It’s 2020 and Traditional Selling is as dead as Rock and Roll!

When I was a teenager, the saying was that disco is dead and Rock ‘n’ Roll was forever. At that time and in all its forms, rock was where teen angst was directed for escape and rebellion.

With a career over 25 years driving revenue through sales and marketing channels, I can assure you that the traditional selling model is as dead as rock ‘n’ roll. Social media and digital marketing are to traditional selling what rap is now to rock, the replacement!

Sure, you can still find traditional cold calling at the un-evolved company where they still rely on the salesperson to drive revenue from cold prospect to closed deal. Just as you can still find rock playing on certain genre radio stations. Both still have their place in the world from time to time and with the right audience, but neither play a significant role for the respective broader audiences.

I can say with certainty that social selling via LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and even TikTok have replaced cold calling in progressive companies today. To be clear, “traditional selling” (rooms of people making cold calls) is dead, selling is not dead at all. However, the tools available have evolved and made the process much more efficient for those who adapt.

Consider this math:

1.) A self-generated sales prospect takes an average six times longer to close, then an inbound lead… This is from the time of first live contact, and who knows how long that will take!

2.) The salesperson closes roughly 5% of all self-generated cold prospects. This is aggressive!

3.) Conversely about 25% of all inbound digital leads close. This is conservative

4.) The 5% that closes will take six-times as long to close from first live contact then it will an inbound lead.

These results make complete sense; an inbound lead has come to your business seeking information. They have seen something that has piqued their interest and have already started selling process by themselves. They are looking for validation from you, as compared to the cold prospect who is on edge and looking for an out. It obvious, yet so many companies are still hanging on to The Rolling Stones and the Boiler Room, in a world of Kendrick Lamar and Gary Vaynerchuk (if you don’t know either of these names, look them up. It will be your first step to recovery) 

So let’s play the above math out over the course of a year: 

Let’s assume a few additional things for the purpose of this exercise.

a. Both sales rep and the digital marketing campaign generate 10 prospects and leads per month respectively. This is obviously not the case, digital marketing can generate much more than this and it is unlikely that a salesperson in b2b can sustain 10 per month for an extended time, but we will go with it for the sake of the exercise.

b. Average sale is $100k

c. Traditional sales cycle of six months (We won’t count the potential months that it takes for the sales rep to first get the prospect live on the phone).

d. Digital lead sales cycle of one month 

f. Results for a Period of one year based on all of the above. 

Now let’s look at the results at Month 13:

1. Sales rep and Digital marketing generate 120 prospects and leads

2. Traditional Sales = 4 deals at total of $400,000 (Traditional model closes 5% of those that hit six months mark.)

3. New Selling via digital leads = 27 deals at a total of $2,700,000 (Digital inbound lead-based selling closed 25% of those that hit one-month mark.)

These numbers are based on rough percentages, however if anything is skewed, it is against the digital model.

It is undeniable that today’s selling model must start with a digital marketing approach. Cold calling and prospecting in the old form are a time suck, unproductive, a comparative waste of time for talented salespeople, and as dead as rock and roll! However, selling is still very much alive. Talented closers are priceless, and the sales profession is as critical as ever, it has just evolved.

Progressive companies understand the above math and have created a structure to capitalize on the wealth of lead generation options out there, while properly focusing the energy of the sales exec toward closing deals. There may be a shift in capital toward digital marketing efforts, but it is the only way to drive long term and sustainable revenue growth today.