Nathan Yerian
How much time do your sales people spend cold calling? What’s your return on it? If you’ve asked yourself these questions and haven’t come up with a satisfactory answer, it’s time to stop cold calling right now and start focusing on marketing strategies with better returns.
Here are two reasons why you should abandon cold calling:
1. Cold-Calling is a waste of your potential customer’s time.
Your potential customers are busy. Calling them in the middle of their busy day is only going to annoy your prospect. Let’s face it, interrupting someone is not the best way to get them to trust you enough to buy from you.
Additionally, they may not even need your product or service right now. In fact, even if the prospect does have a current need, they will still want to research it more before they can buy with confidence. By cold calling, you may have put your name in front of a potential customer, but it’s not enough to get the sale. In the end, you are bringing more problems than benefits.
2. Cold-calling is a waste of time for your sales people.
Your sales team should be following up on warm or hot leads that were generated through your other marketing initiatives. They should be in front of people who are ready, willing, and able to purchase, rather than calling prospects who will brush them off quickly so they can get back to work.
When your sales team cold calls, there isn't a way to know if the prospect is interested, and able to buy at that time - unlike your warm or hot prospects, who have their pens ready to sign a contract.
You should spend your marketing time in a more productive manner.
With every single hang-up or exasperated sigh your team gets from a cold prospect, you know there is a much better way for them to spend their time (in front of qualified opportunites). Instead of trying to beat the bushes for customers, what if customers were finding your company and contacting you instead?
Sounds like a good concept, but how do you make it a reality? That’s the beauty of implementing an inbound marketing startegy. Inbound marketing allows you to generate qualified opportunities for your sales people, instead of having them grind it out with outdated calling lists.
The focus of inbound marketing is on creating remarkable content that attracts your target market to your website, like SEO-friendly website content and value-based blog content that positions you as a thought leader or offers solutions to customer problems.
Additional value-based content like presentations, e-books, and webinars should be displayed as value offers on your website. Value-based content offers, combined with call to action buttons and landing pages will convert visitors into leads for your sales team.
Because you are creating content that is of value to your potential customers, you’re not wasting their time. You’re offering something they value and are giving them the ability to access it on an as needed basis. You are helping them to maximize the efficiency of their buying process.
You’re also freeing up your sales team to spend their time with qualified prospects. Now they’re focusing on prospects ready, willing, and able to buy. There is no better use of a sales person's time.
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