Cold Calling by Tony Green

Woman hearing the spiel from yet another cold call

            The debate over the merit of cold calling never seems to cease. There are those who live by the practice and others who find the act calling someone unsolicited selling products/services a waste of time. A Linked In posting I read a while back raised the question of whether quantifiable metrics existed which would allow determining the value of the old fashioned cold call. 

           

             Moreover, the arguments for both sides of the issue have been documented in various mediums. For instance, there are a number of books written on how to cold call well. One title I would recommend, is “Cold Calling techniques that work“written by Stephen Shiffman. On the other hand, Frank Rumbauskus, the author of Never Cold Call Again eloquently voiced the feeling many sales people embody which is a better way exists to generate sales of a product or service.

My experience a salesperson tells me more efficient and less interruptive ways can be employed to entice customers to buy from you.  However, I would be negligent if I failed to point out on there are a few, very selected instances where cold calling is the way to go.

The first instance is to provide insight to encourage interest in a potential offering. Occasionally a prospect has an idea about how your product can help but needs to wrap his/her hands around the technology in order to fully understand your value proposition. In this case the easiest way to move forward is to engage the prospect in a conversation.

Another instance is to determine if your potential customer is using a competitor. If you can obtain that key information out of the person (even if the prospect tells you only to get you off of the phone) at some point in the future you can plan approach them in response to your competitor and penetrate the account.

I am sure other examples which you could add. In short, although contacting someone without previous communication can be painful in selected instances you should not dismiss picking up your telephone and reaching out as a method of beginning the process of getting to the sale.