Is cold calling out in the cold as a business development tool?

Are you sick of sales calls? B2B sales calls seem to have lost a lot if not all credibility with more and more telemarketers calling and making it difficult for actual business developers to use this medium. Which begs the question - what is the best way to get in touch and sell your service?

Recruiters are well known for repeatedly calling clients to see if they have ‘any needs’ especially in a market such as this. I also know that sales calls get on my nerves when I am in the middle of something and I tend to try and get rid of them as quickly (but politely) as possible. That said having been in recruitment for a number of years I am left frustrated and open-mouthed at times when I am dismissed out of hand by whomever I am calling, often in a less than friendly manner, when I have a genuine reason for the call. So how do we set ourselves apart from the script-reading telemarketers or from the recruiters calling to simply hit their KPI’s?  

Don’t get me wrong Wavelength have excellent relationships with many firms of accountants who happily take our calls and will either show interest in the candidate we are flagging up or politely tell us they are not currently recruiting. However new business or clients with whom we have lost touch can really prove a challenge with it being near in impossible to either get through or to get enough time to get your point across.

So your business has to evolve and change the way it does things. With social media being a more and more popular way to raise your profile, Linked In, Facebook, Twitter and regular blogs being the most widely used, you have to start playing the social media field to get followers, friends, connections …goodness me it’s a modern day popularity contest! The important thing is to make sure we are using these mediums effectively so that both candidates and clients are aware of Wavelength, what we represent and what we are currently working on to ensure that if they are looking for a new role or looking to fill a job they will give us a call.  

Direct marketing is also a less intrusive yet effective tool, using email or mail marketing to send out details of candidates and jobs seems to still be an excellent way to get the message across and raise our profile so that if they are not currently interested they will have something to hand so they can they contact is should the situation change.  

So that’s us – but what about you? Do you rely on referrals? Are you a slave to networking events? Or do you believe that a good business development call still holds the key to growth?