Cold Calling
Cold calling is hard.
And it is getting harder. Prospects are becoming increasingly pressed for time and more and more unwilling to give you an audience if they don’t know who you are, what you are selling, and why they should care.
Why Cold Calling Used To Work
Rewind the clock to 10+ years ago before the Internet changed the way we do business.
In this era, there simply wasn’t very much information available to prospective buyers. If they had a problem and they were looking for a solution — many times a well timed cold call would be welcomed by the prospect — the cold call was a chance for the prospect to get some information on solutions to the problems they were having.
If the sales person came into the cold call and presented the right solution to the right problem, the sale was probable.
Why Cold Calling Doesn’t Work Anymore
Today, when a prospect is aware that they have a problem, they have a tremendous amount of information available to them on their computer. They can research the problem, find a solution and then choose whether that solution requires them to hire someone or not.
Many times the solution will not require them to hire someone. Tough luck. They can solve the problem themselves or ask someone in-house to do it — pointing that employee in the direction of the FREE resources they have found on the Internet.
Question: Are these your companies FREE resources or are they your competitors?
Wouldn’t you rather be earning good will with that prospect by providing them with the help they need rather than your competitor earning that good will?
Who will your prospects choose to do business with when they have a problem that will require paid assistance?
Here are some examples of activities people carry out when researching a problem:
- They search through forums
- They read informative blog posts
- They ask questions on Twitter
- They find helpful online video
- They look for relevant podcasts
- They sign up for helpful email distribution lists
Does your business provide information in any of the above channels? Do you have a blog? Are you creating online video? Do you have an email distribution list? Are you communicating in and monitoring social networking sites?
FYI… my free eBook, Tiny Business, Mighty Profits, walks you through developing a plan that will get your business into these online channels.
My advice to you is to scale back on that time consuming, inefficient cold calling and start fishing where the fish are. Online.
Image credit: Graham_B
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