Cold Calling: Pros, Cons and How to Make it Effective

What is Cold Calling?

Cold calling is one of the methods of telemarketing. The term ‘cold’ is used for the fact that you do not make calls to the customers on the basis of any beforehand communication or agreed upon the topic or in short, the customer is unaware of you.

It is a conventional way of marketing products. With recent advancement in technologies, many say that cold call has lost its relevance.

But some experts say that effective cold calling can still play a vital role in promoting and marketing.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Cold Calling:

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Pros or Benefits of Cold Calling:

Cold calling services is an old method of marketing strategy but it still has some relevance in today’s world as it has many advantages.

In combination with other techniques, it can prove to be instrumental in promoting your products or services.

1. Freedom of hunting alone:

The above heading is meant only figuratively. As a salesperson, cold calling can be a great way to step into the world of selling as you do not need to have any prior support or assistance of any expert.

Although, you should take advise of an expert in selling especially who knows the cold calling tips and tricks.

All said cold calling is a way to go for someone who is completely new to the world of sales and does not have enough contact or money to hire someone.

2. All time marketing, more opportunity:

Cold calling techniques gives you an opportunity to marketing all around the minute of a day. It only depends on your ability and patience.

If you wish, you can do your telemarketing as long as you want. This will not only increase your chance of meeting potential client but will also aid you in honing your skills as a leader and persuader.

Who knows when the right opportunity will come and knock at the door?

3. Go hassle free and economical:

All you need, to do a cold call are you, a pencil, a notepad, and phone number of some of your potential clients. It’s that simple.

It is one of those methods of marketing that requires the least of all equipment. Although you may be spending on making calls but this method is pretty cheap in comparison to other methods of marketing.

All you need to have is sheer confidence and practical knowledge about your product or service.

4. Little to no support structure:

Many marketing and selling strategies rely on a network of connection. But for cold calling techniques, you do not need an extensive team or a group to make it a success.

Although just like any other method, a referral can come as handy in persuading your potential buyer but otherwise the beauty of making cold calls lies in the fact that you do not need to have a team to ensure the effectiveness of a cold calling operation.

5. The quickest way of making things possible and feasible:

It is one of those marketing strategy methods which, if done in the correct manner, can get you to seal a deal.

This can come as a surprise to many new salesmen but yes that’s what happens when you are successful in calling a real potential candidate who is interested in using your product or service.

If you are planning to earn money really quick in the cheapest way possible, then an effective cold calling can be your way out.

6. Creating and strengthening a new business connection:

Cold calling may not be the best way to open new connection but it can still offer a way to form and create new bonds and business connection.

For B2C, a cold call can offer a way to open up a new connection or in conjugation with other methods; it can function as a measure to strengthen your relation with new customers.

Therefore, a successful and well-researched cold calling can result in boosting your sale records and forming new customers.

7. Make business unrestricted beyond boundaries:

Cold call lets you expand your business across borders. You can easily make local, national, and international calls at a cost that is negligible in comparison to the benefit that you can make by finding an interested customer successfully.

If you have the skills, to be good in communicating your ideas to people of varied culture then you can get a chance to learn about opportunities in a foreign land which will help you to further your business expansion.

8. Gives you instant feedback:

Other than door to door selling and face to face related strategies, cold call marketing is the only form of marketing strategy that promises you to get instant feedback from your customers irrespective of the distance or location problem.

One can leverage this as an opportunity to learn about their product and services in a very short period of time and optimize them according to the needs of the customers.

So cold calling can give you a chance to get reviews on your products or services.

9. Indirect benefits:

Successful Cold calling can help in developing your personality as for making a cold call you need to make extensive research of potential clients.

Since you are making contact to your client for the first time it needs a lot of guts and skills to make an impression.

You also need to have persuasive skills in order to sell your product as in the case of cold call customers are generally unaware of the product or services.

Cons or Disadvantages of Cold Calling:

There are many criticisms regarding the practicality and applicability of cold calling as a means to market the product as advancement in technology have opened up better means of targeting audience in a much better way:

1. Irritating to most of the customers:

With so many promotion calls from different organizations trying to persuade the customers, today’s customers are now ignoring such calls altogether.

Some experts say that cold call has now become obsolete as many customers are not even picking up phones from marketing sector.

Thus, all the effort that goes into making a cold call goes in vain. Some people put their call to answering machine while other rejects them with the use of the advance software.

2. Long and long and long:

The chances of getting a potential customer are very low. Many people are not at all interested in the product.

A salesperson can expect to hear lots of no’s, unacceptable behaviour, and abusive languages that can greatly result in loss of time.

For getting a hand on a single client, you may need to hear 10 or may be 100’s of no. So the chances are very gleam.

3. Not a sustainable method:

In order to get success in a cold call, you need to work tirelessly so that you can get lucky in getting the right candidate.

For that, you will be making lots of call with no guarantee that they will be all nice to you during conversation.

A continuous strike of not getting even a single candidate can lower your esteem to a great level.

4. Advancement in technologies:

With advancement in technologies, many new methods of communications have developed which are far superior in comparison to cold call. These methods are not only reliable but are better in reaching to targeted audience than a cold call.

Also, with people increasingly adopting newer technologies, people in marketing are now shifting to newer methods to reach their target audience in a much better way thus making the cold call, obsolete technique.

5. Booming of spammers:

Many spammers started to use it as a way to loot people. Because of this, many people started to ignore marketing calls of all kinds.

Also, due to many incidents related to phone calls including privacy and fear of spammers, people rarely pick up calls from unknown calls.

So this greatly hit hard to those salespersons using cold call for promotion who are selling some real stuff.

6. Lack of professionalism:

It is not that every salesperson that is making a cold call is kind and polite during a conversation.

Due to such incidents, people nowadays have a negative opinion about telemarketing and as a result, it has made the cold call an unpopular way of marketing.

Also, many marketing persons make the random call without doing any prior research which causes inconvenience to a lot of people. Thus, it puts the cold call in a bad picture.

7. A slower method to spread information:

In a cold call, you need to talk to every person one to one which makes it a very slow process to reach a large number of audiences.

With the advent of emails, internet, and social media, companies are now able to reach to a large number of audiences in a very short amount of time.

With a little effort, companies can even make advertisement focused on a particular type of audience which increases the chance of getting potential customers.

8. A poor cold call can backfire company’s reputation:

Since cold calls are done to customers who are not aware of the company’s products or services that it provides, it becomes essential that you need to keep the customer engaged and grab the attention.

You need to distract him from his work or thinking and persuade the client into thinking in the way you want.

But a small mistake can make all these efforts go in vain resulting in losing a potential client and giving a bad impression.

9. Uncomfortable experience for a customer:

Cold calls catch the targeted audience off the guard and this makes it very uncomfortable for the customer to get along with the marketing executives.

This makes it a difficult task for marketers to convince their client to advertise the product or service and get a promising outcome from the conversation.

10. Uncomfortable experience for a salesperson:

It should not come as a surprise. Talking to an unknown person can be a daunting experience for any person and marketing persons are no exception.

It requires lots of skill and courage to talk with people with all confidence and informed.

It puts many marketers in an uncomfortable situation as many of them are not ready to confront unknown people.

11. Fear of rejection:

Nowadays new salesperson least like the method of cold call. As explained in the previous point it is uncomfortable for many people.

Many marketers have a fear of rejection and even worse incapability to bear with humiliation that they will have to hear from unknown people.

How To Make Cold Calling Effective?

Though cold calling is plagued with many shortcomings but with effective measure it can be put to good use:

1. Research about your potential customer:

Make sure that you do your homework before using the technique. By collecting information about your clients you can narrow down your list of customers to call and can increase your chance of getting a potential customer.

2. Make selling more relevant:

Many a time cold calling do not work because of the negligence from the part of the caller.

You should make sure that you make calls to those people who can find your product or services relevant to their current business or needs.

3. Combine it with other techniques:

Cold calling may not be a good way to introduce your company but in combination with other techniques, it can be a useful tool in perusing your client in purchasing your product or using your services.

4. Do not use it as a marketplace:

Many marketers make a mistake of using the cold call as a platform to seal a final deal.

Instead of selling things you should try to seek an appointment or reserving a future talk which will help you to finally get a potential customer.

Final Words:

In the end, it all boils down as to how you decide to use this cold calling technique to your benefit.

With advancing time, the relevance of this method is diminishing but if cold calls experts are to be believed then the cold call can still impact your career in the way that you cannot even imagine.

Though it can be uncomfortable at first look but if used properly it can open up an ample amount of opportunities to expand your selling.

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