Cold Calling is Dead; The Myth: Part 1

I have recently viewed a recorded webinar entitled “Cold Calling is Dead.” The main point of the webinar was that, in light of the popularity of the social media and the shift in the way people research products, solutions and services that cold calling was completely ineffective and has no place in the tool belt of a sales person. In fact, on a LinkedIn group discussion recently, when a person was asking a legitimate question about cold calling, someone replied somewhat sarcastically, “why are you cold calling in the first place.” This popular idea seems to be gaining ground in many circles.

My take is different. I think that it may be that in this economic turndown that, cold calling may be ill; it may have the proverbial flu if you will allow me the metaphor but, it is not dead and, will be as effective as ever as the economy grows stronger and, buyer confidence returns. In other words, the economic turndown is a convenient situation to capitalize on because; it is definitely true that cold calling is difficult at this point in time. It is much more difficult than it was a year ago and, it is easy to wonder if it will ever get better.

When using the illustration of Tylenol vs. vitamins, it can be seen that a person with a headache will scrape together enough money to buy a bottle of Tylenol because of the extreme pain no matter how tight cash flow is. On the other hand if a person is feeling a little run down, in times of cash flow crunch, they will get along without the vitamins. So, this is true of companies in times of economic turndown. They will still scrape together the money to buy something that will alleviate immediate pain, but they will put off for later something that could make the process run a little smoother, This phenomenon alone is responsible for much of the downturn in cold calling effectiveness.

An experienced cold caller realizes that it is all about the dials and statistics. It is not personal. First, it is difficult to get people to answer the phone and when you do, it is random that the person will have a need at the exact time of the call. In Part II, I’ll discuss some of the benefits of what cold calling can do to jumpstart nurturing and relationship marketing.

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