Trump's Loss in Iowa Shows the Value Cold Calling over Branding

If you've ever doubted the value of building an effective cold calling, sales team, Ted Cruz's Iowa victory should remove the doubt.

*** This is NOT a political article - I am not expressing ANY opinion or preference for any candidate in any party, only analyzing the results of their campaign in Iowa ***

For years we have all been told that cold calling is dead, that social media and marketing is the new king.  People have bought the lie that you can skip the hard unpleasant parts of sales by building enough viral content, building a twitter follower list rivaling Kim K, and making sure you have name recognition through the media.  

This has been much of the basis of Donald Trumps campaign so far.  Name recognition, total dominance of the media through any means, and holding large scale rallies that turn into media events reaching the masses.   It's efficient, less expensive than a traditional campaign, and had him leading the polls in Iowa right up until the votes were counted. 

That was much of his strategy in skipping the final debate.  Had he gone to the debate, he would have placed himself on the same stage as the other candidates, and the only controversy would have been over a shocking statement he might have made in response to a question, instead he commanded the media's attention for almost a week with a "will he go or won't he go?" then coverage and analysis of his decision not to go.  This was a branding play all the way, and gave him the equivalent of millions of dollars of free air time that his opponents didn't get.   TV and print coverage has been all Trump all the time!  Name recognition of his opponents has been dismal compared to his.  From a marketing standpoint he has effectively drowned out the competition, and his polling numbers have reflected that for months.  

Polls however, don't win in Iowa, votes do.  Once the evening numbers came in, Ted Cruz had turned out 48,608 voters in the caucus.... more voters in Iowa than anyone else in Caucus History.  The real story is the difference in the way he campaigned in Iowa.  While Trump dominates the media, late night comedians, and water coolers across America, Cruz built a team of 12,000 volunteers making over 25,000 calls a day to Iowans urging them to get to the Caucus and vote for Cruz.   (Source Time Magazine:  https://time.com/4203690/iowa-caucuses-ted-cruz/ ) Cruz ran his campaign on a smaller scale appearance wise, connecting directly with voters in person - visiting every county in Iowa, speaking at small venues to handfuls of people, building rapport, and getting on the common ground.  Basically cold calling, door to door, and networking.   In the ultimate sales game of selling yourself to Iowa, Ted Cruz decided that cold calling, and virtual door to door sales was a better strategy than marketing on a large scale. 

As business people, what can this teach us about selling our own goods and services?  I believe that it teaches us that if we have an identifiable market of manageable size, that cold calling over the phone & in person is always superior to large scale marketing.  In marketing you are inevitably wasting money on selling to people who will never buy from you under any circumstance, either due to lack of need, or loyalty to your competitor.  With direct sales, you are building a sales funnel by constantly calling your target market (awareness) identifying likely clients (interest) and entering them into the sales process (decision) and eventually closing some of them (action).  

I believe that the Iowa caucus is very analogous to most B2B and B2C sales situations because of the small population in Iowa along with the timing of the caucus that makes it possible for a candidate to effectively reach out personally to a large segment of the voting population.  On a national scale marketing becomes more effective, because while Iowa has a population of 3.1 Million - the entire country has a population of 318 Million.  ( Source US Census https://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/19000.html) That's why national brands such as Coke and Pepsi, spend millions on reaching the mass market.  At scale, combined efforts of mass marketing and reaching out niche pockets becomes critical.  Candidates need marketing & get out the vote campaigns.  

This brings me to another example - a couple of years ago I was tasked with rebuilding the way an old school car dealership group sold cars after it was purchased by a new owner.  We had 2 goals, improve sales while improving customer satisfaction scores.  What we did was build staff, and train a call center to handle incoming leads, over doubling the number of internet leads (marketing) that turned into sold customers in less than a month.  At the same time, we began a campaign of bringing back old customers in the dealership's database, calling all recently sold customers to remind them that a factory survey was coming and giving the dealership an opportunity to address any dissatisfaction that the customer may have had.  Additionally, all customers who visited and left, were called and asked why they left, and if there was any problem that we could address - bringing many lost customers back for additional sales.  In the service department, we reached out to past customers, warranty customers, and the local area to set more appointments and give more billable hours to the service department.  This resulted in a greater ROI on every marketing dollar spent, record sales, fewer lost sales, more return customers, and greater profitability for the dealership group.  

In the recruiting industry a recruiter of engineers in a limited geography, cold calls every engineer in his market as often as possible.  This makes him an effective recruiter because he knows his market, and his market knows him. While a national brand hires many local recruiters who each must specialize in order to scale the brand over time. 

As a student of business, sales, and an advocate of building effective outbound sales teams, I am interested in seeing how the rest of the campaign plays out.  Can Cruz keep his momentum going through a an effective political machine, or will Trump's media dominance and name recognition win out on a national scale?

John P. Kaufman is a Sales Trainer / Recruiter -  CEO of Nexmation / Staffing Core the fastest growing Engineering specialty search firm in the Cleveland / Akron Ohio market.  

Author of the book "The Recruiter's Secret", and nationally recognized thought leader within the sales and recruiting industries.

He can be contacted by cell: 440-487-1703 
https://www.StaffingCore.com