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The One-to-Many Sales Advantage: Cold Calling vs. Social Branding

Jamie Shanks
Jamie Shanks

cold-callingIf a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear it? If a cold call is made to a prospect and no one answers the phone, does anybody hear it?

No one can deny that a cold call is a very linear form of communication. It’s one-to-one. As a sales professional, you know that you need to spread the message far and wide to your territory. If a cold call lives only for a few seconds in existence, what impact can it really have? I know what you’re thinking: who cares, if I make enough of them it will make an impact. You’re absolutely right about this. Your canned pitch repeated 50 times/day or more can work.

But what if you could pitch once and be heard by 50 people?

One of the bedrocks of social prospecting is content. Sharing your own words (When Sharing Isn’t Caring, Go Social: Put Your Thoughts on Video), thoughts and perspectives is necessary. Potential buyers can determine if you’ve got clout, expertise and, quite frankly, just a good understanding of your industry.

By working on this, your content (pitch) can be heard by countless people! Don’t believe me, here’s an example of a blog that my colleague Jamie Shanks just wrote.

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I want you to focus on how many people have shared this on LinkedIn and Twitter. If you do a partial deep dive into these numbers, you’ll see that of the 29 shares on LinkedIn, and the 45 Tweets on Twitter, there are some people there that could be future customers (I’ll do a blog post in the future about how to check this)!

This is a perfect example of how Jamie publishes his thoughts and perspectives and isn’t afraid to be controversial in the process. As Jamie builds his personal brand and reputation, we’ve seen that his network has grown. Why? Precisely because of the social nature of content. Because sharing information is now easier than ever, people take these blogs he writes and share them with colleagues and friends in their own company or others. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve heard “my friend/colleague sent me a link to your blog”. This is not an exception anymore, it’s almost a rule.

We are able to use this information to have very real conversations with prospects that cold calling just can’t emulate. Because we’ve acknowledged that the buyer has a right to move at their own pace, we let content do the work for us. And not just in the sales prospecting cycle, but also in the nurturing process. It demonstrates that we are willing to add value at every turn by being influencers and not pests.

Compare this to the one-to-one nature of the cold call and you’ll agree that the one-to-many approach is far more effective.

The Bottom Line

As you continue cold calling, add some social into your daily mix of activities. The data and insights are all there to prove that you can build a brand of expertise for more quickly than ever. The social nature of content today can help you have more meaningful and contextual conversations with prospects. What would happen if you could add an extra 5 to 10 or even 15 more appointments every month?

Contact me to get started on content today. I’ve simplified it after a lot of mistakes along the way. Remember, social selling isn’t difficult; it’s just different.

To learn more about Social Selling check out 10 Steps to Becoming a Social Selling Machine or 9 Steps to a Winning LinkedIn Profile for Sales Professionals. For tips, tricks and more rants, we could always set-up a time to chat using my below schedule …

Amar Sheth

CTA

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