Stop Cold Calling. It Doesn’t Work (as you know).

On a whim, how many times have you picked up a phone call or answered a knock at the door, conversed with someone you didn’t know, and by the end of it, made a critical decision? Chances are probably never (okay, maybe once but we’re not going to count that time).

So then I ask you, marketers and sales peeps, what is up with cold calling? And why are we still doing it? Especially, when according to Harvard Business Review, cold calling doesn’t work 90% of the time, as only 5-10% of your calls pick up the phone, and less than 2% result in meetings (Yellow Tie).

When you put a sales rep in a car and send them around town after a handful of cold leads, chances are your cost of acquisition will skyrocket. Agencies and media companies using call centers aren’t that far ahead either; yes, the costs are lower and the reach may be wider, but the problem remains the same—they are still soliciting people who aren’t ready to buy.

Spinning your wheels on cold calls is an exercise in futility—it doesn’t matter how good your pitch is, people only buy when they’re ready. Maybe you get lucky and hit that 5-10%, but setting your watch to random phenomena isn’t sustainable.

You’re smart, and you know that closing a sale is a process that takes a series of calculated steps to warm the lead until they’re ready to buy. But did you know, on average, a lead requires 10 marketing-driven touches to convert from the top of the funnel into a paying customer (Aberdeen Group)?

Plenty of reformed agencies have ditched the icy calling strategies and are killing it with lead nurturing strategies, using agency-specific marketing automation. These set of tools are geared toward helping you sell to local businesses specifically. They have the ability to tell you which prospects aren’t interested, which need a little warming up, and of course—which are ready to buy.

Want to learn more about marketing automation tools, along with other solutions that can solve the challenges your business is up against? Download the 14 Challenges Agencies & Media Companies Face eBook and discover real solutions backed by real data.