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End cold calling and start getting leads

Written by Charlene Jacob | 14/01/2016 12:30:00 AM

One of the more familiar battles for Marketing Directors all around the world is how to eliminate cold calling and still get leads.

Sales professionals just hate it like there’s no tomorrow, plus the percentages of returning more clients and better clients are extremely low.

Essentially, nobody wants it, but precious few actually investigate if there is a way to eliminate it altogether!!

Now the good news - it can actually be eliminated. After a bit of time and dedication, it will take your marketing structure into the future – a new era where cold calling is replaced by highly valuable information collateral.

There are 6 steps involved.

Step 1: Forget what you knew

Step 2: Understand who you are talking to

Step 3: Have customers come to you

Step 4: Be the organisation they familiarise with

Step 5: Centralise the process

Step 6: Maximise your website

 

Rather than overload you with information, let’s explore the methods for change one step at a time.

I will keep it brief and straightforward, yet in doing so, the aim is to give you enough subject matter to imagine how this one recommendation alone would actually impact the marketing which you are currently directing.

Quite likely, your eyes will open to major possibilities in gearing up for the future – a future without cold calling

Forget what you knew

The term Google is so globally recognised purely because it is, by far, the number one search engine on the planet.

Not only is it widely used today, but as Generation Y increasingly comes into the workforce, this search engine will become even more engaged in business purely because the next generations cannot function without the internet.

Regardless if you are marketing director of an industrial, retail or commercial company, be prepared to accept that pretty much any time someone wants a product or service they are likely to look for it in Google.

So, with this being the new reality, why would you persist in having your sales staff cold calling for such low returns while wrecking their self esteem?

Why not forget this archaic approach and be logical? If your next customer is using Google, turn your system on its head by feeding into this buyer habit.

Every customer of yours, past and present, has one thing in common with the plethora of potential customers you still haven’t reached: they use your business for pretty much the same reasons.

So the idea is to extract all that experienced knowledge from the minds of your sales staff and yourself, turn it into digestible content, and structure the dissemination of this content so whenever that next potential client Googles a search term, you are the most likely to show up high on the search results list.

And be aware when Google presents you to them via that search, by the time they click through to your collateral (web page, landing page, video, webinar, picture, anything), they have all but made up their mind to deal with you already!

This is what we refer to as a ‘warm lead’, compared to the ‘cold call’ of yesteryear.

So take a deep breath, close your eyes and imagine how your business would function under this structure.

And if you would like to explore more, be our guest and download this free e-book which outlines all 6 steps in basic detail.

It won’t overload you with information but it may just open your mind to a much, much smarter way of utilising your marketing budget and stretching it way further.