From time to time I have conversations with companies where the sales department has too much power.

Power that holds the company back.

It’s more typical in companies that have repeat business from customers, which tends to mask the fact that there’s not enough new business coming in.

It’s also common when (IF) there are metrics for sales leads, they focus on the number of outbound calls/emails rather than what matters: how much new business is gained.

 

“I’m quite happy cold-calling my list”

I’ve heard words similar to that many times.

They come from the mouths of sales people within some businesses who are trialling the software that I provide on a free trial.

It’s usually someone else (normally someone in marketing) who trials the software because they are interested in identifying the names of companies that visited their website (and what they looked at page by page).

However, they end up battling with the sales people who refuse to make use of the data supplied to them because “we do sales our way”.

I’ve been on Zoom calls with companies, where we show them evidence that someone from a company has been to their website and has looked at several pages.  Here’s an example:

The response from the sales people is generally: “if you don’t know who it was from that company, then what use is that to me?”.

It’s hard to resist saying back to them: Stop being lazy! Would you like their birthday, favourite meal, and inside leg measurement too?

That’s the sticking point though, because a sales list will often have this information ready for the sales person to use:

• Company name
• Name of person within a relevant department
• Phone number
• Email

That’s fine, but it’s still a cold list and the people being called by the sales person are unlikely to be actively in the market for their product or service at the time they’re cold-called.

 

What makes more sense?

1. Contacting several companies from a cold list and it taking hours or days to get any level of interest, or …
2. Knowing the name of a company that’s been to the website and then spending a bit of time researching (e.g. via LinkedIn) relevant people at the company, digging a bit deeper to get phone/email, and then making contact with a range of people within that company, knowing that someone at that business had been to the website and so there must be a level of interest in the products/services available.

 

My challenge to businesses focused on cold calling

There is no harm in having a cold-calling list, but such sales activity should be secondary to following up on the knowledge that identifiable companies have been to a website.

Yes, it may take longer to work out the right people to contact within each business but the fact is that the company that visited your website is going to buy from someone at some stage and it’s better to be you than a competitor that’s not so proactive at reaching out.

Here’s the process my customers typically follow …

1. Sales staff see a list of companies that visited the website in the previous day (and what they looked at page by page).
2. Either the sales staff themselves, or support from marketing, source contact information about relevant people at those companies.
3. Sales staff focus on having conversations with people at those companies.
4. Only after working through those warmer leads (companies interested in products/services offered) does it then make sense to focus on the cold-calling for the rest of the time.

 

Got any feedback about this?

Am I missing something obvious that justifies cold-calling above warmer leads?  Feel free to comment below.