Since I have that fancy letter “C” as the first letter in my title as Chief Sales Officer, I get quite a number of cold calls. Of course it just makes me cringe to be called by someone who hasn’t even spent a minute looking at our business and developing a message about their solution that I’d care about. But I do enjoy critiquing in my mind their pitch.
Some would like to rename cold calling. I recently heard it called “introductory calling” in an interview done on Barry Moltz’s talk radio show. I don’t know, seems analogous to putting lipstick on a pig.
Instead of just renaming the term, Nigel Edelshain of Sales 2.0 has written a 24-page ebook on turning cold calls into social calls. He reviews the new Sales 2.0 techniques and tools to “…help you with the three most critical factors: talking to the right people, establishing relationships and using changes in your buyer’s environment.”
You can download Nigel’s book for free here. Adding his blog to your RSS reader is also well worth it.
All About Referral Selling 
Michael, love the picture of the pig! Nigel’s ebook is worth the read so thanks.
I am starting a movement to change the name of cold calling to the “unexpected introduction”. Perfume on Miss Piggy or not cold calling is now a misnomer. You can find out everything about your prospect except what they had for lunch so there is no such thing as a cold call.
And, of course, it goes without saying that the best way to start a call is with a referral!
I don’t know if introductory calling is like putting lipstick on a pig but I think we need to think of ways to lessen the fear of calling people on the phone. By giving it this name, we lower our expectations and realize the sales process is about building trust!
I’m thinking of the prospect being called. No matter what the caller calls it – cold calling or introductory calling – to the prospect it’s a cold call. The reason why there’s fear in making cold calls is because no one likes to answer a cold call. Renaming to introductory calling doesn’t change anything from the prospect’s perspective.
Instead, calling with value based on specific knowledge, gleaned via Sales 2.0 tools or better yet a referral, is something welcomed by the prospect.
Michael,
Right. You’ll notice in my ebook the pivotal Venn diagram. One of the circles in that diagram is relationships.
Basically what is going on here is that we can use social networks to accelerate relationship building. And from relationships come referrals.
So in many ways were essentially back to the old referral selling approach but ACCELERATED. New tools applied to existing human psychology.
Our result outcomes change a lot when we’re referral selling. Plus we can use other Sales 2.0 tools to find information before our call so we’ve done our homework.
So if we use all these tools and approaches together we’re referral selling AND we know a lot about our prospect. This is where our outcomes are WAY better than a cold calling pig. Maybe more like a cute puppy.
Nigel