Still Relying on Cold-Calling

I guess I’ve been online and on the go for too long now. I thought that cold-calling was dead and everybody had moved past it on to better and more efficient ways of generating business. I guess I was wrong.

As I’m looking to settle down again (preferably in Vancouver, London or Amsterdam) I’ve been paying attention to Craigslist, Monster and other job-posting sites to see if anything catches my eye. I’ve also put the word out to my friends and colleagues so they often send me listings in which they feel I may have an interest.

The thing that I’m getting floored by is how many telemarketing positions are still available. Even more so, is how adamant people are that cold-calling is the only way to generate business. I’ve been testing with email replies beginning with “I’m not the right person for the position as posted but I can help you generate a massive amount of warm sales leads for your reps” or something to that effect.

The responses that I’ve been getting are startling. I get everything from, “Who are you to tell me how to run my business?” to “You don’t understand my business, nothing else works” to “You mean there is another way to do this?”

It has been a fascinating lesson. Like I said, maybe I’ve been out of the loop and strictly online promoting CPA offers too long but I’ve gotta shake my head. Nearly two years ago I wrote, “Nice People Can Sell” and I received the same reaction back then and now I see that very little has changed.

Yes people. There are better ways to grow your business. Don’t subject your employees to the tedious task of cold-calling. In the end, you’ll waste money paying them for unproductive time and they will resent you for having to do unproductive and deflating work day in and day out.

Set up an automated lead gen system and let those same reps follow-up with prospects that already know what you do and are warm to the idea of being contacted. That is the ticket to success.