Few sales people enjoy cold calling, but until now it’s been a necessary part of lead generation. In the aftermath of the economic recession, however, companies need a more scientific approach—one that offers predictable revenue for the new business era. Enter Cold Calling 2.0 on the sales scene. 
Why Old Ways No Longer Work
Customers are tired of being sold to. In the age of inbound marketing, consumers in general have become so selective of what they absorb that traditional methods of advertising and promotion aren’t working, either:
- Tighter budgets and increased need for accountability in your expenditure and better tracking of your ROI means that the old ways of “pushing” information at your target—whether in person or using media—simply isn’t viable any more.
- Marketers need to be able to provide evidence of their results, and guesswork doesn’t cut it. So sending sales people cold calling is like blasting a message out into the air—where she lands nobody knows!
All this led to a need for a new way to generate warm leads that take less time and money to bring sales.
Enter Cold Calling 2.0
This is a new concept presented by sales guru Aaron Ross in his book Build a Sales Machine, Cold Calling 2.0 is a new and innovative way to approach the problem. Developed by Ross during a case study at Salesforce.com, the idea is to “prospect into cold accounts” without making any cold calls of any sort.
- What it Is: The differences between the old way of cold calling and the new is all in the approach. In the past, sales people focused on the number of contacts or touch points they made each day and assumed that an average proportion would convert into sales. Now, they focus on identifying a target number of researched or referral calls in a specific time period (such as a month). These represent qualified opportunities during which the sales person tries to identify a mutual fit between the two companies. It’s a far cry from the old way of coming in with a hard sell attitude and pushing prospects to close the deal!
- Separating Core Functions: Cold Calling 2.0 is very clear about separating the core functions of sales and marketing. While the old way required sales people to do their own lead generation, the new thought process around inbound marketing does the opposite: it expects marketers to handle the core lead generation function and sales to handle the negotiation and closing. This is quite a radical move away from the way it used to be.
- New-Look Sales Funnel: The “sales funnel” or “buying cycle” concept hasn’t gone away. Rather, it’s changed shape to accommodate the different process that 2.0 brings with it. While it still follows the basic principles of generating interest, making contact and closing the sale, the biggest difference is in the first two stages.
In Cold Calling 2.0, a marketer first has to define the ideal target profile. This means using data to create a customer persona that represents your ideal client, then finding companies and people through research that you can add to the database of prospects to prepare.
Prospecting in 2014 takes on a different meaning, with initial contact efforts done via the sending of personalized emails, followed by the sales person contacting the prospect by telephone and setting up demos and presentations. This way, by the time you actually speak to anyone, you’ve prepared them for the fact that you might make contact.
Benefits of Making the Shift
Making the shift to Cold Calling 2.0 provides a range of advantages for optimizing your sales process. It introduces warmth into your telemarketing, so instead of calling out of the blue, you’re making anticipated contact. This gives you a better chance of reaching the right person and provides higher potential for conversion. It’s focused on research more than just closing the deal, and gives you the opportunity to provide real service to the customer.
It gives you much better opportunity for tracking your ROI and conversion rates, because the processes required provide real data on which to base your assumptions. This also serves to align with the trend towards big data, which enables you to leverage the potential of your customer information in the long term.
Cold calling never had it so good as it does now, and neither do sales representatives. Start using these methods in your marketing strategy and see what a difference it makes to your bottom line.
*Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net
