There are a growing number of companies, blogs and tweets that will tell you that cold calling is dead. There are also those that go even further and will tell you that all B2B telemarketing is dead.
To me, these people are no different than the travelling snake oil salesmen of old. They are selling something that is new and not really understood. Their whole business model is based on clients giving up the old forms of lead generation and taking a gamble with them. Yes, these techniques can certainly help generate B2B sales leads, but are they worth giving up other forms of lead generation?
I am a great believer in social media, online, content marketing, inbound, SEO and the other services that these companies are selling. I’m such a believer that we offer these services to our clients as well. The big difference to me is that I know these lead generation techniques work best as part of an integrated campaign. Every company needs to look at their own market, their own capabilities and experience to decide how best to generate leads.
Take a campaign we did over the last couple of weeks. We needed to get sales appointments with NHS trusts and hospitals and the time frames were very short due to government funding that expired soon. We didn’t have time to write and distribute content, build relationships over the long term, undertake big social campaigns or wait for the phone to ring.
All we did was 10 days cold calling telemarketing, which if you listen to many online marketing companies, is apparently dead. As a result of this campaign, our client had 3 face to face appointments, 5 one to one webinar bookings and a pipeline of 18 other trusts that are applying for the next round of funding. In total a pipeline running into £millions.
Not bad for a dead technique, our client was certainly very happy.
Don’t get me wrong, in an ideal world we would have had 6 months to plan and implement a full multi-touch campaign of both inbound and outbound marketing. Unfortunately in the real world this isn’t always an option. So next time someone tells you that any form of marketing is dead, look further at their motives as I guarantee that their business is based on them selling an alternative.
