents, peers etc.) and code mistakes as dangerous. Yet making mistakes is an incredibly important part of learning, growing and exploring. A willingness to make mistakes is an absolute must for anyone who wishes to become skilled. The Pizza-walk Experience seems to help you eliminate this unhelpful response."

So your homework, should you choose to do it now, is to go into three shops and make an absurd request, like:

Going into a pizza shop and ask for a Big Mac meal
Go into a newsagents and ask for a vacuum cleaner
Go into a shoe shop and asking for a fancy dress costume

you get the idea..

you have to trust me on this, I know it sounds totally weird, crazy and a bit mental, but I would urge you to try it, it will get you over so many of your inhibitions about cold calling.

if you do this please send me an email to let me know your experience, as I would like to write a blog post about this.