Is Cold Calling Dead?

Cold calling is diminishing and has been for some years, it is costly and less effective than in days gone by. Services such as CTPS (Corporate Telephone Pref Service) and its consumer version TPS would not exist unless people and companies are saying ENOUGH! no more cold calling.

Cold calling will always exist in some form but the manner in which we go about it is changing. Perhaps more of warm calling!

Social media is not just Facebook and LinkedIn, nor is it all about creating profiles and inviting friends etc. Social media extends to viral videos, blogs, social bookmarking, micro blogs and more. The art is to create engaging content for potential and existing customers.

Barrack Obama used social media tools in his campaign to great success, run a search on the subject to understand the tools his team used.

So how does it work?

Social media activity generates more inbound communication (leads, prospects etc) than is statistically possible by cold calling. Prior to our work with the council, all the members of the team have run large sales teams with everyone bashing the phone. Yes it can bring success, but ONLY when we followed very strict processes and did it well.
However, times have changed. The response rate now, compared to 10 years ago are not the same. Where a response rate of 5% was OK, but nothing special, it is now better than average.

Social media (this includes well written emails) have helped us hit our targets for many of our projects. Its the whole package – and it will only get stronger as more people go online!

Do you agree? Do you disagree? We need to hear from you and let us have a different viewpoint!

Originally posted 2009-04-03 14:32:35.