Is Cold Calling Dead? Can Social Media Fill the Void?

Yes and No.

I know this is a hot topic right now.

Traditional cold calling seems to be a thing in the past. How many of us like an interruption in our day of someone trying to sell us something? I particularly like the ones that do not even ask, “Is this a good time to talk?” Or, I had one recently where the guy made it sound like he was representing the firm that put on a trade show I participated in. After I realized I was being sold, it kind of pissed me off. I decided not to do business with him anyway, because he had been deceitful.

I hired an expert in cold calling several years ago. She had built a successful IT Staffing business before cold calling had become so widespread. She got frustrated because it had become much harder to get people to even want to talk. Cold calling in her mind was dead.

Those are my anecdotes.

What are the statistic?

Proponents of cold calls will tell you, it depends on the industry. But the fact of the matter is it is about numbers. On one site I found, the sales manager did the math to figure out how his people could make the $100k the owner says they could. He found his folks would need to make 510 calls a day. He already knew that he needed to “speak” to 100 people in order to get three buying customers (a .0058 percent close rate from calls to closes). He presented the numbers to the owner and suggested the following:

1. Purchase a bigger list to support the increased numbers needed.
2. Or, increase commissions so reps can earn the 100k
3. Or, find new ways to work smarter.

The owner’s response: “The reps might do better than those statistics.”

I am not suggesting that the phone is dead. It just needs to be used differently. Prospects need to be warmed up before calls are made. And at a .0058% close rate, there has got to be a better way.

How can social media help?

In B2B, social media can play an important role. It is a list building exercise, only it’s a list you build. The ROI in social media is building the list of possible customers, and industry contacts. An organic list is more valuable to you than a rented or purchased list. If you are generating conversation through social with your marketplace, they are more likely to do business with you.

With social media, it won’t take 100 conversations to get three clients. You can start getting one client in about eight phone conversations — which happens after you’ve laid the groundwork through a social network. Your sales pipeline becomes more predictable.

Cold calling in the traditional sense is dead. But, warm calling is alive and well. Social Media can help warm those folks up.

Today’s outrage brought to you by the NY Times’ Maureen Dowd.

I am not challenging what she is saying here.  There is some tragic comedy unfolding here.  What I would challenge you on is your reaction.  What emotions are you experiencing as you read it?

For you guys who claim you do not understand feelings, you have 4 main feelings that drive a male.  There is one more too, they are:

1.  Anger

2.  Fear

3.  Sadness

4.  Joy

Bonus feeling for males:  Shame.

So, it is pretty simple, your body communicates when these feeling are going through your body.  With that in mind, what is the feeling that comes out of reading the following:

http://kl20.com/outrageatbankers/

I know how it made me feel.  Test it for yourself.

It is a powerful marketing tool.

In the last couple of weeks, it has been interesting to see how newspapers, television, and radio use media to market.  See, they need eyeballs, ears, or page views to justify their advertising dollars.  So, what better way to do it than the use of outrage.

Image from sportswrap.berecruited.com

The master of course is none other than Rush Limbaugh.  This weeks outrageous claim, “He hopes that Obama fails.”  So, instead of ignoring him, the general media, the blogsphere, and others give him free press with their outrage.  What?  Rush Limbaugh spoke?  Let’s go listen to him.

All the while, Rush Limbaugh is laughing his head off because everyone took the bait.  He can now demonstrate to his advertisers that he has the audience to deliver their message to potential buyers of angry listeners.  He smokes a cigar, kicks his feet up, and smiles a devilish smile at the power he has over the American people.

Recently here in Indianapolis, Bob Kravitz pulled a similar stunt.  The day after the Colts lost to San Diego, he declared that Tony Dungy was no longer fit to be the coach of the Colts.  He made some sarcastic claims that Dungy did not really deserve to be credited for a Super Bowl.  He was an abject failure that needed to decide if social work was more important than Indianapolis Professional Football.

It was an outrageous article.  HE GOT ME!  I was upset by it.  It made a blog in the New York Times.  It was in USA Today.  It even made Fark.

The result….page views.  It generate page views for the Indianapolis Star.  Page views means advertising revenue.  Outrage brings revenue.

The next week when Dungy announced his retirement, you would have thought Bob Kravitz was a disciple of Tony Dungy.  He had nothing, but nice things to say.  After reading the article, I realized I had been had.

See, outrage got me to click on the page.

Right or left, outrage is a good way to get noticed.  

And business can do it too.  It can be outrageous that Chinese companies use lead to manufacturer toys for children.  Or, it can be outrageous that companies healthcare is being offered by pharmacies rather than doctors.  It is outrageous that our energy is being controlled by speculators, why not use wind, solar, and electric?

Outrage is a powerful marketing tool.  Just ask Rush Limbaugh – he’s been making millions from it for years.

SEX SEX SEX…

I never thought of myself a prude. Today, everything seems to have a sexual connotation to it. All my favourite sitcoms have explicit sexual content in it.

What ever happened to Abbott and Costello? (I know, they are dead). I mean, where is the humour in just simple word play. “You want me to tanked up with Ethel? I don’t even know the girl.” Fine, there was a lot of sexual innuendo back in the day. It just seemed to have a little class with it.

Today?

I watched a deoderant commercial that was highly suggestive to say that when you get married and are getting ready to consumate your marriage, you don’t want a deoderant to ruin the moment.

Or, I love the Levi commercial where the guy and the girl take off their clothes and jump off the pier. That is a great image to show my raging hormoned teenage Son and his friends. These images do have an impact on a teenage mind. (As a parent, this one kind of pisses me off).

Or, watch any sitcom today. They kiss, then they have sex. Yes, this has been written about many times. When you step away and really look at what is happening, it does condition teenagers to see sex as a kiss and a roll in the sack.

We rented Scrubs from the library this weekend. Great show, I love the daydream sequences. But…holy crap, the Surgeon that is always talking about his thing. Isn’t that sexual harrasment in the real world? And all the kissing and making out in the hospital? Isn’t that a little over the top? The writers are obviously creative, but all the sex kind of takes away from those really truly funny and even real moments.

It is everywhere!!

Like I said, I never thought myself a prude and I am not writing this from some Reverend Jeb place. I just wonder if marketers and writers only creative form of expression today is to inject sex into every freaking thing we do. It is not a moral outrage, it is a creative outrage.

Or, as a society, are we so dumb now that the only way to motivate us is through sex. Have we already transported ourselves into an Idiocracy world where Starbucks performs handjobs, and Fuddruckers is now called Buttf***ers.

Has the English language denegrated to such a low point that people no longer understand that Abbott and Costello are really funny?

(Deodorant?! Sex to sell Deoderant? Whatever happened to “Strong enough for a Man, but made for a woman.” SEE, it was effective, I still remember it!)

So, I have decided that one of these nights when I am watching a couple of sitcoms, I am going to keep track of the amount of Sex that occurs in the show and during the commercials.

Then the next question is, why did everyone get up in arms over a wardrobe malfunction in one moment of time, when they are seeing it at least x number of times in an evening?

Hi Everyone,

Yes, this is a shameless promotion of my new business.

My company Indy Associates is winding down its operations to focus on a new business we started several months ago. Some of you may have received an email about “Professional Blog Service.”

In a nutshell, www.ProBlogService.com is a new service that provides ghost writing, promotion, and social networking management for companies that want to blog, but don’t have the time or resources to do it properly or effectively.

Why blog?

Traditional Search Engine Optimization has been going through changes over the past several years. In Internet Marketing, “shoppers use keywords, buyers use phrases.” Corporate blogging helps companies connect with the buyers in their market because GOOGLE wants “FRESH, HOT CONTENT”.

The challenge is, it takes a lot of work to keep up a corporate blog. Most companies don’t have the resources to do it. Nor, do they know how to do it right and make sure the activity is measured properly for an ROI. This is where we help.

Lloyds of Indiana is a local retailer that sells printing equipment, supplies, and binding machines through their webstore. We have been blogging for them and manage their social media profiles. We continue to grow their list of marketable prospects and have even converted sales off their MySpace page.

These guys were a local print shop for years. How many print shops have you seen go under in your local market? They changed their business to sell the supplies people need in their office, including high-end printers and corporate displays.

Blogging is helping them do this.

The cost is simple:

$135.00 per post – written, promoted, and managed through social network
$75.00 per post – written only.

So, if you have any friends or family that are complaining about their traditional marketing being expensive and unmeasurable, send them my way.

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(I am Paul Lorinczi and I approve this message)

We live in a buzzword world.

Everything that even smells of something new gets a buzzword. I have visions of smartly dressed people with stylish glasses and fancy haircuts going, “let’s give a name.” Then we come up with a sample like this:

3-6-3 Rule
A Ton Of Money
Accounting Noise
Acquisition Indigestion
Across The Board
Active Box
Activity Based Budgeting – ABB
Affluenza
After The Bell
Agency Cross
Agflation
Air Pocket Stock
Alligator Property
Alligator Spread
Alternative Energy ETF
Alternative Investment
And Interest
Angel Bond
Angelina Jolie Stock Index
Ankle Biter
Anonymous Trading
Antitrust
Arbitrageur
Aspirin Count Theory
Sourced from www.investopedia.com/categories/buzzwords.asp

What usually happens is a small segment of the population actually understands what it means. People in the know sound really smart because they can repeat the buzzword and sound really intelligent. The Internet has spawned all kinds of them. Example: “It is important that your GUI design captures the eyeballs. Make sure that you employ search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC), and Web Analytics. ” The genius ones use a lot of them in many sentences. (Wow, he’s smart, he is buzzword compliant). And people buy it all the time. (I guess that why they work).

I will be the first to admit that I loved buzzwords too. I used to sit around with my collegues who dressed nicely and play the buzzword game too. I was a buzzword expert too. I would do it in front of clients and feel really good about myself.

There is one constant in human evolution. Human interactions have not really changed. Despite all this technology introduced into our lives, we as a species still function pretty much the same way. While we may not feed each other to lions, we find new ways to be cruel just the same. And our fears and desires are pretty simple too. We can still be made to fear and sex will always sell.

So, what is all this social media hype about anyways? What’s all this Internet stuff with My Space, Facebook, Linkedin, and Plaxo about? Well, the reality is human evolution in buying has gone from the bazaar to the store, to the electronic store. Buying and selling is still done on emotions. Doing it on the Internet is no different. Now we have to either visually or through words impact people’s emotional reaction to buying from us. Just like we did when people stood in front of our table at the bazaar. There is no buzzword to describe this. Businesses just need to learn how to sell in this new market. It is old fashion buying and selling that is going on today.

Cold calling is dead. People no longer pick up the phone and talk because caller ID says I don’t have time for people I do not know. So, they are changing from having the world come to them to opting into the world of their choosing. People are quorom sensing beings. They will naturally gravitate towards those people that have similar interest and become part of a community. Instead of going down to the Church Hall, they may now choose to join the forum on under water basket weaving because there are not many people at church who are into under water basket weaving.

Business professionals globally are also trying to connect with potential colleagues with like interests. They no longer pick up the phone and listen to sales people. Instead they pick and choose what information interests them or could help them. The challenge today is learning how to generate the information they would be interested in reading. Or, creating an environments that gives them the option to participate. Again, it is old fashion buying and selling.

In the end, humans have not changed. We are still creatures of habit. We still gravitate towards shared interest. The only difference is that we do it in a different environment today. So, if you peal off all the buzzwords and narrow down the basic human behavior we see today, success is simply watching how humans behave in their new environments. If you observe the Internet from this perspective, you will see that nothing has really changed, only the location where people congregate has.