In a recent article published on LinkedIn by Daniel Disney, the author takes position in the current debate of cold-calling VS social selling.
I strongly recommend you to have a read-through his piece. If time is lacking, here is its content in a nutshell:
Cold calling will die and I believe the biggest reason for that will be millennials taking over the workplace.
He then takes a softer approach to its message… but well… “cold calling will die” still is and remain the strongest point of the article.
I disagree with his statement, and here are the reasons why.
Ice Call vs Cold Call
I do believe a difference has to be made between yesterday’s and today’s outbound sales activity. Cold-calls performed today are essentially different to those made in the past. Indeed, 20 years ago, before the existence of smartphones and social media… reps were working out from XLS lists and calling days in, days out, having to sell products on the spot by building rapport with no prior connection, nor information about the prospect. That is what I refer to now as Ice-Calling. The situation today is totally different, with reps having access to a multitude of tools such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook etc…
Microwave your cold call
What those tools allow you to do nowadays is to be prepared and relevant, in a way that could never be achieved before. Let’s face it, most companies today have online communities managers, whose duties are to make sure people engage with the company in an online manner. If done the proper way, such communities will give you all the insight you need to warm up your cold-call, and instantly bring a statement of credibility and start working on building rapport.
LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are the usual resources. You can easily dig up information about your prospects, or the company they work for and use it to start conversing. Some other tools are available as well…
Quora.com as well as Yahoo answers are often disregarded, even if very useful. You can find there thousands of people daily reaching out for answers to their questions. The odds are… you probably have tens of buyers reaching out to you everyday without even realizing it.
Is social selling new?
The answer is no. Let’s take a look at the definition of socia
of or relating to human society, the interaction of the individual and the group, or the welfare of human beings as members of society <social institutions>
tending to form cooperative and interdependent relationships with othersb: living and breeding in more or less organized communities <social insects>cof a plant: tending to grow in groups or masses so as to form a pure stand
At the light of those definitions, social selling has always existed… people just called it “building rapport”.
Let’s face it… whether we are looking at now or twenty years ago, the likability of a sales representatives always plays a crucial role in a sales process. You do not buy from a salesman you dislike. The interaction between the sales rep and the prospect has always been there… it has just evolved.
So let’s not jump ahead of ourselves and announce the death of cold-calling based on a wrong definition. Instead, let’s start realizing the difference between Social Selling and Social Network-Based Selling.
The Millennials Brain-Teaser
Let us first take a look at the definition of Millennials:
The term Millennials is usually considered to apply to individuals who reached adulthood around the turn of the 21st century.
You can also check this much less politically correct definition…
Millennials will soon prove to be a serious headache for sellers around the world. Born with technology in their hand, often somewhat detached from reality, and incapable of introspective questioning… Millennials will however become the leaders of tomorrow. But does that mean they can only be reached by using their beloved social networks?
I would argue to say no. Speaking with a prospect, or meeting with them is still the best way to build a relationship. Yes, Millennials will be a tough bunch to address and reach, but they also are easier to talk to once engaged.
Also, and this is totally disregarded currently… Social network-based selling, if it does really pick-up as some predicts it to… is simply ideal for cold-callers. Here is why:
- Hundreds of sellers around the world will tweet prospects everyday
- They will send LinkedIn in-mails days in, days out
- Facebook News-feed will be full of sponsored adds that eventually people will automatically zap…
- As a result, there will be way too much online traffic and requests. It will be impossible for prospects to answer their tweets and in-mails in a day, and they will soon start feeling fed-up with such requests. The beauty of cold-calling is that you often have to get past a gate-keeper, who is in charge of filtering the calls. What kind of gatekeeper does a twitter account have? Or a LinkedIn account?…
I am a strong believer that somehow, Millennials will have to build a bridge between new-age business, and old school business. Cold-Calling definitely has a place in that model-to-be.
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