There are many oh so many different ways to market a product or a service. Among these varied techniques, there are many good ways to generate sales and customers. But as many are the good methods, marketing also has its fair share of turkeys. Cold calling is one of the techniques in marketing that is subject to scrutiny in many ways. Marketers and other organizations are beginning to doubt the efficacy of cold calling.



Cold calling is also called blind calling. The marketer in this case calls up or contacts a ?random? person who might, if the marketer is lucky, want the product or service want to buy into what the marketer is offering. Cold calling is pretty much like blind guessing who your next customer will be. The caller then does his pitch talk to this person even if he or she has not been referred to by anyone.

This method of marketing has also been used by honest marketers and has also resulted in good customer relationships. However, cold calling has fallen out of fashion due to the fact that it has been well abused by many an unscrupulous marketer.

Advantages? It allows you to tap into a potentially unsaturated market. It allows you to create a new network of referrals, especially if yours is running dry. But do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?

1. Irritates the investor

Cold calling has gained the ire of many a customer. This is because many of the cold callers usually conduct their business at nighttime. This is very inconvenient to potential clients because they generally want this time to be private. And dragging a person out of bed in their pajamas to talk about business is as irritating as it gets.

Many marketing firms employ boiler rooms to conduct cold calling. Boiler rooms are a team of cold callers whose specialty is spewing out very persuasive scripts on why you should buy into their product. Unfortunately, these callers tend to be abusive, and pugnacious. Many of the clients they get only took up their offer because they were coerced into doing so. Their motto is: as long as the person is on the line, there is still a chance to badger him or her. This is not the kind of marketing that gains mutual trust and respect.

2. Unfocused Marketing

Cold calling marketing is unfocused marketing. If you cannot focus your energies on better prospects, you might find yourself using up resources on people who are not really interested in your product. It would be better to use mailing lists or profiling to know which customers would most likely avail of your offers.

Cold calling sometimes relies on pure luck or stubbornness to get their clients. Unscientific. Unreliable.

3. The law

Believe it or not the law has made steps to safeguard clients from the wrath of cold callers. Law dictates that cold callers only call during working hours. They are no longer allowed to call from 8:00 P.M. onwards. Clients can now submit complaints to the authorities if your cold callers become abusive or disrespectful. For a business to be successful, you would like to avoid tangles with the law such as this.

Unfortunately there have been many reported scams in regards to cold calling marketers. As said in the first reason. These callers are usually annoying and abusive. The people you call may take offense at this and report your company to the authorities.

4. Loss of Trust

Since cold calling already has a bad reputation, affiliating with this kind of service could have a negative effect on the image of your business. If you want your business to be reputable, you will have to use reputable methods to gain the confidence of your customers. Remember that you are not merely wishing to siphon money off of them, you are also trying to establish a mutually beneficial relationship with them.

The Verdict

Cold calling can still be a good way to broaden your client network. However, the intrinsic dangers that it displays may not be very appealing to many companies. Before even considering cold calling as an option, take a look at the other marketing strategies that are in existence.