The age of sales within a business-to-business environment has been built of the cold call. I’m sure who ever the first business to get a working telephone was didn’t have to wait long before someone called them out of the blue trying to sell themselves, a product or a service – but have we seen the beginning of the end for this business institution?
In a day and age where we are putting ever more information about ourselves out onto the ’World Wide Web’ for people to find it is becoming ever easier for research to be carried out on prospective customers and partners to discover what makes them tick. Had a quick pop onto your targets LinkedIn or twitter page complaining how poor their current service is? Or what about something as simple as how poor their football team is doing (trust me I support Fulham…!) this is all information that when properly processed can help you build a fantastic picture about the company you want to work with and the person you need to speak to.
If you can get your name recognizable before you even pick up the phone for the first time by simply retweeting some of your prospects tweets and commenting on a few of their LinkedIn updates then you are exponential more likely to have your phone call answered when you do make that lukewarm phone call as they will recognise your name! Why try and call through a four thousand contact long prospect list when with a bit of research, some scientific principles and a little bit of gut instinct thrown in you can highlight those 15-20 contacts who after a bit of social networking and relationship building will take your phone call without hesitation and be in need of your services/products.
This is not to say that all of those people who are putting in the effort and making those 100+ dials a day are wasting their time. It can be an incredibly successful way of working depending on your business model and I have nothing but respect for those people who have the ability and mental toughness to succeed in this role. However would someone really want to have to make 100 dials when they could get away with only having to do 10?
Is there a proven scientific method that we could list here that if everyone used would hurry the end of cold calling properly not – or at least we have to yet to discover it – but with a little research and some trial and error everyone can come up with a system that would work for them. There are some fantastic tools and documents on the internet to try out and read each with some truly amazing ideas and methods but you need to find one that works for you and your business model.
So come on people how can we hurry on the end of cold calling and get social selling at the forefront of everyone’s methods!?
