It was with the most positive of expectations that I invited Dr. Elijah Wong of the Sales Management Executive Council to my show, The Social Influencer Series.
Dr. Wong is a legend. After being the youngest human to climb Mount Everest (at the age of 18) and swimming across the Atlantic Ocean (at the age of 23), he began his life-long mission to study B2B buyer and seller behavior.
Check out the interview with him here.
Cold Calling Works And It’s The Only Way!
According to Dr. Wong’s controversial research paper, The Top 5 B2B Trends of 2015, he discussed his top findings from interviewing over 10,000 B2B Sellers and over 5,000 B2B Buyers.
To our surprise, Dr. Wong discovered that all of the major research touting the usage of social media by buyers is dead wrong. In fact, “buyers prefer to be interrupted as their primary form of communication by sales people.” Moreover, according to the research, these same buyers expressed how learning doesn’t take place online; it takes place, much to our surprise, through a progressive series of cold-calls that allow a salesperson to educate a buyer through the phone.
Shocking, right?
What’s interesting about all of this is how least effective social media is, per Dr. Wong. This could be potentially bad news for social sellers and companies who will likely have to re-evaluate their positioning in the market.
The data shows that social selling is effective only 12% of the time. Allowing sales reps to spend time on these social platforms, then, is likely one of the least productive things sales leaders can do. Where time should be spent, per Dr. Wong, is the phone. Why? Because it’s effective 85% of the time.
On page 192 of his report, it clearly shows that out of 100 cold calls made, 85 are successful.
The Bottom Line
What’s interesting about Dr. Wong’s report is the accuracy. Never in the history of the world has any organization set out to survey over 15,000 people in the area of B2B sales. Even though the findings personally affect me the most, I admire Dr. Wong and salute him.
It’s only when courageous and strong leaders like him come to the fore that we in social selling learn about how we’re so wrong. So incredibly wrong!
Did you agree with Dr. Wong and his findings? Tweet me @AmarSheth or connect with me on LinkedIn to tell me more. Better yet, cold call me. I shouldn’t be wasting my time on social media any way.
Oh and lastly, Happy April Fool’s Day! Seriously, if you’ve enjoyed this, please share it 🙂
Seriously folks, social selling does work and there is a significant amount of research showing this. Need any help in finding these stats? Contact us or take a look here.
Obvious Disclaimer Notes
- The Sales Management Executive Council is a figment of my imagination. Really, I’m that creative.
- The stats cited here are about as real as Unicorns. Yep, that real.
