by Tim Hughes | @Timothy_Hughes | LinkedIn
Many of us remember the old days, calling people up and pitching to them and, in a way, in those days it was accepted.
Buyers were not so sophisticated, we didn’t have the access to information that we do now. Today we have the internet, social media and mobile, that has made a massive change on the way we buy and sell. Back then, we didn’t have any of that, so to know what was going on in the world, a cold call often gave us information as to what was about.
Fast forward to now, we are all totally pissed off with the amount of interruption through cold calls, advertising, unsolicited emails etc. This has all become “just noise” and in fact legislation such as GDPR and technology, such as blocking calls on your iPhone has become a way of filtering out the noise. Thankfully!
As a company, Digital Leadership Associates (DLA) do no outbound marketing. We do no cold calling, no advertising, no unsolicited emails and why would we? We are a social organisation, we teach our clients to do what we do.
Most people understand that social is now the place to build relationships with prospects and clients. The problem is that social selling isn’t about selling. Nobody gets up in the morning and says “the first things i need to do today is talk with a manipulative sales person”. But some people still don’t get that social selling, isn’t selling over social.
The LinkedIn Cold Call
LinkedIn is now being used to make cold calls. What do I mean by this?
- The inmail, pitching a product and service. – This is the cold call over a social network
- The connection request where people give a list of products and services – Again a cold call on a social network.
- The LinkedIn connection request which is based on 2015 social selling techniques. This is where people say, I want to grow my network. But the summary on their profile screams at you that they are a salesperson.
Here are just three examples, where this outbound technique is basically just a cold call, over a social network. I’ve even seen cold calling gurus complain about this technique and I agree with them.
A friend of mine recently had one from American Express so he complained to Amex by posting on LinkedIn and tagging senior people in Amex. It was amazing how quickly the spammer from Amex blocked him. But of course, the damage was already done and the senior people were already in the loop.
So what can you do?
If anybody comes to you offering this type of service, send them on the way. This is spamming and for you to try and get business by spamming is going to cause you a lot of brand value loss.
If people are doing it to you, I suggest a polite reply pointing out they are spamming. Blocking is a last resort, but you can always block the people.
People who read this article also read these:
https://www.social-experts.net/welcome-to-the-social-platform-the-new-competitive-advantage/
https://www.social-experts.net/free-yourself-from-the-inefficiency-and-ineffectiveness-of-legacy-sales-methods-of-the-past/
https://www.social-experts.net/is-your-social-media-consultancy-actually-walking-the-walk/
