by Tim Hughes | @Timothy_Hughes | LinkedIn
In Mark Hunter’s book “High-Profit Prospecting”, page 80 he says “There is no reason with all the information available today for anyone to have to make a cold call”.
So that’s it, it’s official that cold calling is dead!
It’s now “warm calling” or “informed calling” I’m told.
By the way, this isn’t new, I was doing this back in the 1990s.
The cynical among you might be thinking this is a desperate rebrand for people to hope they still keep some form of relevance in an internet, mobile, social media driven world. I’m sure there are people that think that way.
So what is Warm or Informed Calling?
It’s simple, you use the information available to you, like that is available on social networks (spot the irony of cold callers admitting to using social networks).
For example, as I write, my summary title on my Linkedin profile is “Should have Played Quidditch for England”. So you might call me up (so back to cold calling) and say “Hi Timothy, I see you love Quidditch” and then you would start pitching to me like you always used to.
The idea is the fact you have found this piece of information is supposed to sugar the bitter pill that you have interrupted me, pissed me off and then are about to try and manipulate me into buying something over priced that I don’t want and i don’t need.
As any buyer today I have access to standard iPhone technology and I block all cold callers. In the old days and the assumption from cold callers, sorry informed callers today is that you can keep cold calling me and then you can bully me down the pipeline. But with two taps of my iPhone screen and you are blocked. I ask you reader to start doing the same.
Another Form of Warm or Informed “Call” well actually its an Email
Here you warm me up with an email.
Sounds simple, you warm me up with an email and then you call me as I will be so amazed with your email, I will buy instantly. Or so the vision is sold. What happens in reality is something different.
So you send me an email interrupting me and pissing me off, you then call me up interrupting me and pissing me off and you ask me did you get the email me that interrupted you and pissed you off? At which point I will reach down the phone and tear your head off or in the cold calling world I sign on the dotted line. This is utter fantasy.
Just before I wrote this blog, I got an unsolicited email. My name was wrong, it was templated, it was all about them nothing about me, they wanted something I didn’t know who they were, it wasn’t relevant, they hadn’t actually bothered to find out anything about me. Because, of course, “informed” is a relative word. What informed means to you and means to me are two different things.
And of course with two clicks I set up a rule that any more emails from this person will go straight to trash and I ask you to start doing the same.
This whole cold calling rebranding is a scam. I’ve argued before that “warm” calling is actually worse than cold calling.
It is still interruption that people just won’t tolerate anymore. It still assumes I can push and bully you through the pipeline, but we have technology on outside as buyers to stop this. It’s not relevant.
Just before Christmas I was at a clients drinks and got talking to a CIO, I asked him “surely there must be an onslaught of people contacting you?” and he said “yes, but it’s pretty easy dealing with it”. He went onto explain that 80% of what he got was templated, even competitors using the same template. The calls and emails were not relevant and the people clearly didn’t understand his business issues and priorities. He said that all that just got deleted. And there is the issue, cold calling, warm calling or I guess next week it will be called hot calling, makes you look like just another salesperson. Same old, same old.
Finally, we all cold call or warm call as we have no leads, I know that, you know that and your clients know that. By doing this you, not just destroying the good will you have in the market. (A cold caller from Virgin Media (my internet provider) put the phone down on me this week, which is just rude.) You are also advertising the fact you, as a business, have run out of ideas in sales and marketing and don’t care about your clients. Maybe time for a rethink?
People who read this article also read these:
https://dlaignite.com/why-your-marketing-is-very-seriously-broken/
https://dlaignite.com/why-using-profile-writers-is-not-social-selling/
https://dlaignite.com/40-sales-and-marketing-books-to-transform-your-thinking-part-2/
