[wecando.biz]

Hi all

I have been working with Matthew Brazil, director of 6Consulting and a former sales director at SCI Sales, on a piece he has written for Modernselling.com.

ARE SOCIAL NETWORKS THE LAST NAIL IN THE COFFIN FOR COLD CALLING?

"Cold calling has been served notice, a new era beckons and with it an altogether different way of working. Social networking has arrived and will soon replace cold calling as the predominant method of prospecting in business" - read the rest at http://www.modernselling.com/sales-e...-in-sales.aspx .

I am often accused of trumpeting my own business on here, so a warning - Matthew gives WeCanDo.BIZ a flattering comparison to cold calling. He also gives an interesting insight to picking up useful relationships through social networking, forums, blogging and micro-blogging. And few may know that my other company is a lead generation company which cold calls for software companies to arrange meetings for them, however, so I don't get it all my way in this piece! It also gives me something to think about in terms of the services I recommend to clients in the future.

Matthew's findings are interesting and I'd be really interested to hear others' views on the future of cold calling.

IH

[OldWelshGuy]

I think it depends on the product. A lot of cold calling has been replaced by email but it is still cold calling it is just in email form rather than telephone. We run email campaigns for one of our businesses, and they are FANTASTIC. We tend to partner up and get piggy backed. For example, we have an article going out in the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) monthly newsletter (oddly enough about grasping the web in business).

In this article we sing the praises of networking for business, we sing the praises of WEB2.0, we also sing the praises of a lot of other things that will help a business to maximise their return.

Is cold calling dead? I think the jury is still out, I think for certain things it will always be there. If Cold calling WAS dead, how would yellow pages and thompsons etc make so much money from it?

[AVS Agencies]

Cold calling is dead? How on earth do you get consumers to social networking sites such as yours Wecando as from what I can see, its primarily b2b.

[wecando.biz]

Originally Posted by AVS Agencies

Cold calling is dead? How on earth do you get consumers to social networking sites such as yours Wecando as from what I can see, its primarily b2b.

40% of consumers are on Facebook. Correct, ours is not a consumer site, but the mechanisms exist to engage with consumers through social networking, as you can witness by some of the "fan pages" that brands have on Facebook, MySpace and the like.

Anyway, I believe cold calling to consumers died AGES ago. Who enjoys receiving cold calls when they're bathing the kids or having dinner? TPS has spread much wider than CTPS.

IH

[wecando.biz]

Originally Posted by OldWelshGuy

Is cold calling dead? I think the jury is still out, I think for certain things it will always be there. If Cold calling WAS dead, how would yellow pages and thompsons etc make so much money from it?

I don't know about Thomson but Yell is taking a kicking at the moment - their shares have fallen 90% in the last year, they have recently been booted out of the FTSE250 and there are now boardroom scraps as they try to unseat their chief exec. There is little but doom and gloom from them these days about their prospects in an internet age.

The only recent highlight was an announcement that they have launched a Facebook widget!

[AVS Agencies]

Cold calling includes leaflets through doors and such like too, so how on earth can you say its dead?

So what about the other 60% of consumers that are NOT on facebook, do we as a business just sit on our laurels and wait for them to realise and join such?

[OldWelshGuy]

Originally Posted by AVS Agencies

Cold calling includes leaflets through doors and such like too, so how on earth can you say its dead?

So what about the other 60% of consumers that are NOT on facebook, do we as a business just sit on our laurels and wait for them to realise and join such?

That would be reactive marketing (leaflets etc) I think the original post was with regard pro-active marketing.

in the case of a company I part own in tourism, we do both

[Alvin]

Originally Posted by wecando.biz

40% of consumers are on Facebook. Correct, ours is not a consumer site, but the mechanisms exist to engage with consumers through social networking, as you can witness by some of the "fan pages" that brands have on Facebook, MySpace and the like.



IH

You mean 40% of our kids may be on facebook.?

The people with disposable income are still googling away.

Alvin

[wecando.biz]

Originally Posted by Alvin

You mean 40% of our kids may be on facebook.?

The people with disposable income are still googling away.

Alvin

Or networking on LinkedIn (average income over £50K).

Ofcom research from April shows that 22% of adults have a profile on a social networking site.

But more people have phones, of course. That isn't the point. His point was that he found it easier to establish relationships using the word of mouth mechanisms presented through social networking than it was to pro-actively approach someone from scratch. That can't really come as a surprise, surely?

If you can engage "better" with them online, why would you bang your head against the way calling the rest and getting the phone slammed down? You don't need to be addressing the hostile 78% of a market if 22% of it is receptive to your approach.

IH

[Alvin]

Originally Posted by wecando.biz

If you can engage "better" with them online, why would you bang your head against the way calling the rest and getting the phone slammed down? You don't need to be addressing the hostile 78% of a market if 22% of it is receptive to your approach.

IH

Agreed hence why search engine traffic is so successfull.

People know what they want and they come looking for you.

Alvin