I’m not a friggin lead! I will never be a lead. Got it? Anyone that reaches out to me in the manner of a cold call doesn’t understand that I’m not a lead and they don’t grasp the concept of social media!
Who am I talking to? Anyone, and everyone, who has reached out to me on LinkedIn or any of the other social platforms and has asked for a call or meeting who doesn’t know me.
Here’s an example approach I received recently on LinkedIn ( the names were changed to not completely embarrass this person)
Hi Barry,
I work on the Inside Sales Team at Company X and saw your post on LinkedIn today about Facebook Ad Campaigns so I felt compelled to reach out.
I was speaking with John Smith last year about Agency ABC’s social focuses but once he left Agency ABC, our conversation was put on hold.
I wanted to see if you’d be open to a quick call to learn about Company X’s Social Ads Management platform? We work with Big Ass Brand and they use the tool to create, manage, scale, and optimize their client’s paid social campaigns across Facebook and Twitter.
Would love to learn more about Agency ABCs needs within social and see if our offerings make sense for your client’s digital goals.
Would you be open to an intro call?
Thanks,
Oblivious Sales Woman
Let me tell you why such an approach went nowhere for her.
1. I don’t know you
2. You blew the chance to know me
3. You didn’t take the opportunity to get to know me
4. You never followed up
5. You have no credibility as a social operator
6. You don’t grasp the concept of permission based marketing
7. If this is how your company trained you then perhaps they don’t get it either
8. The cold call is dead and buried if you know how to utilize social media
9. My suspicions were confirmed when I clicked in your LinkedIn bio and found that your Twitter profile is “protected” ( but the part that should have been hidden is that you’ve been on Twitter for 3 years and you have a total of 9 followers!!!)
10. I’m not a lead.
In this digital era, I wouldn’t hire anyone unless they had a demonstrated ability to interact on social media. How can any agency or company bring people on who don’t have experience in social media and expect them to have any success in the industry?
Furthermore, I would make it mandatory that every staffer must have sold a product online within the last 6 months. If they couldn’t prove to me that they successfully made an online sale, then go somewhere else.
I’ve seen bio after bio on LinkedIn where people say they’ve done everything except the single most important aspect of marketing. That being actually sell something.
Agencies hire staffers right out of college who have gone through classes that do nothing to give them the real skill that brands and clients need today. How can you possibly counsel a client when you’ve never sold anything yourself?
How can you ask a client to spend millions with you when your staff has no idea how to get someone to pull out a credit card and buy something?
We have the best opportunity that’s ever been presented to advertisers and marketers. We can actually talk to the people we want to do business with and we can do it at scale. We can create articles, we can create videos, we can converse daily…but as we see from the example above, some clearly don’t get it and squander opportunity.
I’m not a lead. I’ll never be a lead. And those that don’t know that are wasting their time and their employer’s resources.
But then again, it’s the employer’s fault.
Instead of taking the time to build a relationship, now you simply get ignored.
