Working in the world of sales leadership as I do, it’s always interesting to see how people view the world and articulate it.

You may not know that I have a podcast, #TimTalks, yeah I know, a play on words from TED Talks. OK moving on. Here’s a link by the way.  http://www.youtube.com/c/TimothyHughes1

In one of the podcast I interview Don Carmichael, if you don’t know him, he trains pre-sales people with the “demo to win” methodology. He is also works at Stonehenge as a tour guide. You can find the video here https://youtu.be/5e-FPfhd9Es

Why is that interesting?

When Stonehenge was built there was a total population in England, Scotland and Wales of 200,000 people. And something, we know not what, convinced 10% of the population (2,000 people) to converge on Stonehenge, every year for the winter solace. For some people a six week walk.

These articles are where these sales leaders can articulate their vision, to motivate the thousands that will read this article.  They might not motivate 10% of the population, but it's a clear call to action.

The "interesting" thing for me is my friend Deb Calvert's comment that "cold calling" is the biggest search term for the "Sales Experts Channel".  Could this be that cold calling does not work, people are being pressurised into making cold calls and it just does not work?  I know she talks about people sitting around waiting for leads to come in.  Really?  Do people, actually sit around and hope?  Hope was never a strategy.

I have a theory.

In the world of advertising, the amount of advertising spend is increasing.  Why?  Because it does not work so people have to spend more to try and get the results they need.

Isn't this the same as why people are searching for cold calling?

I had lunch this week with the CEO of a Marketing agency, they are not the "full service agency" that you hear of all the time.  They focus on Demand Generation and he talked about contracts where he is paid by the MQL (marketing qualified lead) or the SQL (sales qualified lead).  Is this a revelation?  No there are plenty of agencies that do this, but it was interesting in his comment that cold calling no longer works in the US.

Let me qualify that before I get a comments, that somebody made a cold call once and got through to a person.

I'm not a gambler, but in the rare occasion I've placed a bet.  You know what, I've actually won a couple of times, I can tell you stories of people that have won betting.  But, let's be honest bookies (betting companies) wouldn't be in business if everybody won, all the time.  So while I can tell you that once somebody won, of course, somebody once got through to somebody on the phone.

The same with cold calling, yes one or two people can get the odd call through, but it's not enough to feed a company.

It gets worse.

The picture that was painted by this Marketing Agency was.  Software company starts-up, they get funding, they hire a load of SDRs (sales development representatives)  to make cold calls and ...... nothing happens.

People are coming to them in desperation that they cannot get enough leads and meetings using these legacy sales methods.

In fact this agency, is employed to create MQLs for the SDRs .... for those that love irony, like I do, there you have it on a plate!  For you cold calling lovers, sorry, it's served a little cold!

As Deb Calvert says "waiting around for inbound leads won't get the job done", totally agree and we know that cold calling just isn't getting the job done either.

Maybe it's time to take sales strategically and take social strategically and move your demand generation into the current century and current decade?

Our social selling transformation programs always get a sales increase of 30% of new business and reduces the sales cycle by 40%.  It provides sales people with a prospecting method, that is "always on" and it provides people with a methodology to help sales right up too close.

Why use methods based in the 1980s, when it's the second decade of the 21st century?