Turning up the heat on “cold” calling.
You’ve arrived home after working late and still up to your eyeballs in work. All you need now is more undue stress. Your phones starts ringing and its from an unknown number – you do not need this right now…
It frustrates the life out of you when you get these calls, it just seems like a waste of both yours and the salesman’s time. You haven’t asked for their service; you haven’t visited their website you don’t even know what they are selling. It all just seems very old hat as well, with the internet revolutionizing the B2C experience.
Its experiences like these that give cold calling a bad rep and instantly puts people off, as soon as they catch wind they are being sold to human nature kicks in to shut the conversation down. This wasn’t always the case, we’ve all seen Wolf Of Wall Street which glamorizes the 80’s cold calling lifestyle, and it’s the Jordan Belfort’s of this world that have probably caused this negative stigma towards cold calling.
However, despite this negative stigma, cold calling is still a vital business tool for growing sales over 40 years after Jordan and his pals were establishing the sales method. In modern times sales channels such as Email Marketing have started to become more of a used tool for marketers, however cold calling is reportedly 5 to 10 times more effective than email campaigns (GetVoIP, 2021). As well as this 71% of sales teams want to hear from sales teams and speak to a person (GetVoIP, 2021). The phrase “Cold calling” is unfair in my opinion if done correctly with prior research and outreach into the potential client produces a call that is more “Warm” than “Cold”.
The main benefit that comes from warm calling is the human connection that can be made, it’s not exactly rocket science to understand that people will engage more with an actual human rather than having marketing forced down their throat. The trick is to target the right, relevant people and not just ringing any Tom, Dick or Harry. Warm calling is a powerful approach when you have the right type of person with a persistent nature behind the telephone. Despite the emergence of Social Media marketing and emails, warm calling is still here, and here to stay.
It can be a time-consuming process but the potential opportunities that warm calling provides leads me to think it will always have a place in the market, especially for up-and-coming businesses looking to make an impact. If your target market is “warmed up” so to speak, then calling potential clients is still, and always will be, a highly successful tool for you and your business.
By Dan Wright