COLD CALLING VS. COLD EMAILING: WHICH METHOD TO USE?

Nowadays, there are many different ways in which you can reach out to businesses. You can reach a business via Facebook or you can do it via Instagram. What’s more, you can run advertising campaigns or engage in link outreach. BUT!!! As of now, cold emails and cold calling, the two forms of cold marketing, retain the status of the most effective telemarketing methods you can use to boost your sales. 

If you are a seller who is searching for the ways to get more leads for your company, you have probably come across a whole bunch of Internet articles talking you into using either cold calling or cold emailing as the main way to scale up your business, haven’t you?

In this blog post, I want to break it all down and give you the pros and cons of both cold calling and cold emailing so that you can decide which one is best for you and which one will help you scale your business. So, what I am going to do is single out the cases in which you can use this or that strategy. Let’s get straight to the point and start our analysis. 

Cold Calling: Still Not Dead 

Some people are inclined to think that cold calling is dead. Yet, I face difficulty understanding their motives except for, maybe, the fact that the opponents of cold calling may simply be staunch supporters of content, inbound, or digital marketing. Sometimes cold calling opponents find cold emailing a good practice while the very idea of cold calling seems appealing to them. This brush-off of cold calling hardly makes any sense to me.

I have started thinking that, perhaps, people who totally cast out the idea of cold calling are those marketing professionals who simply don’t know how to act upon people with their word of the mouth whereas they’re good at writing and know how to influence their customers with a skillful play of words. This group of marketers claims that cold calling is the only option that should not be used for lead generation as they treat cold calls as an old and outdated marketing technique!   Well, cold emailing is great, I AGREE, and it works well with those who are skilled with words and know how to get at the customer with the power of writing.

Inbound Marketing

Same about inbound marketing: it’s easy yet has its limitations. Here all you have to do is take orders from those who have already expressed their interest in them and sell things to these customers. Looks pretty attractive, BUT…This type of marketing has many bounds!!! One of these is that you have to wait…wait… and again wait…Just look, you have to write some content, do some advertising, and then twiddle your thumbs and wait for the phone to ring. Even if it sounds rather cool, it may turn out tiresome for those who haven’t got used to waiting for results, right? Finally, what should those marketers do who know how to win customers over quickly by going straight to the point regarding their service or product?

If they choose to stick to ONLY inbound marketing, not much. For these marketers, inbound marketing clearly looks restrictive.

Is Cold Calling Dead?

It is for these professionals that cold calling offers a myriad of opportunities to bring round and control destiny. If you like this, too, don’t miss the chance to continually reach out. Once you figure out how to scale the whole process up, you can multiply your outreach by thousand and get ultimate control over your brand’s destiny while also maintaining a solid inbound strategy as a supportive alternative to cold calling. This is why for me COLD CALLING IS NOT DEAD. Full stop. 

You can resolve objections easier. Facing objections can look intimidating if you aren’t a great salesman. Admittedly, not all people are good at counteracting objections. If you are this kind of person, you can ward off any objection straight away. What’s more, if you excel at dealing with customer distrust, thanks to your quick mind and you will resolve the issue while being on the phone. Cold calling is just what you need! 

COLD CALLING PROS 

Everything’s immediate. What do I mean by saying this? The moment you are calling the business is the very moment of getting the answer from this company, and here you are free to use all your creativity and professional skills. Indeed, if the other party is interested in what you offer, you will know it straight away. This is a hands-on approach to marketing, which seems impossible to achieve even with email marketing, which can be quite frustrating. Really…too much frustration in email marketing and a quick turnaround in cold calling! So, let’s clarify: the first advantage of cold calling is that you can get things done very quickly and benefit greatly from a  quick turnaround.  

Personal Communication

Personal communication (or voice communication). I would go so far as to say that personal communication is the biggest pro of cold calling and, indisputably, one of its major benefits. No one can deny this. Why? Listening to a passionate voice is a fantastic way of becoming interested in buying something. Doing sales becomes easier with personal communication in case you know how to handle it.

Behavior Analysis

If you ARE A PEOPLE’S PERSON AND YOU KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH DIFFERENT PEOPLE, this method will definitely work out. In truth, a good thing about cold calling is that you can adjust things quickly without spending too much time on writing cold emails. Can adjust scripts/tactics quickly. If you’re a professional inbound marketer, you should know that your professional routine includes setting up a group of emails, then waiting for responses, then creating a new template, and after this waiting for new reactions, which is basically a rather awkward practice for those of us who like quick results. So, cold calling is the best option for marketers keen on yielding fast outcomes.

Simplicity of the Process

The simplicity of the whole process. If you’re doing cold calling, all you have to do is open your sheet of potential leads and start calling the potential customers trying to sell them your stuff. In fact, your success depends on getting a good list of people who are ready to pay for what you offer. 

Low expenditure associated with cold calling.  Cold calling will help you save money you typically spend on marketing, sales letters, posters, and advertising to lead on people. In fact, cold calling pivots on the idea that there is a group of people who are in need of your products and all you have to do as a marketer is find them. 

Good learning option

Good learning option. Cold calling is a good start for those who want to learn sales. If you want to do sales well, you have to learn the techniques this approach uses. Yet, keep in mind that cold calling is much harder than regular sales. 

COLD CALLING CONS

There are several cons that can create barriers to successful cold calling. Let’s analyze some. Cold calling is multi-dimensional, meaning that there are many stages within cold calling itself, and the chances to talk to the right person are low. As to the multi-dimensionality of cold calling, you can see it using this observation. Not only do you need to convince your customers that they really can’t do without your services, but you also have to generate the solutions they’ve been looking for. In other words, you have to find out what services or products the company is looking for and how you can fit your services and products to their needs. 

Situation Handling

As to the low chances of talking to the right people, I can give you a good example. When you’re calling a person or a company you don’t even know whether or not you’ll be able to talk to the right individual. It might happen that they will direct you to a secretary first, let alone you may face rudeness.

OK. In case you pass through walls and manage to talk to the right person, you’ll be a winner, BUT for the majority of inexperienced cold callers talking to a secretary is the FINAL step of their conversation. Now, in order to get the result and succeed in selling stuff to the person responsible for buying you need to apply a whole set of skills. Not everyone can arrange sales quickly and professionally. In this case, the only option left for will be calling small companies, where the wall of defense is typically much thinner. In this case, you need to be skilled at shaping quick and friendly conversations that offer a solution to the potential buyer’s problems. BUT at this point FAILURES are also quite FREQUENT…

So what else is left for an inexperienced seller who wants to make his way in business? 

Online Marketplace

If this is you, the only option, in this case, seems to join an online marketplace, such as Upwork.com or Guru.com, etc. By using these platforms you’ll be able to create a perfect lead magnet. In addition, an online presence can be very beneficial in case you want to avoid paying the fees and create your own sales funnel. By joining online marketplaces you can get a higher cut of the profit and get higher-quality clients. 

Cold calling takes a lot of time per call 

The actual call can take too much time. When I first started out, I had to make a minimum of 50 calls each day, and that was what I did. Soon I found out that I needed to be really fast and, to my surprise, it worked out. That was how I assigned a few clients really, really quickly. If you find it inconvenient to calculate by numbers, you can calculate by minutes!

Let’s say, you can spend 1 minute per call, and this means that cold calling will take nearly an hour of your time a day. If you calculate it by hours per week, you’ll see that you’ll spend nearly 7 hours weekly on cold calls. Alternatively, you can look for ways to spend less time on cold calling and limit yourself to just a few hours. Well, sticking to just one strategy (in my case, cold calling) will not necessarily bring about good results. Realistically, you can get much better results if you combine cold calling with another strategy rather than do JUST COLD CALLING in the course of a 7-hour span. But if combined with some cold emails and other inbound marketing techniques, the results can be much better. 

Finding phone numbers is a drag 

While in marketing there is special software that can get you information on businesses and stuff, with cold calling you typically need to do some manual work and research before you make calls. If you want to go out and find businesses, you’ll have to scroll on Google, go to each particular business’ website, put down their phone number and fill all these numbers into the spreadsheet. That is really a drag. Finding correct phone numbers can actually take longer than making calls and usually extends over  1-4 hours per day. Here I’m talking about the process that results in finding all needed numbers. So, as you see, it is quite time-consuming.

Cold calling annoys business owners 

As you can imagine, all this mess associated with cold calls can be an annoying process for business owners. Even those who are somehow interested in what you’re going to offer can get pissed off by the very fact that someone unfamiliar is taking their valuable time. They may be reluctant to speak to you.

Many will find the process too boring, especially if you compare it with receivers’ response in cold emailing, where everyone can say “yes” or “no” right away. Let’s talk about it in more detail. For example, I have found out that a lot of business owners among those who might be interested in your products can get crazed by your voice. They can give you a very dry response or not give a response at all!! Pretty gruesome experience where you can DEFINITELY feel not appreciated or valued, right? 

 Cold calling is not scalable 

When I say that cold calling is “not scalable,” I mean that you can make only one call at a time. Of course, I know that a lot of people have sales guys who will do all calling for them but if you only start your business, cold calling will probably leave you with few chances to scale the business effectively. 

Rejection can kill morale 

Last but not least, rejection can kill morale. With cold emails, it’s different whereas with cold calling prepare for hearing a lot of “NO!” Pretty much discouraging, don’t you think so? Imagine you’ve got to make 30 calls per day and all you’ll hear in return will be 30 angry “NO!”. Sure, at some point, they will get angry and frustrated. This is what I mean when I say that rejection can kill your morale. What to do? All you need to do is just suck it up. BUT, if you manage to pass this suck-it-up stage, it can happen that cold calling will work out for you. You just have to find a way around it. 

COLD EMAILING PROS:

Well, I guess we need to change to some positive tunes now)). And we will surely, we do as now we have come to the point of discussing the pros of cold emails. So, let’s sum up all of them step by step. Maybe, you’ll find it hard to believe me, but in reality, cold emails have a lot of benefits. Here are just some of them: 

Scaling

They’re super-easy to scale. It means that there is nothing out there, i.e. no other client outreach, and it makes cold emails well-scalable. If you message people on social media, like Facebook or LinkedIn, this is not as scalable as sending out cold emails. When I say scalable, I mean you can contact thousands of businesses every week while doing the minimum of work. Indeed, many entrepreneurs are switching from cold calling to cold emails primarily because of the opportunities linked to business scalability. 

Time Efficiency

They’re insanely time-efficient. If you get an effective cold emailing strategy, it will you won’t need to spend more than an hour a week in order to get good. That’s why to refine the system in place and contact as many people as possible with the help of cold emailing. It will enable you to achieve marketing results without wasting too much time and you will actually focus on the stuff that needs more thinking, like ads. In truth, you won’t need to send all emails individually.

Unlike sending usual emails possible when we first get an email address type in the subject line, type the text, and then move to the next level. Quite simple, isn’t it? Maybe, yes, BUT this is not the way to scale your business up. Indeed, the only way in which you can strengthen your business is to email hundreds of potential clients at once. The whole idea looks as follows: you type just one email and it reaches the hundreds of business owners. This is the main advantage of cold emailing. And you definitely won’t scale your business up to such extent with cold calling. 

Rejection

Not really affected by rejection. Interestingly, but if the business you have already sent your email to is not interested in your proposal, they just won’t answer. See how simple? Well, they can sometimes (very rarely) drop a line, of course, saying they aren’t really interested, yet you know that they just don’t really care about you, and that makes you feel ok. Just imagine, you won’t get angry or distressed after receiving an angry phone call answer from an aloof business owner. 

Still, just like everything else cold emails have their cons. Sorry to say this, but it’s true.

COLD EMAILING CONS: 

Cold emails have their cons. Not many, of course, but still worthy of your attention: Need to wait for replies. Sometimes you have to wait for a day and often you may need to wait for two or more days till you get an answer. Look pretty annoying, doesn’t it? Now, if you’re trying to grow your business and looking for the means of making it go, you’ll benefit from cold emailing less than cold calls. In truth, with cold calling, you can refine your strategy really quickly because you won’t need to wait for replies. If you want to stick to cold emails, however, in order to implement your strategy successfully, you’ll have to wait for a little. 

Technical restraints (SPAM, Limits, etc)

If you send out emails with certain words, you risk ending up in the spam folder and you can face certain limits, too. Each email provider, like Gmail or G-suit, has its limits. So you just cannot send more emails than has already been defined by that limit. For example, you simply cannot send 1000 emails per day because you’ll get blocked. Sadly, there’s no way of getting around it for you.

Now, it seems the list is complete, and I cannot find out any other flaw of cold emailing. Just to clarify, compared to cold calling, sending cold emails is less time-consuming. It will probably take you less time to write cold letters than to make cold phone calls. At the same time, if you want to be successful at cold calling, you’ll have to build your own cold emailing strategy. This strategy will help you get clients fast thanks to cold email outreach. With this strategy in your hands, you’ll succeed in cold emailing since it will no longer happen as a spontaneous process but will function in a smooth and organized way. In this regard, it’s useful to recall the benefits of a cold emailing strategy.

Benefits of a Cold Emailing Strategy 

What I am going to do is demonstrate what an ultimate cold email strategy looks like. Here you will find information on how to find your clients fast while building your business. 

First, when building up your cold emailing strategy, it is very important to set proper goals. This will help land more clients and increase your sales. The strategy with its goals is a perfect solution for those who can quickly get anxious when involved in the routine practices of cold emailing without yielding immediate results. It will gown and scale up your service-based business. It will also help automate the whole process of cold email outreach and bring down the time spent on this to mere 20-30 minutes. A good strategy must include: 

1. Meticulously crafted subject lines to get 60-70% open rates 
2. Instructions how to avoid ending up in the dreaded spam folder 

With a proper strategy, you can avoid many pitfalls and can grow your business simply because..

Strategy You Should Follow

• You won’t need to engage yourself in doing regular phone calls and talking to mood business owners 
• You’ll l have a strategy which will allow you to spend less time at your PC while sending out cold emails 
• For daily cold emails outreach practice, it will guide you in using special templates 
• You’ll be able to reach thousands of businesses operating both on the national and international scale.

So, my conclusion here is if you want to reach your customer, cut down the time you spend on doing your sales and then craft your own cold mailing strategy!

You can know a lot about Marketing Automation Tools that need to flourish your business.

Summary 

In the end, I’d love to encourage you to invest your time and effort into getting a well-thought-out strategy so that the methods I’ve discussed above will work out for you. I believe that both can bring about great results! From my experience, I can say that you’re likely to benefit from a combination of cold calling and email marketing. Today, I can boast 10 leads generating clients 10 of whom have come through cold emailing while 4 have been driven to my business by cold calling. So, try to find your ideal ways of scaling your business up. Good luck with all your efforts!! 

Originally published at https://contentpersona.com