From a recent email:
Are the Winds of Cold Calling Changing?
Posted: 27 May 2009 05:00 PM PDT
There sure are a lot of opinions about cold calling out there these days. Of course there are those that believe cold calling works with good technique and those who think cold calling is dead.
The truth is it depends on what the ROI for cold calling is versus the ROI for other lead generation activities?
For example, can the business buy an inexpensive list and pay someone an hourly wage to pitch their product or services and set a number of appointments per hour? If so, it would be crazy not to go with cold calling.
On the other hand (which is the hand that probably represents most b2b situations), even if you can buy a quality list of prospects who are decision makers with good contact information, the odds of getting them on the phone are slim. Additionally, the more complex the product or service, the more a business needs to put into the compensation and training of the person making the calls. The ROI starts to shift in a bad way.
Furthermore, if the salesperson needs to spend a lot of time doing research and building their own list only to make a cold call and get voice mail or shut down at least nine out of ten times, the ROI is terrible.
For large and medium size companies, the answer lies in Sales 2.0 tools.
For the SMB (small and some medium-size business), a Sales 2.0 like strategy is key. In a nutshell, making good old fashioned, relationship based connections (a high form of networking) combined with the strength of basic CRM and online connection tools such as your website, LinkedIn, Facebook, and even Twitter is the way to go.
Where do you fall on the cold calling spectrum. It is an alive and kicking strategy or is it dead?
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