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To Make Sales Appointments In 2009 and Beyond - Is Cold Calling Dead?

Guest post by: Peter O'Donoghue

Article Overview: Will social media and marketing ever replace the skills of cold calling and professional telesales. Absolutely not. Read this fantastic article to find out why...

To Make Sales Appointments In 2009 and Beyond - Is Cold Calling Dead?

It is extremely interesting to read the latest buzz around the area of Cold Calling and Telemarketing dying a death due to Social Media and other modern prospecting methods.

I'm going to be upfront, here and give my opinion. Cold Calling will never disappear and that is a good thing. Let me get this straight. I'm not talking about mass market business to consumer calling, which is prehistoric and will die out.

I am talking about professional, business to business calling. Or as I prefer to call it:

"Identifying people who potentially might have challenges you could solve, or goals you can help them achieve, and seeing if you can help them. If you both decide it warrants you meeting or further action then you can agree to do so"

I do think the Sales Training Industry, bloggers and commentators, have been guilty of for too long is a basic ‘school boy error' that we tell all of our clients not to do.

We have got caught up on the process and the tool and not the outcome.

Let me explain. The debate rages over the effectiveness, and legitimacy of cold calling which is fundamentally wrong.

What we should be focusing on is the desired outcome i.e A business meeting, or appointment, rather than just one of at least 20 ways of achieving that. This is a failing perpetuated by the Training Industry who still hold ‘cold calling courses' rather than courses aimed at getting an appointment.

I could go even further to say a more relevant desired outcome in today's modern, tech savvy world could be to get a sales presentation. This might not even need a physical appointment due to the ease of use of online ‘webinar' programs such as gotomeeting

If I wanted to learn about gardening I wouldn't go on a course about grass cutting, I would go on a course designed to show me how to develop a low maintenance, well planted and decorative garden. Grass cutting is just a small part of that. Does that make sense?

What about social media?

Again, social media is one element of an integrated sales strategy that includes using the telephone.

Recently, I was working with a large IT company. One of their sales team has 300 named accounts from which he is targeted to make around £10 million in sales. When we first spoke, he was down to his ‘tough nuts'. These were the last 42 contacts that he could not get in touch with. When I listened to his approach it was an exact replica of the ‘canned' spiel popularized by Stephen Schifman in the 1970's.

He was stalled at the ‘Gatekeeper' who he had given the same spiel to at least 3 times previously. With no success. When we discussed where he would go from here it was plain that the next step was to diarise a call back in a few weeks.

I was shocked! I thought the world had moved on from that. There a complete lack of, what I term, ‘sales guile'. Being a tech savvy sales professional I could immediately think of at least 10 different ways of getting in touch. The first thing we tried was a simple Google listing on the person's name by using "person's name". Within 5 minutes we had a whole goody bag of information to work with.

The IT Director in question had:

• Recently spoke at a conference on emerging technology. Areas of his topic were actually in line with the solutions provided by my client.

• He was listed on a social networking directory - Zoominfo with an email address and an indication he was happy to be contacted for professional reasons.

Within 5 minutes we had the means of contact and the reason. We spent a few minutes drafting an email and then sent it off. It obviously referenced the conference he spoke at. Within 3 hours we had a reply and within two weeks a meeting.

The moral of that story is if your desired outcome is to get a meeting then focus on that. Don't get too caught up on the mechanism. Ensure you have enough ‘sales guile' and flexibility to find a way. On my training workshops we always stay focused on how to achieve the outcome and we cover at least 30 ways of getting there.

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Article Tags: appointment, bloggers, business meeting, business to consumer, buzz, challenges, cold calling, commentators, debate rages, desired outcome, grass, legitimacy, low maintenance, market business, mass market, nbsp, professional business, sales presentation, savvy world, telemarketing



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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
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...


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