Back in the year 1897 when a major American newspaper printed the obituary of the famous American author Mark Twain prematurely, Twain quipped that “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated’.

I like to paraphrase and apply Twain’s famous line to cold calling and sales prospecting because despite what you read and hear from today’s sales and marketing experts, I don’t believe that cold calling is dead or dying.  In fact, I believe done properly, cold calling is THE MOST EFFECTIVE way to find & qualify new opportunities and build sales pipeline.

Look, being an author of a successful book on social selling, sales coach, advisor and trainer and a digital transformation champion and practitioner I am a big advocate of leveraging social media, and the urgent need for sales organizations to embrace digital selling.  However, I see all these digital channels such as social media, messaging apps and marketing automation as simply tools to be utilized to improve productivity, increase revenue, & enhance the customer buying experience.  They cannot do the job of selling.  Believe me I have tried, but I have never been able to convince someone to buy what I am selling doesn’t matter how many posts or LIKES I do.  I still need to engage in a person to person conversation in real time.

The reason why so many people have problem with prospecting the old fashion way is not because it doesn’t work.  It is often simply because they are not given the opportunity, have the skills or desire to do it the right way.

I can list dozens of reasons why sales people step over their own closing by poor preparation, messaging, attitude and approach. I can also share dozens of stories of how done properly you can fill your sales pipeline within a couple of weeks.  I just did a workshop for a small and rapidly growing technology company with around 10 sales people and we managed to lock in 68 appointments with the decision makers in just 3 hours of very focused call campaign using my prospecting methodology published in my book The Winning Formula.  Prior to this workshop this company was getting on average one appointment a week having 3 people calling 5 days a week! Go Figure!

So stop hating the game and take a look at what the players is doing or not doing!

If you want to learn how we do it drop me an email and let’s have a 15 minute conversation.  I promise you will get your time’s worth.

About the author:

Mark Ghaderi is an author, sales coach, mentor, entrepreneur and social selling evangelist with twenty five years of driving business results across the globe.

Vital Strategies Pte Ltd. Provides Revenue Growth Services to companies across the APAC region, helping organizations to grow their top line through digital transformation and improving sales execution.

contact us at: sales@vital-strategies.com