Ok, first let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room. We are a cold-calling company asking whether our livelihood is dead. Suffice it to say, you’re probably assuming we have some sort of agenda behind asking this question and that our opinion can’t entirely be trusted because we have a stake in asserting that cold calling is, in fact, alive and well.
And, truth be told, you’re right – although not exactly in the way you might expect. Yes, we have an agenda and that agenda is to correct the misconception many people have that cold-calling is an obsolete, dinosaur practice that doesn’t produce viable results. We are a successful, established company that has not only survived but expanded over the course of its sixteen years of life precisely because what we do produces results for our clients.
And yes, we have a stake in asserting that cold calling is, in fact, alive and well but that doesn’t mean that what we say isn’t true.
But, don’t just take our word for it! In preparation for this article we didn’t either! Even though we have tons of first-hand success stories of how and why cold calling works for B2B sales, we decided to see what the experts out there were saying. So, we Googled “Is cold calling dead?”
Of the 10 organic results on the first page, six concluded that cold calling is indeed not dead, but rather a vital tool in the salesforce arsenal. When we then narrowed the results down to articles written in the past year, 9 out of the 10 organic results stated that cold calling was very much alive.
Typically, articles that disparage cold calling tend to look at it through an archaic lens. You know it well! It’s the stereotypical annoying sales rep trying to sell his product to anyone he can, whether they have a need for it or not. This is not how cold calling is conducted these days, not by anyone still in business that is.
Old-school cold calling is, in fact, obsolete, as many of the articles discuss, although some of the fundamental principles of a successful cold call remain the same, and will always remain the same. But these days, if you’re not using email, social media, market research and a host of other tools to make the calls less ‘cold’, then you’re not going to get results. Some of the new terminology for this is ‘smart calls’ or ‘warm calls’ but, in reality, they are just more sophisticated cold calling techniques that utilize the abundant technology we have to our advantage.
The interesting fact about cold calling is that it has grown not only in sophistication but also in purpose and scope. Traditionally, cold calling has been a selling tool used to land new clients and find new prospects. And, that model still holds majority. However, we have many clients who use cold calling to collect data, test a message, and refine or even identify their target market. There is a lot of intel that can be gained simply by having a conversation with someone and it is information that could never be gathered through email or social media or any other type of technologically advanced avenue.
In conclusion, we would like to state, for the record, that cold calling is NOT dead. Rather, it has evolved. And, furthermore, we project that it will never die, but rather continue to evolve. Because, simply put, no technology can completely erase human connection. Nor can it replicate human to human relation, interaction and conversation.
If you are interested, we’ve linked you to a couple of the articles we came across in our Google search:
If You Believe Cold Calling Is Dead, You’ve Already Lost. Here’s Why.