There’s a good reason it’s called “cold.”
P.T. Barnum is alive and well - and selling “reinvented” cold calling on the web. Uh-oh. “Cold” is just that - nobody likes a stranger to interrupt their day with a sales pitch - even if they really need whatever is being pitched. As Frank Rumbauskas notes on his blog,
How on earth can there be a new way of cold calling that supposedly works this time around? I found my answer when I was going through emails from readers of my newsletter. Someone recently went through one of these “new way to cold call” programs. It was the old, time-worn crap from the 1980s such as “Call your prospect’s office and ask for a fictitious name. When they say no such person works there, act confused and ask who it is that handles the product or service you are selling. Then you can thank the receptionist and ask to be put through to that person.”
Are you kidding me? This isn’t a new way of cold calling, it’s an ancient method, and it’s dishonest to boot!
The bottom line is this: If you have so few appointments that you have time to pick up the phone and call strangers in the first place, you’re doing something seriously wrong. It’s time to forget about cold calling and start implementing lead-generation strategies that work.
View the Blog Roll
August 6th, 2005 at 6:06 am
Hi
I wish more sales people would talk common sense lke this ,instead of rubbish like don’t take rejection personally.
Some other great one’s are every no gets you nearer to a yes,or make teh law of averages work for you by calling more people all that does is create more hostility from customers,and more burnouts.
August 6th, 2005 at 9:42 am
The scary truth is that all business is - in fact - personal…and there’s no such thing as an “unemotional” decision. One would barge into a neighbor’s house without asking…so it’s perplexing that some sales types think it’s the preferred technique to barge in on people they’ve never met.
Also “no” can turn into yes, if we build the right relationship from the start. It may take a few weeks or months, but if we’re really offering value, the prospects will remember us (especially if we do little things like drop them a thank you note for considering our proposal, even when we didn’t win; sending them an article or such occasionally etc.)
Thanks for dropping by, Tommy.
August 3rd, 2006 at 11:50 pm
I work with a Hosted CRM application provider the focuses on the inside sales space (InsideSales.com). Our entire application is build and designed to help sales reps (not necessarily telemarketers) effectively sell over the phone. This includes cold calling. I agree with the masses, cold calling is not fun. If done effectively, it can generate effective and somewhat cost effective leads. However, I have found that leads generated by cold calling are on average between 2x to 4x more expensive that a company or sales rep can generate via the web (if also done effectively). This is not the whole story though.
An example:
We have a customer that uses our system to power dial a list to generate leads. They were able to generate around 1 lead every 1.5 hours. Considering the cost of employees, systems and overhead, they were paying around $100/lead. From the web (using PPC, SEO, and lead providers) they were paying around $20/lead.
This seems pretty straight forward, go with the web leads. What’s more, the cold call leads seemed to be less qualified than the web leads. The web leads generated actual buyers. The leads generated from cold calling identified companies that were at the beginning of the interest cycle. Thus, in the short term the web leads closed better and seemed more effective.
However, they saw an unexpected reversal of value in lead sources. Even though the web leads were smaller opportunities and they closed faster and more often. The leads generated from cold calling we very targeted to the industry and size that that worked for this customer. This customer began to close deals greater than the sum of the smaller deals that came from the web from the same time frame. So in the end, cold calling generated more revenue and held its own compared to web leads.
August 4th, 2006 at 8:06 am
I’m letting this comment stand, even though I suspect (and it reads like) it’s sales spam.
It does, however, give a good rationale for cold calling. But, and this is a big BUT, the rationale is STILL from the viewpoint that there is an infinite number of customers out there and all you have to do is keep dialin’ - pushing your way into their lives. As I’ve said before, just how many potential customers have you lost with cold calling? You’ll never know.
And, for small companies, even automated cold calling is not a good idea. It’s still costly and small biz doesn’t have the reach (even on the Web) to that infinite supply assumed by companies selling cold calling systems, software and/or training.
August 19th, 2006 at 12:15 am
Mary,
Good point, effective cold calling is NOT calling people not interested in your product or service. If your list is not effecitive, your are waisting your money and others time. However, just from what I have seen in our customer base, if the list (people your calling) and the product is well matched, it can be extreemly effective for both small and large businesses.
September 29th, 2006 at 8:46 am
[…] And so it goes…There are, of course, many other ways to burn through piles of marketing moola including trusting your web site to a graphic designer (nothing against ‘em, but they likely won’t have a business results focus) or “smilin’ and dialin’” cold call telemarketing. […]