I spoke to a sales person last week who promised to send me information via email. He did. 3 times. Each time he sent it and called me to ask “so what did you think”, to which I replied “I didn’t get it”. As it turns out, I deleted it, mistaking it for spam each time. The title he had given was his product name. Even with spam filters on full blast, I get 60% spam in my inbox. If it’s not from someone I know or has a subject line mentioning something relevant to me or my company, I delete it.
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I just got a great bit of direct mail. A standard letter in a window envelope landed in my in tray this morning. At first glance it looked like any other letter, but then I saw hand-written on the top right of the envelope “Ed, there’s a few ideas for shortening your sales cycle in here”.
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There’s been a lot of talk about cold calling being “dead” in the last year or so.

This undeniably populist movement proposes that prospecting is now about face to face networking, referrals, the use of blogs, writing articles and whitepapers, pod and video casts, a presence on social networking sites, and other ways to contribute value to and build credibility in your target market. Like cold calling, if done well, I am sure these methods are effective.
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