Cold calling is one of the most universally hated activities in today's world. The people being called on clearly don't like it because more than 209 million phone numbers are on the national do-not-call registry (even though our country only has 240 million adults). And "no soliciting" signs are nearly as common as the "we're open" variety.
It is possible that the people doing the calling dislike it even more. Sure, a good salesperson will try to convince themselves that they like to make cold calls, but the consistently negative responses are the main reason that so many people try to avoid working in sales.
The only people who like cold calls, it seems, are the sales managers who still choose to rely on that method to gain more leads.
Choose Inbound Instead
You can reduce your dependence on cold calling by switching to an inbound marketing model instead.
Making calls to people you don't know is very much an outbound marketing tactic, in which your company is pushing its message out to a general public that is generally not interested in hearing about your product right now. With inbound marketing, the public reaches out to contact you. It doesn't mean you just wait around for them to call, though. Inbound involves proactively creating the visibility and the communication channels needed to draw in interested prospects.
Both inbound marketing and calling require work, but there is a big difference in the type of work and the type of results.
Why Change?
There are multiple reasons why you should be making the transition.
- It costs less. Studies show that companies which focus on inbound marketing spend about 60 percent less per lead than companies which focus on outbound marketing methods. That is a huge difference, and it illustrates just how effective inbound can be.
- It lets your salespeople focus on selling. The overarching problem with calling coldly is that the vast majority of the people you contact are simply not in the market for what you are offering. More than 90 percent of the time, the salesperson has no shot at making the sale, no matter how skilled they may be at selling. The calls from inbound marketing, on the other hand, are always warm calls. You are talking with an interested prospect 100 percent of the time. If they were not interested, they would not have called. It's been said that nobody hates selling.The truth is, it's not the selling part that makes so many people hate sales jobs. With inbound marketing, a salesperson's job becomes infinitely more enjoyable and productive.
- It is more efficient. With inbound marketing, customers often educate themselves on the basics of your company and your products through the content that draws them to your site. This effectively shortens your sales cycle and optimizes the selling process.
- It doesn't hurt your image. People dislike cold calls so much that complaining about them is practically a national pastime. If 97 percent of the people you cold call are not interested, that means 97 percent of all public interactions with your company are negative. A hard-working cold caller can literally get hundreds of people a day to dislike your brand. Some of those people will talk and complain to others about your company, compounding the problem. With inbound marketing, as long as you are helpful and provide good customer service, all calls will be positive experiences.
- It reaches consumers at exactly the right time. Many of those negative responses to cold calls come from people who would be interested in your product or services at a different time, or in a different format. Interrupt them at the wrong time, though, and you may ruin your chance at gaining them as a customer in the future. With inbound marketing, you are always talking to prospects at the right time, and in the method of their choosing.
An inbound marketing program does take some time to ramp up, so you likely will not be able to quit cold calling cold turkey. But the longer you wait to get started with inbound marketing, the more it will cost you. The time to start the transition from cold calling to inbound marketing is now.
*Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
