Anthony Iannarino’s blog (The Sales Blog) – The Death of Social Selling.
About 2008, I began hearing from my prospects for our appointment setting training we sell, “Oh, we’re not going to cold call any more. We’re going to use these new social selling techniques.” Since then, I have been warning anyone who will listen, that while social selling has its place in warming up a target, using it to set Initial Appointments is not one of them.
I’ll let you read Anthony’s blog, as I couldn’t have said it better, but just in case you’re in a hurry, here are a couple of highlights regarding his issues with social selling:
- It has been sold as the new end all for the selling activities of building pipelines by eliminating the need to pick up the phone and ask decision makers for appointments. “Cold calling is Dead!” say its proponents.
- And this is my hot button—it is providing the excuse for sales professionals not to develop their skills to set appointments on the phone. I love his analogy: “…it’s a bit like a fitness plan built on Netflix and ice cream.”
Very few people like to pick up the phone and call someone they’ve never met and try to convince them to take a meeting with them so they can attempt to sell them their solution. Ergo, anyone who comes along and says they have an alternative solution that eliminates the need for appointment setting calls gets attention.
Anthony makes a very astute observation. Ask yourself who is selling the concept of social selling replacing the need to cold call? The answer is content creators. I’ll add to that those that sell the platforms that deliver the content, such as HubSpot, Pardot, and Infusionsoft. This is marketing-not sales.
So here’s the second question to ask yourself, if social selling is truly the panacea for getting in front of targets and cold calling is really dead, then why do I get cold calls from the likes of HubSpot, et. al. trying to sell me their platforms?
Don’t sabotage your career and drink the cool aid. Think about it this way. If it truly were as easy as they make it sound, no one would be willing to pay you nearly as much as they do now to do what you do.
Here’s reality. There are only three sources for an Initial Appointment:
- Marketing program leads,
- Networking and referrals, and
- Cold calling
Regardless of which of the three categories the target’s name comes from, it generally still falls to one of us sales professionals to pick up the phone and call the target to set an appointment to get the selling process started. Even with a marketing lead or strong referral, we’ll not always get them on the phone the first time and even the strongest of referrals will say no when we ask for the appointment, they’ll just be nicer about it than those we cold call. So, we still need to have a process to follow to get a hold of the target, leave well thought out voicemails, send complementary emails, a tool that helps us keep track of where we are in the process and have a methodology to counter the ‘no’ we hear. These are the same processes, tools and skills we need when we cold call.
If you’d like more information on the topic of how to set more appointments, drop us a line or give us a call. Or, if you’re simply interested in why no team of sales professionals has ever failed to at least double the number of Initial Appointments they were setting after going through one of our programs, give us a call or drop us a line. We love talking appointment making!
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Caponi Performance Group and Contact Science jointly market the telephone prospecting and cold calling solution called Coldcalling101™. It is the only comprehensive solution to solving the biggest barrier to success in most selling organizations—the inability to secure enough Initial Appointments to begin the selling process. We accomplish that through simultaneously addressing both the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. We can be reached at 817 224-9900 or at bcaponi@caponipg.com. You can also find answers to many of your challenges in our books: Contrary to Popular Belief, Cold Calling DOES Work! Volume I: Effectiveness, The Art of Appointment Making and Volume II: Efficiency, the Science of Appointment Making.
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