How to Drop Cold Calling and Get More Hot Leads

Cold callers are almost never welcomed with open arms and it is not the recipient of the visit who doesn’t enjoy the experience, as the salesperson tasked with making the call doesn’t often relish the task either.

Cold calling has been around for many years and obviously has some success otherwise it would be a practice that would have been shelved some time ago, but there are definitely more modern and less combative methods that are viable modern marketing alternatives.

Making effective use of an effective lead management system and understanding that the modern consumer is much savvier and knows what they want, are just two reasons why cold calling is slowly being put out to pasture.

Invading time and space

The modern consumer is a much more sophisticated customer than perhaps was the case in the past and they generally want to be served on their terms, which means a time and place that is convenient to them and not the salesperson.

Understanding this change in behavioral patterns and knowing that customers are becoming more protective about their time, will allow you to adjust your sales strategy so that you do not intrude on their space at the wrong point and be put immediately on the back foot when trying to close a sale.

Many of us are almost permanently contactable by phone, email or a social networking platform like Twitter or Facebook, but the paradox is that despite this increase in potential availability of cold-calling recipients, many consumers are keener than ever to reclaim their time and don’t want the intrusion of an uninvited sales call.

First contact

How the modern sales process is evolving is mainly around the fact that in today’s sales environment, it is far more common for a customer to prefer that they initiate the first contact with the company they wish to buy from.

Whilst marketers could argue that you could go broke waiting for the phone to ring or the orders to come through from your website, if you embrace this change in behavior you can prime your sales force to respond quickly and positively to that initial contact and opportunity to sell that has been created.

Rather than taking the view that the internet is heralding the end of cold-calling and lamenting this fact, it is far more productive to view this change as the beginning of a new way of marketing.

Raise your online profile

In order to profit from the modern way of engaging with customers via the internet, you will need to concentrate on raising your online profile.

Social media sites like Facebook are a powerful sales tool if you use them correctly and resist the temptation to put too much emphasis on selling in the primary message.

Using Facebook for customer interaction and even running a competition is a great way of getting to know what your customer wants and opening up a dialogue that is much more conducive to selling at some point than trying to force a sell on the doorstep, which is what you are trying to do with a cold-calling strategy.

Learning to live without cold calling and embracing modern methods of contact should pay handsome dividends with plenty of hot leads to follow up on.

Tanya Mueller is definitely a battle-hardened marketing executive and enjoys sharing her insights with an online audience. She also finds time to write regularly for a variety of business and marketing websites.

Published by Kidal Delonix (1200 Posts)

Kidal Delonix is a contributor to Mr. Hoffman's blog. The views and opinions are entirely his/her own and may not reflect Mr Hoffman's views.