Has “Informed Calling” Replaced “Cold Calling?”

People are quick to say how cold-calling doesn’t work and how if you’re doing cold-calling, you’re wasting your time.

If you choose to believe cold-calling doesn’t work and you are going to rely exclusively on referrals, then I suspect you either have a very low-level of expectations or you have a network that rivals a political organization.

Today’s marketplace might be making cold-calling more difficult, but in so doing, it’s opened up a huge new opportunity — I refer to it as “informed-calling.”

The process works and I’ll say if you rely on cold-calling or referrals for your business, then you need to check out the “informed-calling” strategy.  I’ll tell you right now it works and it works well.

Informed-calling is built around the concept that before you reach out to anyone, you have a purpose for the call.

Thanks to the level of information that is now available about anyone or any company, there is no reason to call anyone without a reason.

Put yourself in the position of the person who is being called.  Would you be more inclined to take a call from someone who is calling with a reason that you can connect with or from someone who is calling to introduce themselves?

The only thing that is required to make informed calling work is to spend a couple of minutes searching the web to find a piece of information the person you’re calling can connect with.

The information might be something pertaining to the industry they’re in or economic news or even a sporting event.   The options are varied and the beauty is that with search engines, Linkedin and other tools, you can uncover information quickly.

When you come up with the piece of information you are looking to share, use it as the purpose for the call.  The objective is to create a reason for them to talk with you and for you to create a way to connect with the other person.

I will soon be sharing a few more posts on the subject of “informed-calling,” because I believe it is one of the best ways to develop new business.

Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.