This week I spotted a conversation on LinkedIn where a bunch of cold callers got together in a huddle and talk about how great cold calling is.

We all love a bit of nostalgia. It reminded me of my parents telling me that the music was better in their day.

We often get salespeople coming to us day and day our asking for help.  They say that all their leaders know about is cold calling and send emails and to get more pipeline is to make more calls and send more emails.  And that dear reader is totally fine.

I remember when I suggested to my partner that she buy a smartphone and she said "why? all I need a phone for is make calls and send texts".

Of course, now she has a smartphone, she does many things, and while she does still make calls and send texts, she does them the least.  Until she understood and used the smart phone, the possibilities where not obvious to her.

Cold calling vs social selling

The argument about cold calling vs social selling died when DLA Ignite where the first company to prove that you can get an ROI from social selling and we've proved it ever since.

Like my partner before her smartphone, cold callers they are able to make great "calls" and send "texts" and are getting great results.  But, of course they have not used a smartphone yet as that will give you demand generation on steroids.

But this is fine.

Being an analogue company and cold calling is now a strategic decision

It's fine carry on cold calling, if you get a response from it, carry on.  In fact, being an analogue company is fine.

But as a management team, you must be aware that your competition are not just making calls and sending texts, they have the benefit of the "smartphone".

We teach our clients to be "digitally dominant", they are able to totally dominate social and digital channels, pushing out the competition to the side lines.  If you are a digital customer and customers are today, then you will see our clients, they will become the natural choice for you to buy. These prospects will walk towards our customers and buy.  That's the way it works in business today.

Why am I mentioning this.  Because, if you have chosen a path of cold calling, I'm being open and honest with you, you need to find an analogue way to counteract that.  And this is fine, you have after all chosen this as your strategy. 

Let me be totally honest about your cold calling business strategy

As well as having to battle that challenge of your digitally dominant competition, you will also have to battle with

- Lack of talent to choose from - you future employees will choose your digital dominant competition over you. 

- More churn of employees - you are aware that the jobs market has moved online and staying as an analogue company is going to impact on your existing employees.

- Lack of pipeline, we have already talked about that.  Obviously, if you are cold calling killers, not something you need to worry about. 

- Lack of invites to be on the clients top table.

As I say, this is totally fine, my advice, is you explain to your employees, as you have a duty of care that "downward spiral" is your strategy. 

Or you could realise that the world has moved on and maybe digital is something you need to look at.

So who's taking a digital path?

In case you missed it, the Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch have banned cold calling and have moved all their people to social selling. This isn't some trendy tech company that might have decided to do this on a whim, this is a very conservative financial services company that has made a decision based on data.

But surely cold calling has a better ROI than social selling?  Not according to Merrill Lynch.

"They will also be encouraged to contact prospects over LinkedIn, which has a higher hit rate than cold calling"

The CRO (chief revenue officer), Richard Eltham of Namos Solutions, of one of clients posted a comment on LinkedIn about social selling. See here.

“Social selling is not an option now it is the way of the world and you either learn and execute it or fear getting left behind” 

Kevin Murray who is the Head of Sales at MacArtney Underwater Technology recently posted about his success with social selling here and wrote an article about the transformation that has happened in sales here.