Cold Calling is Dead
How to find new Business Customers without Cold Calling
One of the most common things I hear people say when they start selling is ‘I hate cold calling!’. I can’t say I blame them. Who wants to call someone that doesn’t know you or want to speak with you, and interrupt their day?
More to the point – why is anyone still trying to do this anyway?
What is Cold Calling?
Cold Calling is an old B2B sales technique, that simply means calling someone that you don’t know ‘cold’. That is, they are a number on a list – you call them and see if you can start a conversation – usually with the aim of booking a meeting.
Cold Calling came about because back in the day, pre-internet, one of the main ways that businesses connected with their customers was over the phone. Businesses had to list their landline number in the directory so that people could find them and call them.
Not only that, most people working in offices of large businesses would have a dedicated landline for people to reach them on, which they would have listed on their business card.
What this meant was, that you could get lists of people and call them on their direct line – and they picked up the phone. There was a time when it was considered quite bad manners not to answer your phone at all.
Over time, of course, behaviour changed once people had voicemails and the ability to see who was calling. So even when landlines were still around, cold calling was becoming less and less effective as a way to get people.
No One has a Direct Line Anymore
As we all know, almost no one has a direct landline anymore. The last of these mostly disappeared with the move to hybrid working with Covid as people started working more from home. Offices are now busy dismantling their landline systems – certainly at least for their white-collar and executive teams. If you want to reach someone – you do it via mobile, some kind of instant messaging – like Slack – or good old email.
Phone Behaviour has Changed
One of the most interesting changes that I have seen in the last 10 years, is how people’s phone behaviours have changed.
Now we have one mobile number that works both for our personal lives and our work lives. Our phones carry our lives in them – speaking on them seems to be the least important of their purpose!
We can see who is calling and decide if we want to pick up or not. But even more likely, no one calls us directly without first texting. We communicate far more via text than via voice, especially with people we are not particularly close to.
With all of these changes, cold calling is no longer an effective way to reach people.
So what should we be doing?
What we should be aiming for, is a warm contact. We want to be building genuine contact with people who actually want to speak with us.
So how do we do that?
One of the best ways is to be introduced by someone – what we call a referral. Ideally, we will make contact with someone who can introduce us to the person we would like to speak with.
So how do we do that – you may ask? Well – you start hanging out in places, both digitally and in-person, where the people you want to speak with meet. You have conversations and ask questions. You provide value to those you speak with, so they can see your authenticity, – and you ask them for an introduction to the right person.
LinkedIn can actually be a great way to do this. For example, if you know someone that works at the company you are trying to reach, drop them a note and ask who might be the best person to speak with in regards to the conversation you would like to have.
Foster Warm Leads
You can also look at providing content that is of value to the people you would like to speak with. When you create content that they can download, capture their details and this provides you with a lead to follow up. Following up with someone who has downloaded content you have published is very different from calling someone ‘cold’. If they are showing an interest in what you do, they are much more likely to want to engage in a further discussion.
There are many other ways you can employ marketing techniques to create warm leads. This might include holding webinars or other types of events, creating surveys or quizzes – or offering health checks. You are only limited by your creativity.
Remember – when we are trying to make contact with someone, we are doing this to begin a genuine authentic conversation with them about what we do. Far better to do this in a genuine way right from the beginning, so that you are not wasting your time or theirs.
So the good news is – you really don’t have to cold call to build B2B Sales. There are many ways to connect with people, to foster that genuine conversation leading to a much more positive experience for everyone.
Learn More
