It was strange to watch but last year (2017) but there was a phoney (pun intended) war between US (and Australia) based people around cold calling (and cold email) Vs Social Selling. Even today on Facebook, I see on Facebook a question around cold calling and email.
Let's deal with the email point first. GDPR pretty much kills email marketing for those in the US as well as Europe. It also changes sales as you can no longer push people down the sales funnel with email. While I totally understand we are not at the May deadline yet, surely as a business you are getting ready? I initiated at my last board meeting a program for GDPR compliance and global education of all our staff. I'm not being flippant or trying to create a scene, just trying to save you a fine and probably your job.
In terms of cold calling. In Europe, we stopped this 12 months ago. (Apart from certain low value transactional based products). The argument was won, or maybe there was never an argument. In fact social selling is now selling. We do wonder why the US (the leader in social etc?) and Australia have fallen behind so much?
If you are a cold caller, we salute you! As a vinyl record collector, I can understand totally the feel control that picking up the phone gives. We also know it can be lonely sometimes. So rather than go to your customers why not fish in the pool where they all are. 40% of the worlds population is after all on social media and NOT sitting by the phone hoping you will call and ask for 15 minutes of their time.
“Thought leadership builds industry recognition, elevates subject matter expertise, strengthens your status among industry analysts, secures earned media and speaking engagements, and generates business leads,” says Kido. “Getting high-level executive attention that results in new business is the ideal end game of a successful thought leadership initiative.”
