I recently spotted post from Alex Abbott who is a CEO of a partner of ours, anyway I nicked some of his words to create this blog, thanks Alex.

Cold calling days in 2023, really?

I organised cold calling days back in the day when I was in corporate, in fact the company I worked for gave me a prize for creating a fun, gamified set of sessions.  But that was 10 years ago. It's like saying the salesforce should all have their iphones taken away and be issued with Blackberries. Come on it's 2023!

Cold calling the data Vs the opinion

There is a lot written about cold calling and much it is just opinion. Ask anybody that posts "cold calling is dead" to post the data behind that, because that is just an opinion.

I'm now going to show you have cold calling isn't dead, but if you are using it to generate leads, you are way behind.  After all we have a choice in this digital first world, disrupt or be disrupted. 

Cold calling the data / facts

Cold calling has a 1% call connection success rate and the very best cold callers achieve a 3-5% call progression rate (meaningful next step agreed).

Cold calling is the number 1 reason a buyer will not buy from a sales person (TrustRadius), with cold email being 5th.

Let's look at the data for social selling

Social selling on the other hand, not any old social selling (it means different things to different people), I mean our specific methodology of which we’ve 20 weeks worth of sales performance data across a range of sales experiences, from 2 to 20+ years of sales experience. 

The only social selling program to be endorsed by The Institute of Sales Professionals thanks to the efforts of DLA ignite.

The highlight is that the team are creating 10 meetings a week per person through our social selling methodology. Just think about scaling that across your SDR team? 

Our social selling performance benchmark data shows that:

😃 9% of everyone asked we sit a call with.

😄 33.6% of those calls move to a meaningful next step agreed.

😁 32.1% become qualified opportunity.

The best part is, the buyer enjoys the experience, no awkward sales techniques used and the sales reps interviewed said they enjoy their job again: Tek Lubiarz, Jordan Abbott and Jensen Abbott

Poor Mental Health in sales affects 63% of sellers and 60% of sales leaders, if you’re forcing your team to perform outdated sales techniques they don’t believe work, there is a better far more enjoyable and effective way of developing new business conversations that lead to sustainable business growth.

So why are you still running cold calling days

The data is clear - 1% call rate with a 5% next action or 9% call rate with a 33.6% next action.

If you are still cold calling, you can clearly see you are falling behind and behind and behind.

Want to know more about social selling, check out my new book

"social selling techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition".

In this brand new edition, I have updated all the text, I have also got 15 practitioners, so people who are doing this already to explain how they are get (practical) business benefit. From the CEO that has been running a digital business for over 18 months to sales leaders who use social selling every day.  

Articles on how these business have and are implementing digital, from Mercer, Telstra Purple, Ring Central, Cyberhawk, Namos, Ericsson, Crux Consulting, DLA Ignite and more.

What does Mark Schaefer, Marketing guru think of the book "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition"? watch the video here

It's available on Amazon worldwide.  Link to Amazon.com here and Amazon.co.uk here.