Isn't sending an unsolicited email to someone the same thing as cold-calling them?

Hi Craig:

The answer is yes. Unsolicited emails, phone calls, and knocks on the door are all cold calls. Why? Because a cold "call" is contacting someone who does not know you and does not expect your call. It's really that simple.

With so much sales intelligence available today, many salespeople believe that if they've done their research, identified trigger events, and learned about the individual, that their call isn't cold. It is cold. Sales execs delete as many as 150 unsolicited emails and voice mails a day. We're wasting a ton of time and think we're productive because we've sent so many emails.

The exact opposite of a cold call is a referral introduction. The person knows you and expects your call. Your sales process shortens, and you convert that prospect to a client more than 50 percent of the time. You still need to do research, but the person who referred you will give you lots of information you never got through even the best sales intelligence.

Hi Craig! Well of course it is! So is speaking first, and uninvited, to the person seated next to you on an airplane, but there is no Focus grousing about that.

This whole cold call, cold e-mail issue is not that the communication arrives without prior notice, it is that we have become conditioned to expect inappropriate or untimely calls and e-mails that often are sales pitches. By contrast, few of us would object to an unexpected e-mail message from our state’s Lottery Director stating that we have won the big prize.

That said, there are serious implications to sending unsolicited e-mail … CAN SPAM and beyond. For example, here is part of a recent interview I conducted with a top officer of a global technology firm.

MAB: “In your capacity, you also have to contact other IT execs. What do you do to make sure your own approaches are different and better than the approaches used on you?”

IT exec: “If it’s a vendor or partner, I work through the sales team. If it is a direct prospect, of course my title and company attract attention right away. But beyond that, I propose a discussion based on something relevant and timely to them, to share our experience with other clients, and what we know about the technology in general. I would never send an unsolicited e-mail to a senior executive. It’s a much more personal communication.”

With all due respect to Focus's administrators and experts, I believe that the answer to the question is unequivocally no; sending UCE is not the same as cold calling. But you have to define your terms (such as what you mean by "the same thing") in order to make any sense of the question.

First, if I assume that you were asking if they have the same impact, then answer there is, of course, no. UCE is likely to wind up in a spam folder, and get deleted before the prospect ever sees it. A cold call will at least reach the prospect's gatekeeper or voice mail; and if the caller is any good, it will get to the prospect. The chances that UCE will deliver its message is about 1:50,000. The chance that a cold call will deliver its message is around 1 in 2.

Second, it is almost impossible to personalize UCE, while it is almost impossible not to personalize a phone call. The Initial Benefit Statement may be generic, but as soon as you start asking questions, the cold call (assuming that you don't use a script) is entirely personalized. Therefore, the ability of UCE to connect with a need of a prospect is virtually zero, while the ability if a cold call to connect with a need of the prospect is about 1 in 4.

Third, to argue that because both are, in some exceptional way, intrusive begs the argument - how is that any different from a billboard, pop-up ad, or commercial, or even a tap on the shoulder at a networking event? There is no marketing technique that is not, in some way, intrusive. Again, forgive me, but methinks thou doth protest too much, if that's the concern.

Carlos - to your point that most buyers are not in a ready-to-buy state: I actually hope that the prospect (who is, by definition, not yet a buyer) is not in a ready-to-buy state when I call him. Rather, I would like to be the one that puts him in that state, before anyone else does it. To believe that such is not the goal of sales or marketing is to concede failure at the gate, which I'm sure you don't intend. I don't disagree with engaging them where they are; but I don't at all agree that a cold call can't take someone from not being a buyer to being a buyer in the space of a few minutes.

Joanne - We call hundreds of people every day who don't know us. We don't need a referral. We don't need to have pre-established rapport. And we get a qualified lead, depending on the campaign, on anywhere from 15%-50% of the calls. I agree that a few seconds of research can help, so if that makes the call a little less cold, I concede.

In short, it's all about technique. If you make a bad cold call, it's not going to work. It may anger the prospect, and it may get a hang-up. It probably won't even get past his gatekeepers. But a good cold call? There isn't a day that goes by when a cold prospect hasn't thanked one of my folks for calling because it got him to think about a problem that he has, and a solution that might work.

Great question and agree that unsolicited email is basically a cold call, but after reading David Brock's blog post from earlier in the week, the issue is not about solicitied or unsolicited but whether today's sales folks are fully using the Sales 2.0 methods and tools to be prepared and relevant in what they actually say to start the conversation. David correctly states that far too many of today's sales people do not practice what they preach about Sales 2.0.

Trish Bertuzzi pointed me yesterday to Jim Keenan's post about the Sales 2.0 conference and talked about how almost every speaker violated every rule of Sales 2.0 by basically delivering a sales pitch in their sessions rather than relevant content. I thought we stopped doing that 5-10 years ago?

Both David and JIm's posts and this thread brings me to my pet-peeve and its that with the pressure to make quota greater than ever in this economy, too many are reverting to their sales childhood and making every prospect encounter - solicited or unsolicited; email, phone or whatever - all about them. Very troubling IMHO.

Yes! And I agree that strategic telemarketing has a higher percentage of succes than sending "cold e-mails".

The methodology is the same for both... Know your Target Market needs and wants for each Client Segment prior to making calls and sending e-mails.

At both touch points you're introducing your business, providing some relevant info, and asking their permission to move forward.

At FawcettGroup, we teach our clients to make the call first and then, after they have "opted in", we send them an e-mail or direct mail, as per their preferrence. The expectation is set for a follow-up call. Only after scheduling an initial meeting, do they become a qualified prospect. We then begin tracking their progress through the Sales Process.

Great Topic!