Cold Calling vs Social Selling

Cold calling as we know it is dead… thank you LinkedIn Said Ken Krogue

No one likes picking up the phone and making a cold call

Equally no one likes receiving a cold call

It’s outdated and should have been left in the 90’s

Does cold calling work?

Some will say that cold calling is still effective; it’s just that most of the people who are employed to call 100+ people a day are just poorly trained. This is why it is not working. Once you are able to master the art of cold calling – which by the way isn’t for everyone – then you should be successful.

Cold calling is essentially a numbers game. Let’s face it, if you make 100 calls a day someone is bound to say yes! Is this true? 10/15 years ago, it was easier to get through to the decision maker; you could just keep going and going until that person did agree to buy your product / service. Is this numbers game really just a myth? Luck? Who knows…it works for some and not for others.

But with the world of technology evolving every day, social selling is becoming more and more popular. Do decision makers want to be hounded every day with ‰’cold callers’? No, they don’t.

Social selling is using social media to sell and promote your product or service. Social selling is not a difficult way of selling, it’s easy!

If you are a sales person, then LinkedIn is your Bible. It is a great selling tool, you can look up companies and you can find out who works for the organisation and who the decision maker is. You haven’t got any Gate Keepers preventing you from getting directly through to the decision makers! What’s not to like? (It’s as if it’s been designed for Recruiters! We love it!)

By connecting with the Decision Makers, you can InMail them, like their posts. And see what interests them, and what industry news surrounds their company. You can put lots of threads out, and eventually they will know who you are. Especially when you pick the phone up to then speak to them, they will already know who you are and what you are about. It turns that cold call straight into a warm call, and a warm call is always more pleasant!

There are other forms of social media that is used, like Twitter and Facebook – these are great sites for brand awareness and promoting the company. Not as good as LinkedIn when it comes to the nitty gritty selling though!

Here are some interesting facts on social selling, it will really change the way you sell your company!

Social Selling:

• 55% of Business 2 Business buyers search for information on social media (MediaBistro)
• Over 40% of salespeople say they’ve closed between two and five deals as a result of social media. (Social media and Sales Quote Survey)
• 75% of customers say they use social media as part of the buying process (IBM)
• 2 x higher ROI from e-mail marketing than cold calling, networking or trade shows (MarketingSherpa)

Cold Calling:

• 91% of the time cold calling doesn’t work (Harvard Business Review)
• 90% of C-suite executive say they never respond to call calls or emails blasts (Dale Carnegie)
• 82% of B2B decision makers think sales reps are unprepared (SiriusDecisions)
• 60% more expensive per lead that other methods (HubSpot)
• Only 5% of business lead phone calls lead to a sale (DSWA)

After reading some statistics on cold calling and social selling, It really is time to move on from employing these so called ‰’phone bashers’. And start selling the social way!