The Case for Email Marketing | How Cold Calling is Killing Relationships

Cold calling was once a very effective sales tactic but it’s rapidly becoming a relic of a bygone era. For starters, the digital revolution and information age has made the cold call just plain unnecessary. Today, prospects can get information any way that they want, and your sales team can provide this information in a number of ways.

The big issue here is not just that cold calling is irrelevant but that it is actually hurting your business. There are a number of ways that it is doing this and today we will talk about those and how they make the case for email marketing.

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How Cold Calling is Hurting Your Sales

Having a chance to talk to your prospect and make your pitch is a natural urge of the salesperson. But that’s just the problem, it’s a natural urge of a salesperson not the client. The sales process is supposed to be about the client not the salesperson. The very act of a cold call begins the relationship off on a selfish footing.

Cold calling is also a waste of your time. The workplace is an active and mobile environment now, which wasn’t always the case. The chance that you will catch a decision maker while they are sitting at their desk is extremely low. The chance that they are sitting there with nothing better to do than to take your unprompted call is next to zero.

Let’s not just make this about you and take a look from the client side and put ourselves in their shoes. Whatever the decision makers exact role is, you can safely assume that they are wearing many hats in their organization. They have full days and full calendars. They are running around handling issue after issue and after a busy few hours they finally have five free minutes to sit down and their phone rings. Of course, it’s another sales call. You could have the best product and you could have the perfect pitch; it doesn’t matter. This call was dead before you even finished dialing.

Now, let’s take it one step further. Any good salesperson is taught to overcome objections and get the meeting anyways. This frustrated decision maker tries to quickly dismiss you, but you avoid the objection and push back. Unfortunately, he or she is tired and not having any of this interaction. The call quickly turns contentious and you leave the wrong type of impression for yourself and your company. Good luck selling to them in the future.

Before we turn to the solution, I have one last reason you need to ditch cold calling, your salespeople hate it. It kills morale on your sales team and as discussed, it is not an efficient use of your time. Put the cold call to rest and do everyone a favor.

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Make Email Marketing a Mainstay

Email marketing is the answer to your cold calling woes. Email marketing allows you to carry out the same basic function of the cold call without the negative down falls. You are able to deliver your message in a way that allows the prospect to review it and make a decision on their own schedule.

Email marketing can be done many ways but here are a few best practices. For starters, use creative headlines to grab attention. Testing out different headlines is a good way to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Secondly, be creative with the content of your emails. Tailor your message to who your reaching out to. Whether that be their industry or the local business economy, make the message relate to them so that they feel special.

Use a marketing automation tool to streamline this process. First contact with prospects should be a quick process to get them to reach out to you. This will allow you to focus on more high-level tasks to drive your business forward.

Cold calling has served a purpose but that has run its course. Sales and marketing professionals are working in tandem to improve processes and make their organisations better. Turning to email marketing in lieu of cold calling is a winning formula for businesses.

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