The trend in business is like ones that can also be found in the world of fashion, it’s an endless cycle; from winter collection, to spring collection, to summer collection, and down to fall collection, it will ultimately and by all means go back to winter, the season where the cycle first started.
Relatively, in the realm of business, the same thing (though not “exactly”) also happens, especially in terms of b2b lead generation. First there was this door-to-door salesman, whose journey has reached him to the caves of igloos, to wilderness of Sahara, and to the high-rises of Himalayas (of course, I’m exaggerating), then followed by the seemingly-ancient-manuscript which is the phonebook (the first sales lists) upon the invention of the telephone (which coined the industry of telemarketing), down to the Internet age – a whole new mode of marketing and lead generation, and ultimately to the complex, yet lucrative arena of social media.
The difference however with of the fashion cycle and that of the business’ is that the latter can do some mixing and matching, both of its new and ‘old-fashioned” ways which rarely happens to the former; also, the revolutionary cycle of a business doesn’t necessarily have continuously move as it can adopt to different situations depending on the need to carry it out.
Nevertheless, the illustration above doesn’t only present the similarities and the differences of the cycle of fashion and business; what lies beneath it is the vital portrayal of outbound telemarketing in the industry.
Trends do surely come and go, and vice versa; the sector of cold calling may have been overlooked and neglected previously due to the ceaseless innovations of demand generation technologies, but that doesn’t completely take the spotlight away from telemarketing. Just because the market is presently flooded with latest innovations doesn’t mean businesses have to disregard the art of prospecting by making phone calls; definitely not in any way.
This misconception has been certainly roaming around the streets of the global market that has eventually misled the people in terms of decision making. They said social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkdIn would kill the industry of telemarketing, yes! We all hear the same thing before, yet it seems like nothing still changes with this phenomenon; well, it is because these platforms didn’t really allow the ‘cold calling’ industry to kick the bucket, but have actually enhanced it instead.
The fact will always remain that social media has undeniably paved the way for cutting-edge tools that were effectively incorporated in terms of generating leads, that it has raised the bars of lead generation higher, and that it will forever be an essential part of any modern businesses.
Overall, the basics of marketing haven’t really changed at all. In fact, the basics are more important than ever. New tools in marketing isn’t always about “out” with old, “in” with new; they’re about incorporating new tools with old techniques, and it’s more like of tying up the past and the present to come up with a better and bolder future.
