Cold Calling: Is It Dead?
Cold Calling is dead. That's right, it is dead. It is
interruption marketing to the highest degree. Consumers are
tuning out interruption marketing and the advertising message is
not getting through.
So why do you continue to cold call? It is probably because your
sales manager tells you that you should. And why does he tell
you to cold call? It is probably because the sales consultant
that your company spent thousands of dollars on advised that the
staff should increase their cold calls to increase their sales.
Of course, your company needs to see a return on this investment
so they advise the sales manager to advise the sales staff to
follow the recommendations and increase the amount of cold calls.
"More cold calls equals more appointments made equals more sales
presentations equals more closed sales." This is the general
thinking. So sales leads lists are purchased from companies such
as InfoUsa and the troops hunker down in the "boiler room" and
call business executives and decision makers hoping to set
appointments. The generally accepted rule is 15 cold calls
should translate into 3 appointments made which should result in
1 completed sale. This rule usually ends up being 150 (or more)
cold calls equals 3 appointments made equals 1 completed sale.
The reason? Have you ever tried calling a business executive?
Then you know that it takes about 10 tries before you actually
get through on the phone. So the intial 15 calls turns into 150
calls. Executives, by nature, are busy... appointments,
meetings, travel, planning... they don't have time for
unsolicited phone calls. And, if you do manage to find them with
some free time, it takes a lot of skill to get through the
secretary (the gatekeeper); they are trained to filter out
unimportant phone calls. And guess what? Your call is NOT
IMPORTANT!
Let's go back to the sales consultant that your company hired.
How did your company decide that they needed to hire a sales
consultant? Did the sales consultant cold call your company to
advise that your company's sales are not as high as they could
be and that, therefore, they should hire a sales consultant to
provide some recommendations? No he didn't. The scenario was
something along the following lines: The CEO of your company
noticed that sales are decreasing and did a search on the
internet for a sales consultant to potentially hire to help the
company increase sales. The CEO called the consultant, they met,
the consultant made his sales presentation, and he was hired.
The sales consultant, already with a contract, just regurgitated
old school sales principals, basically more cold calls. Perhaps
he even drafted a few cold calling scripts. This is almost
foolproof. If sales increase the consultant will say it was
because of his cold calling training. If sales don't increase
he'll say it is because the company wasn't following his
recommendations... they did not make enough cold calls.
The bottom line is this "sales expert" did not need to make a
cold call to earn his income. The company CEO found him on the
internet. He has a website and he lets his website do the
selling for him. If the "sales expert" doesn't need to make cold
calls, then neither do you. Rather than spending thousands of
dollars on sales consultants and sales lead lists, sell the way
that these pros sell. Instead, spend that money on internet
marketing. People that need your services are searching the
internet to find somebody to provide it to them. If they are not
finding you then your competitors are getting the business. If
you don't have a website, you can create a professional profile
on other sites, such as trade-pals.com for free. Just remember,
if you disturb somebody with a sales message it is interruption
marketing. If someone finds you through searches it is
permission marketing. People just don't respond to interruption
marketing anymore. If they find you, they have already made the
conscious decision to use your services; half of your sales work
will already have been done!