After a moment’s hesitation…
We’re off again.
This piece is the companion to the original Tumbleweed post in the Lead Generation & Sales section of the Hub https://www.newerafi.co.uk/docs/that-tumbleweed-moment-follow-up/ which addresses what happens when silence follows your messaging and what to do about it. This sequel is about the moment before you do it: the mindset shift that makes the doing possible.
The hesitation is real and it is normal #
Let’s start there, because glossing over it doesn’t help anyone.
The moment between finishing your mailing and picking up the phone to follow up is a real moment. It has a texture to it. A slight resistance. The spreadsheet feels comfortable because it is predictable. The phone represents genuine human interaction and humans are wonderfully, unpredictably themselves in ways that no email thread can replicate.
The hesitation isn’t a sign that something is wrong with you or with your approach. It is simply the recognition that you are about to step into the unknown. And that recognition, when you name it honestly, is the beginning of moving through it.
What helps is not suppressing the hesitation. What helps is reframing it.
What cognitive reframing actually is #
Cognitive reframing; sometimes called cognitive restructuring, is a technique rooted in cognitive behavioural therapy that involves actively altering the way we perceive and interpret events, situations, and experiences. It recognises that our thoughts and beliefs significantly influence our emotions, behaviours, and overall wellbeing. By shifting the frame through which we perceive a particular situation, we change how we respond to it.
A 2023 meta-analysis found that cognitive restructuring significantly improves therapeutic outcomes across a wide range of conditions. But its application extends well beyond the clinical setting. It is the technique behind every successful reframe of a professional challenge, including the hesitation that sits between sending outreach and making the follow-up call.
The most powerful reframe available to anyone in this moment is a single question substitution.
Instead of: “What if they say no?”
Try: “What if they share something valuable that I haven’t considered?”
That shift, from avoidance to curiosity, changes the entire psychological landscape of the call before you’ve even dialled. The first question positions you as the suppliant, hoping for permission. The second positions you as the curious professional, genuinely interested in what the other person is thinking. The conversation that follows from the second mindset is almost always better than the one that follows from the first.
As Marianne Williamson put it: “Our key to transforming anything lies in our ability to reframe it.”
The beautiful moment #
It’s a beautiful moment; the pause before the follow-up, once you know how to read it properly.
Because once we reassure ourselves that lead generation plus relationship building equals sales growth, and that conversations improve conversions, we can proceed with a much more positive mindset. The formula isn’t wishful thinking. It is a description of how B2B relationships develop: slowly, through repeated positive contact, until the moment arrives when timing and trust and need all align.
The pause before the call is the moment you remind yourself of that. Not to manufacture false confidence, but to accurately assess what the call is: a conversation between two people, one of whom has something potentially useful to offer, and one of whom may well be sitting with a challenge they haven’t yet found the right person to help them address.
That is a wonderful moment, if you let it be.
The dandelion and the telephone #
I’m not sure about the beauty of the tumbleweed plant itself but it has certainly given its name to a poetic phrase. There aren’t many tumbleweeds round here to photograph, which is why the image that came to mind instead was a dandelion seed head.
The dandelion is the scourge of the avid gardener. It spreads uninvited. It resists removal. It reappears with what can only be described as cheerful persistence, year after year, regardless of how many times it has been pulled up.
And yet, the dandelion flowers are beautiful. The seed head, in the right light, is one of the most elegant natural structures available to any photographer. And the plant enriches the soil with nitrogen, making it literally more fertile for everything around it. The gardener’s scourge is, on examination, the gardener’s friend.
The reframe is available to anyone willing to look more carefully.
Just as we can make the telephone our friend when we follow up. The call that feels like an intrusion; that sits in the mind with the same uninvited persistence as the dandelion in the lawn, is, on examination, an act of genuine service. It is reaching out to someone who may be sitting with a challenge they haven’t yet brought to anyone, waiting for the right person to call.
The telephone, like the dandelion, has a rather better reputation than it is sometimes given.
Building momentum through doing #
The practical companion to the mindset reframe is momentum through action rather than through preparation.
The first call of any day is the hardest. The second is slightly easier. By the fifth, something has shifted. Confidence in follow-up is not a quality developed through thinking about it: it grows through doing it. Each call builds positive psychological momentum that the next call inherits.
Start with warm contacts; people you know, clients you are checking in with, conversations that carry lower perceived risk. Use those to build the rhythm before moving to colder contacts. The goal is not perfection. It is motion. Because motion, once established, tends to continue and it is in the continuing that the interesting conversations, the unexpected openings, and the eventual sales live.
The hesitation before the call is temporary. The conversation that follows it is real. And positive results from actively following up are, as the original Tumbleweed piece says, just the best thing.
Lead generation plus relationship building equals sales growth.
Conversations improve conversions.
We’re off again.
Thank you for reading.
Author: Richard Bull-Domican, founder of New Era Financial Introductions, a B2B lead generation consultancy with over twenty years of experience. The perspectives shared here come from two decades in the field; not theory, but practice.
I create small, digestible guides on Gumroad for business owners who hate aggressive tactics and prefer relationship-led approaches. New resources are added regularly. For longer reads on lead generation and the human side of sales, follow me on Medium and join the daily conversation on LinkedIn.
Gumroad: https://richardbulldomican.gumroad.com/
Medium: https://medium.com/@richard-bulldomican
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardbulldomican/
