Industry Experts Respond – Does Cold Calling Still Work?
Does cold calling still work? That was the question that Derek Singleton, Managing Editor at Software Advice, asked when he brought together three of the industry leading professionals together to debate.
To get to the heart of the debate, each of the dabate participants were asked the following three questions:
- Is cold calling still relevant in the Internet age? Are companies still generating ROI from it?
- With other lead generation activities on the rise, (paid search and content marketing, for example), can cold calling help marketers stand out from the noise?
- Can inbound marketing and analytics help us better decide who to cold call and when?
Watch the complete video here:
Source: Software Advice Marketing Mentor blog
Here are some of the key takeaways and arguments from those that participated:
“I’ve gotten so annoyed with cold calling that I’ve turned that channel off. I’ll do webinars, hangouts, and scheduled calls. But it’s impossible to cold call me now because I don’t have a phone. [Cold Calling is] an annoying medium for me because it’s about the seller and not the buyer.” – Mike Volpe, CMO of HubSpot.
“If we [at XANT] just rely on the Internet to bring us leads, it’s like a fish sitting in a pond waiting for the river to bring whatever it brings to them. What we’ve found is that if you look at a typical bell curve, 70 percent of all the leads that come in are small. For example, we’re moving up to enterprise class companies and we have to forget about the Web bringing us those leads and have to reach out to initialize the conversation (usually through calling), then we move to a Web-based type of nurturing.” – Ken Krogue, President and co-founder of XANT.
“As a marketer, it’s our job to figure out how to best get in touch with someone. Some people actually prefer to get a phone call over an inbox full of email spam. If a message isn’t crafted to speak to me personally and my needs as a business, then I trash it immediately. Frankly, the phone is a little more rare than email, so it might be a competitive differentiator.” – Anneke Seley, founder and CEO of Reality Works Group.
What are your thoughts? Do you agree with any of the responses, above? Watch the complete debate, via Software Advice, here. Additionally, read Derek’s blog post highlighting the debate in detail, here.
As an additional help, learn more about Software Advice’s Salesforce Automation (SFA) Software.
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