For as long as the telephone has been around, so has cold calling. It’s the backbone of B2B and B2C marketing; everyone is familiar with it.
For decades cold calling has been an essential player in prospect sourcing, so it would be naïve to ignore its effectiveness in B2B and B2C sales. After all, how would’ve businesses grown in a pre-social media world?
Whilst cold calling is incredibly beneficial for gaining prospects, it is a huge undertaking and the consistency needed to see results is time-consuming. Hiring a business development agency, like us, for example, can take that pressure of calling from your business. But you may also want to try sourcing prospects through other methods, like social media. We have found that combining both cold calling and LinkedIn sourcing has helped us connect our clients with some amazing prospects, often leading to them winning work. As the current market shifts, perhaps it’s time to start utilising multiple methods of sourcing to optimise your business’ chances of obtaining prospects.
LinkedIn has over 875 million users as of January 2023. That is 875 million opportunities. In fact, B2B and Lead Gen businesses have found that 80% of their successful leads come directly from LinkedIn. Whilst LinkedIn is a social media site, it’s unique in the fact that it solely connects you with other professionals. You’re constantly networking, with easy access to other businesses and their employees. Your sourcing pool is immediately accessible, all at the click of a button. Through a filter, or two, you can easily find the decision-makers of a particular organisation, or even fully view a person’s profile and assess if they will truly be a great prospect for your business. Furthermore, you’ll be able to see who directly interacts with your brand, so you can easily see who is interested in what you have to offer.
By sourcing through LinkedIn, you’re giving your prospects the opportunity to respond in their own time, not forcing them to give you a response straight away to your pitch, essentially the time to digest all the information you have provided. There’s also less opportunity for miscommunication: all the information is laid out clearly in front of your prospect.
LinkedIn also allows your business to experiment with ‘digital personalisation’, something which has been proven to be successful with 62% of customers globally. In the current market, customers are wanting business reps to completely engage with them and their contexts: like discussing any significant work that the prospect is currently doing, and how your business can assist them. People are constantly updating their LinkedIn with current projects, awards and achievements, or even new job roles, all of which are, again, easily accessible. By staying up to date on potential or even warm lead prospects, it highlights you’ve dedicated the time to them. Congratulate them on that achievement or promotion, and then bring in your pitch. Over time, you’ll be able to build authentic relationships, which can often be difficult to achieve over a phone call. Adaptability is key to winning on LinkedIn.
Even if you do happen to get a “no” from your prospect, they may connect you with someone more relevant. Like cold calling, Linkedin sourcing can bring so much good to your business.
That’s the beauty of LinkedIn: once you start connecting with people, you never stop.
Gee Stencel | They/Them
Strategic Operations Manager
Carbon Global