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Almost every week I see some sort of marketing splurge about how cold calling is dead and how “web 2.0 or even 3.0” is the way to go. The latest and the reason for this article was the headline “Increase Cold Calling Success by 6-8 Hundred Percent” It’s message was by using Web 3.0 (can’t wait for Web 4.0) and social media best practises any salesman can increase their success by 6-8 Hundred Percent. At this point a stream of abuse and derision was about to leave my lips. However, I paused mainly in respect of those of a tender age and a delicate disposition, but realised that the writer had simply missed the point and was looking at the problem the wrong way, that is from the sellers perspective not the buyers.
I have recently been involved in selling a service to CEO, FD’s and Company Secretaries of the top 1000 businesses in the UK. What is abundantly clear is that using Web anything and social media as a way of contacting my suspects, is as likely to succeed in delivering orders as running backwards up Everest is likely to get you to the summit without falling off. The reason, simple, most senior executives of organisations of that size don’t use or need social media and many are surprisingly unskilled in the use of the internet. This is not only a function of their age but also the fact that they have been successful in establishing their own network using traditional face to face techniques. To them online techniques are irrelevant.
So what did work? Well cold calling, once we had made contact we could explain how our service was of benefit. We were able to generate a steady stream of meetings and sales. Why was that? After all according to many pundits call calling is interrupt driven and doesn’t develop the buyer seller relationship. All of this may be true but for our market it (cold calling) was a communications method they understood and could relate too, consequently it was effective.
My point is that the mix of marketing and sales processes required to be successful changes in every situation. Your marketing mix must reflect the expectations of your targets. Whilst useful, web 3.0 or any other sub-variant of marketing is not a panacea. The hype that social networking changes everything is just plain wrong, it doesn’t replace common sense and it isn’t a Silver Bullet, its just another arrow in the thoughtful marketers armoury.
Exigent Consulting specialises in providing Business Turnaround, Sales, Marketing and Mentoring to the Small and Medium Business. We help Business Owners improve the profit performance of their business.
Just put a 3.0 on the end of it and you have a new generation product. We say our product is marketing automation 3.0 in order to distinguish it from all of the other marketing automation products that just add functionality. Ours is a true innovation.
ReplyDeleteThat is the problem with 2.0, 3.0... It does not mean anything concrete. I, myself, would like a business card with the title "Duke of Information Systems" for a company that specializes in Nth generation systems. Then I would be covered for life.