I was chatting to a fellow business developer the other day and we discussed the concept of "the wall" in cold-calling.

Hitting the Wall is a term from marathon running (also called "bonking") where the runner experiences dramatic fatigue.

From a cold-calling perspective, it's a very similar experience. It's something that few people (and most call centres) appreciate because they forget that cold-calling is essentially a human activity.

What do I mean by that?

With other methods of direct marketing, such as direct mail or email marketing, it's easy to play the numbers game. For a start, there's a lot of consistency in the medium used and message delivered. With telemarketing, the message is delivered by a human being.

Remember that.

Most new business developers, the experienced ones that have been in the game a long time, will tell you that they like to alternate projects. For me, 3 hours is a good length of time to work on the same job. It's long enough to get some momentum, but short enough to keep you fresh.

When I get calls from potential clients and they start talking about, "I want 20 leads per week, based on 60 hours of calling", etc, I know that they've never actually done the job themselves.

Now, those metrics could actually be correct. But the idea that one person can stay chained to the desk and deliver the same message again & again without getting bored, tired or clinically depressed... I don't think so.

What did The Prisoner say? "I am not a number..."

To me, this is one of the key aspects of understanding whether I can deliver on a campaign - bandwidth.

As always, it's all a matter of quality vs quantity.

Labels: cold calling, telemarketing agency, telemarketing company, telemarketing services