We have read a couple of articles recently which have concerned us, one of which disgruntled us to such an extent that we thought we should write our own article to encourage others not to heed such advice.

It all surrounds the concept that

Cold Calling is Dead

This article we read states that in their opinion cold calling is the biggest waste of time and that every sales person out there should instead focus solely on inbound leads and marketing activities such as blogging.

We couldn’t believe what we were reading!

The fact remains, on every single occasion where we have coached a sales person who feels that cold calling is a waste of time, we find that actually their proficiency, in particular their confidence is well below that of what is required to be effective.

It’s completely subjective, if someone isn’t good at something then of course they’re going to say it’s a waste of time!

What angers us is the influence this may have on their readers, their actions could cause thousands of sales people to follow their unjustified and quite frankly stupid advice.

Our Clients

The funny thing for us was that we read this article highlighting how cold calling was a waste of time. We then commented on it to advise other sales people to steer clear of this advice. Then one of our clients got in touch with us, they saw our comment and they wanted to tell us a story about one of their sales people whom we’d been working with closely a couple of weeks prior.

That sales person had been hitting the phones cold calling. He booked a meeting with a new prospective client on the upcoming Monday, he then had that meeting and by the Thursday of that week he had the first PO for £3k, the first of many I’m sure.

In almost every case we see, a good if not vast proportion of a businesses’ customers have come from some form of cold calling.

That being said, the market has and will continue to change. Buyers are more savvy and harder to contact than they have ever been. That’s why we encourage sales people to be intelligent and tactical in their cold calling activities.

Intelligent & Tactical Cold Calling

The reason why sales people often have poor results in cold calling is that they don’t help themselves. They merely put in just cold calls, they fail to strengthen their cause by building familiarity with the buyers.

The more we see, associate and converse with a person, the more our barriers drop, creating a level of familiarity between you both.

extract from Sales Icon: Selling in the Shadows

For more on the familiarity principle do have a read of our previous article:

Those sales people whom are intelligent and tactical in their cold calling approach will receive better results. If you’re questioning how you can conduct intelligent and tactical cold calling, then a good starting point is to try something like nurture campaigns.

Nurture Campaigns

Categorically we see this as one of the most effective yet simple strategies that any sales person can conduct. Use this and you’ll book more meetings, open more opportunities, close more business and win more new accounts.

Have a read on our article dedicated to Nurture Campaigns and most of all try using it:

Multiple Mediums/Channels

We would never discredit any medium, whether that be cold calling, blogging, referrals, email marketing, events etc. There is merit in every single medium, all of them can be effective.

Some businesses are better suited to certain mediums/channels. But in our experience where we’ve seen the most prolific results is when a business or sales people leverage a combination of different mediums/channels. Thus not solely relying on just cold calling, or events or inbound lead development etc.

The Best Sales Book

Just to discredit the concept that “cold calling is dead” some more, have a read of Mike Weinbergs book

• New Sales Simplified

He’s an absolutely fantastic author, whom is frank and candid in everything he says, plus he has real world experience. He categorically states the same as us, that cold calling isn’t dead nor will it ever be and not to listen to those people out there who say otherwise. Chances are they’re failed sales people who just couldn’t make it in cold calling.

The Cold Calling Series

If you really want to take your cold calling to the next level then have a look at our previous articles on our website dubbed the cold calling series.