Should You Replace Cold Calling With A Blog?
I read an article title recently that caught my attention: “Can a Blog Replace Cold-calling?”
As you might guess, the article was about sales. Cold calling has been around a long time. Every sales person who has done any sales at all for the past 50 years has used it. But has it run its course?
One of the most interesting statements in the article, I thought, was in the first paragraph:
If you’re cold-calling me then you probably need me, not the other way around.
That’s an interesting comment because it’s not something you’d expect to hear from a salesperson. If you are cold calling prospects then you likely believe that they need what you have to sale. Otherwise, why are you calling them?
A blog is a different vehicle altogether from cold calling. It serves a different purpose, although there is some overlap. Both blogging and cold calling, for instance, can be used to great effect to generate leads that might lead to a sale. But the methods used are quite different.
With blogging, your hope is that your prospects will find you. Internet marketing puts the consumer in the driver’s seat and not the marketer. But that doesn’t mean the marketer can’t close the sale or get the business. It just means that he has to be a bit more savvy than just throwing mud on the wall and hoping it sticks, which is more what cold calling is. Nevertheless, while I believe that blogging has its place in the marketing pantheon, I also believe that cold calling has its place. In fact, you can use cold calling to drive traffic to your blog.
The problem for marketers in the 21st century is that old methods still work, but not as effectively as they once did. It isn’t time yet to replace traditional marketing methods with online marketing completely. But you don’t want to use blogging and other Internet marketing methods to compliment your current marketing strategies, even cold calling.
