Are Sales People SCARED Of Change?

"Cold calling will never die..."

"People who socially sell are either bad at cold calling or scared to pick up the phone"

"Cold calling will only get MORE relevant in the future"

"It's always worked and always will"

These are just a fraction of the statements I've been reading over the last week from various posts around the cold calling V social selling debate. Reading through them all I started to think...

Are sales people scared of change?

Those are all very "fear" enriched comments often seen when change is on the horizon. They don't want to be back to square one having to learn a whole new process and a whole new system. If the old is still working then lets stick with that!

Let me be very clear, cold calling is NOT dead. Sales people and businesses are very much still thriving from using cold calling.

Let's also be real here, times ARE changing. Technology and social media are shaping the world we live in and the way we communicate. When I started in sales you could only communicate through phone call or email. Fast forward to now and I rarely use the phone but mostly communicate via email and social media.

People are becoming more precious about their time and more absorbed into social media. We consume content like it's air to breathe and our attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter. It's less about books, long meetings or conversations and more about blogs, 3 minute videos and messages.

Sales processes are transforming....

Not so long ago the key prospecting activity would be cold calling. When all you had was a phone what else would you do? Now we have social media at our fingertips and can "warm" those calls up by researching and socially surrounding our prospects.

Why would you waste time calling someone you know nothing about and spending however long trying to find those trivial details? Why do that when within a couple of minutes you can gain all of that and more through social media?

Then when you do make that call you already know the basic details, hopefully they will know who you are because you've connected and engaged through content with them and suddenly that call can be spent focusing on solving problems and providing value.

Kenny Madden shared a fantastic image to summarise this:

The #socialphone is a great way to label this brilliant combination of classic cold calling infused with modern social selling. This is the number 1 sales strategy of 2017 making the most of all the tools at the hands of sales people. This includes the phone call, voicemail, video message, email, social media, face to face, networking, events, e-marketing and all the rest.

Let's put aside our fear of change. Yes it's uncomfortable learning new things. Yes it will take time to get as good on social media as I'm sure you are on the phone, but you will get good. At one point you made your first cold call and I'm sure it was as uncomfortable then as social selling might be for you now. Does that mean you should hide away from social media, point you fingers at social sellers and tell them that THEY are the ones who are scared?

I think you'll find most people who are banging the social selling drum are very successful sales professionals who've probably mastered the cold call and generated plenty of revenue from it. What they have found is that it's hugely time consuming and and so taken entrepreneurial initiative and looked for more efficient ways to sell.

Sales professionals seem to be so focused on this fear that they have to GIVE up cold calling. No one is asking you to give up cold calling, they're only suggesting you make it 10X more efficient by utilising social selling methods.

Social selling is not a gimmick, there are sales people all across the world SMASHING their targets with social selling. Some of them are even doing this WITHOUT cold calling. Some businesses have even given up on cold calling all together and do you know what? They're doing just fine.

Social sales professionals aren't bad at cold calling or scared of picking up the phone, they just want to be a lot more effective and efficient with it. One of the leading traits of successful sales people is the ability to adapt. We need that ability to adapt to each individual customer we speak to but we also need it to adapt to the changing landscape. The sales professionals who embrace change, adapt to new technologies and platforms and who adapt to meet their customers needs are the ones who will succeed.

Like I mentioned before no one is asking anyone to give up the cold call. If anything it's a nice soft transition where you can still cold call but utilise social media to make those calls even better. You don't have to waste time asking tedious questions, you can spend your time focusing on important questions.

So let's slowly phase out the cold call, embrace the warm call or #socialphone and let's evolve as an industry to provide the service that our customers want us to.

I'd love to know your thoughts, please write them in the comments box below!

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If you enjoyed this post please take time to read some of my other recent posts.

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Did Gary Vaynerchuck Just Prove Cold Calling is DEAD?

Why Millennials May NEVER Succeed In Work

The 10 Films You MUST Watch If You Work In Sales!

About the author: Daniel Disney is the Founder and Owner of The Daily Sales, one of the leading pages for sales professionals. With over 12 years professional selling and sales leadership experience and a relentless passion for the sales industry he's become a resource for great sales content. Daniel writes regular posts and blogs on Sales, Leadership, Millennials, Technology and Social Media. As a millennial seller, Daniel is on a mission to help businesses and sales teams revolutionise the way the sell using modern strategies. Daniel is available for sale coaching, sales training, millennial sales training and keynote speaking, check out his profile for more information.

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