Revealing Stats About Interruption Marketing
In researching the statistic for “cold calling” this author ran into two reoccurring themes.
1. Auto dialers, call centers, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) companies and companies selling “leads” in form of our names and phone numbers – promoting cold calling that ran very optimistic and encouraging articles about the abundance of sales a company can make by cold calling.
2. Email generating companies – that posted very pessimistic views on the effects of cold calling, favoring of course… emailing customers.
Sorting through the rubble, certain facts were ascertained to be truthful.
With technology always with us in the form of a cell phone in every pocket or on top of every desk, Cold Calling is referred to as: Interruption Marketing or Outbound Telemarketing.
We are exposed to hundreds of ads per day, now we have one that demands, on our “personal device” that we pay attention solely to it and set aside our thoughts, disengage with our family, clients, or activities to focus on it.
From Charlie Cook’s “Marketing for Success”:
“Cold calling has a bad reputation. Most people find cold calls intrusive and obnoxious.”
- Only 1% of cold calls result in meetings or appointments. Sales for Life
- 90% of B2B decision makers don’t respond to cold sales.
- 85% of prospects and customers are dissatisfied with their on-the-phone experience. —Salesforce.
- Only 28% of people being cold called engage in conversations.
- Cold calling dialers spend approximately 15% of their time leaving voicemails. —Ringlead
- On average, it takes 8 follow-up calls to reach a cold called prospect.
- Only 33% of a rep’s time on a call is spent actively selling. — CSO Insights
- Reps who use social selling vs. cold calling are 50% more likely to meet or exceed their quota. —InsideSales
- 75% of B2B decision makers routinely use social media in decision-making processes.
- 84% of B2B decision makers start individual buying decision based on referrals.
- 82% of prospects can be reached via social media. —Sergey Gusarov
Simple Sale Tracking ran a 2-week study and produced the following results:
“28% – totaling 1,774 calls, resulted in 19 – yes, that’s NINETEEN appointments out of a total of 6,264 cold calls made!
The success rate of cold calls to appointments is 0.3% (based on the average closing rate of 20%, that would equate to just under 4 sales, from 6,264 cold calls)
Now that you have heard the horrific numbers experienced during the study, here is the conclusion drawn from it.
Experienced salespeople can expect to spend 7.5 hours of cold calling to get ONE qualified appointment. That’s an appointment – NOT a sale!”
Leaving you with these stats to make your own decisions as to marketing venues decisions, I will include the following quote that reflects a colorful, personal opinion, from An Entrepreneurs Life:
“Being Good at B2B Cold Calling Is Like Being a Functional Drunk”.
If you decide to explore the venue of cold calling, there are available resources to help you through the murky waters, such as Marketing for Success who encourages you to:
- Get a prospect’s attention, ask permission, find out what they want and then give them what they asked for.
- State your name and ask the prospect if they have a moment
- If they’re busy, schedule a time to call back. This way you’ve got their permission to have the next conversation.
- Summarize what they’ve told you about their needs and wants.
For a higher success rate, DuctTape Marketing, while discouraging cold calling in its article: “The Abusive Math of Cold Calling” says,
“ …it’s generally abusive to both parties. When that same call is made with a referral, the rate jumps up to 40% and even much higher when that referral comes from within the company.”
They also offer tactics:
“A referral into a prospect can come from one of three places
- Current Customers
- Your Network
- or a Strategic Partner
And suggest:
- Once you have a prospect list, connect with them in social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. When you do this, not only will they tell you a lot about what’s important to them and what their challenges and opportunities are, they’ll probably show you who their peers, friends and network members are. They may identify for you the best way to get to referred into them.
- Do this with your existing customers as well because it will make it easier to identify the ones that are influencers, who participates at a high level in social media, and who might be great candidate to refer you to your hot prospect list.”
Article researched and copy written by Laughing Fox Designs, providing results driven website development and social media actions to start-ups, small businesses and mid-size companies. ©2017 All Rights Reserved