This again...

Cold calling is always getting a bad rap... shall I say the philosophy of cold calling is always in question and I think that is why the practice does not prove successful for more sales professionals. So much waffling on the whys and why nots and not enough actual cold calling. Anyway, this is yet another Linkedin Q&A response to the age old question...

Does cold calling work?

We are losing a large account, and our upper management has decided to initiate a cold-calling campaign to generate new business. We sell marketing websites B2B, and we've decided to put other marketing and sales techniques on the back burner in favor of a massive cold calling campaigns. We are a small company, so our sales and marketing departments share many of the same people. This campaign will effectively stop all marketing work until the beginning of January 2009. Our ideal clients are typically upper management and C level execs, and the idea is that we will sell the people on the bottom with our product and they will push us up to the decision makers. Are we doing the right thing to put our focus on cold calling?

Whoah! Stopping all other marketing related efforts (of which telemarketing is one- by the traditional definition of marketing) for cold calling can be tricky if it is not conducted appropriately. There are a lot of things that go into a successful cold calling effort and if you do not have some of the basics in place it can fail miserably. I would suggest working with an expert organization and contracting the effort to gain some data points and conduct some analysis while achieving results. If this is the first time the company has undertaken such a effort then I would get some help FAST. On the other hand, if your sales team is well versed in the process then you should be fine as long as clearly defined objectives are lined up with expectations, activity goals and measurement. I presume you have some level of CRM and this could be a great chance to get the most of it.

Please weigh in with your thoughts, opinions and expert advice.