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Is Cold Calling Dead?

Guest post by: Helen Dowling

Article Overview: The other day I was speaking at a conference and was inviting delegates to ask me anything they wanted to know about marketing. One of the audience asked an interesting question – “Is Cold Calling dead?”

Is Cold Calling Dead?

The other day I was speaking at a conference and was inviting delegates to ask me anything they wanted to know about marketing. One of the audience asked an interesting question - "Is Cold Calling dead?" They'd been along to a social networking seminar on the same day and the presenter had made this bold statement so the delegate naturally wanted to know what my response to this question would be.

So, I'll tell you what I told him - no, I don't think cold calling is dead, but like any marketing method, cold calling cannot be taken in isolation and expected to do all the work.

Let me explain what I mean.

Too many business owners choose one marketing method out of the hundreds of different ideas out there and expect it to bring in miraculous results. If it doesn't, they're disappointed and tell everyone that that marketing method didn't work.

Rubbish!

What you should be doing is using a marketing method as part of a strategy. Let's take cold calling for instance. If you make say 100 calls and get nothing back, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it's not working for you.

But instead, let's say you make 100 calls, follow-up with some information by email and then call back to see if that information is of interest, then that is more of a strategy and you've combined both email marketing with cold calling as marketing methods.

Even better, would be to run an email campaign first; get people to express interest and then call these interested parties to turn them into prospective customers.

It's all in the strategy.

Likewise, with social networking, if you do Linkedin, Twitter or Facebook on their own, don't expect it to bring in much.

But if you post on Linkedin and build relationships with people in an effort to bring them back to your website and encourage them to sign up for something useful so that you can continue to build a relationship with them offline, then that's a strategy!

So, next time you think about employing any marketing method, think it all the way through to the end - how are you going to get contacts; how are you going to measure their interest and how are you going to follow-up and keep in touch with them in order to build that relationship that eventually turns into clients?

And back to the original question - is cold calling dead? Absolutely not! But if you don't employ the strategy, don't expect miraculous results!

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Article Tags: cold calling, exceptional thinking, helen dowling, is cold calling dead, marketing, small business



Related Forum Posts
Re: What to avoid when cold calling? - At the time of Cold Calling we should avoid price increases for products and unavailability.
Re: How to develop sales contacts? - Everyone has the right idea here. Depending on your business, there are different techniques that you could use. For consultants and sales heavy businesses, there are three tactics that I have found especially useful in my business: 1. Attend Networking Events 2. Cold Calling 3. Referral Program 4. Affiliate Program (most successful) The affiliate program was successful for me, as I hooked up with a franchise consultant, and he gave multiple unit businesses that needed my credit card processing services. I highly suggest you hook up with a sales partner, and give him a cut of the monthly revenue.
Re: Direct Mail Postcards - Post cards would be really expensive to send from Japan...but one way to advertise that is not expensive from overseas is by Cold Calling using cheap VoIP equipment. I know Japan has a really good internet connection, so as long as you are willing to stay up late, it might be an option. I cold call from Thailand far, far away from any city using a CDMA wireless internet connection and have had pretty good results. I find tho, that cold calling works best for business 2 business (b2b), rather than b2c products. --matt
Re: Cold Calling - As long as people are out of jobs, you'll probably have a lot of people who say they want to work for straight commission, but if they don't get paid fairly quickly, they usually move on. We've run into that and went through about 500 people (whose resumes looked really good) until we found about 3 good resellers. People just don't want to work for anything. Or they do a good job getting the business but don't do the follow up necessary to make the sale......so they move on thinking they need money NOW. Our business requires all cold calling as well. It's really tough for people to perfect that but there are a lot of good books out there. On is Cold Calling Techniques, by Stephan Schiffman
Re: Cold Calling - Cold calling is an extremely difficult job to do and unless one learns that being told no by people is not a direct refusal aimed at the cold caller but at whatever is being sold, it can be very soul destroying work to do. One needs to have absolute confidence in themselves and a pretty thick skin. MichelleJ


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