Good News For Inbound Marketers: Is Cold Calling Still A Viable Option?
I’ve been studying a load of material on my course this week run by the Institute of Digital and Direct Marketing, and one thing that cropped up in a chapter of the main text book was that 12 million phone numbers had been registered with the Telephone Preference Service, at the time this accounted for 75% of UK households. On top of this 573 thousand businesses have registered with the Corporate TPS service.
What is the Telephone Preference Service?
The Telephone Preference Service was created to help consumers prevent being hassled with cold calls on a regular basis – I registered back in 2006 and I noticed the difference immediately. Basically companies wishing to cold call a consumer have to check it against the TPS list before they can do so, and now they have to do the same for businesses aswell.
More Than 15.1 million Phone Numbers Registered
75% of households was a bit of a shock to me, so I decided to see what the figure stands at now. Unfortunately the TPS chairman hasn’t done a report since September 2009 (2 years ago), but back in 2009 here were the figures:
- In July 2009 15.1 million phone numbers were regsitered on the TPS.
- More than 60% of all household landlines have been registered
- 1.7 million phone numbers from 60 thousand companies were registered with the CTPS
Now bare in mind this was in 2009, 2 years ago, and the TPS hasn’t actually given us an update since then. Surely this is obvious – with such a high proportion of the population signing up to this service, cold calling should be a banned business practice (also silent calls).
This is great news for all the inbound marketers out there, all you SEO specialists, PPC experts and such like – demand is only likely to increase for those of us who have embraced digital marketing.
Register With The TPS & Sign The Petition
If you want to register your phone number (personal or business) to stop cold callers, you can register your number on the TPS site.
If you would like to help make cold calling illegal in the UK, sign the e-petition on the government website.
Show Your Support
Please show your support and add this to widget your website:
Please use the code below:
<div onclick=”document.location=’http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/is-cold-calling-still-a-viable-option.html’” style=”cursor: pointer; margin: 0pt auto; background-image: url(‘http://dn.broncoweb.co.uk/wpimg/cold-calling-150×100.jpg’); height: 100px; width: 150px;”><span style=”display: block; font-family: arial; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; text-align: left; padding: 20px 10px 10px; color: rgb(255, 255, 255);”>15.1 million people can’t be wrong, Let’s <a style=”font-size: 14px; color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none; font-family: arial;” href=”http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/is-cold-calling-still-a-viable-option.html”>Ban Cold Calling</a></span></div>
Anthony Baxter 646 days ago
Whilst I completely agree with you regarding banning cold calling people at home David, I don’t agree that B2B cold calling should be stopped.
I’m a sales guy who uses cold calling working in SEO. I never cold call homes because that to me is a massive intrusion of privacy and I don’t take those sorts of calls myself at home either, funnily enough I’m one of the 12 million registered with the TPS and since registering last year I get very few calls apart from from overseas automated free holiday type annoying calls.
I personally believe there is a place though for B2B cold calling as long as it is targeted and professionally carried out with the right messaging. I have introduced dozens of companies requiring SEO to ethical SEO companies through the art of cold calling. Only contacting businesses where I can clearly see they are struggling with natural positions through looking on Google. If I believe they need help I introduce them to a secure and ethical SEO business via a simple telephone call or email and its a win win for all concerned. They get to reduce their PPC spend quite often, increase traffic into the site and be more profitable. I guess you could say I feel like the good samaritan of the SEO sales world saving many a prospect from making the wrong decision and wasting money!
Lastly cold calling gets a bad wrap because of the fact that huge call centres usually carry out the vast majority of calls and employ monkeys who don’t understand the products or services – That’s my peneth Long Live The Cold Caller…..LOL
David Whitehouse 645 days ago
Sorry Anthony, I should have made it more clear, I was talking about banning B2C cold calling – although I imagine it may be hard in some cases to distinguish between the two. I should have been more specific…
Anthony Baxter 645 days ago
Hey you dont need to appologise David, its a very informative article and I’m sure quite a hot topic at present too so well done! You just scared me for a minute because I thought my livelihood was possibly going down the tubes LOL
8 Gram Gorilla 645 days ago
8 Gram GorillaI really dislike Cold Calling in any sense although I do have to admit that it’s probably because of a tremendous amount of bad experiences I’ve had with it. If more cold callers were nice and personable, I probably wouldn’t mind so much but there’s nothing worse than either an automated call or someone who doesn’t even know the name of my business. It’s just another form of spam
Keenan Steel 645 days ago
I was quite honestly appalled by this: “15.1 million people can’t be wrong.”
Oh really?
“there are between 471 million and 628 million Muslims who support terrorist attacks.”
http://goo.gl/A9YF5
I am not equating the two. I’m just saying to hell with your argument from consensus.
David Whitehouse 645 days ago
The arguement is based on the fact that the majority of households in the UK are signed up to the TPS – in other words, more than 60% of people don’t like being cold called (as of 2009, it’ll no doubt be higher than that now).
Out of the rest of them (less than 40%) I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of them didn’t know about the TPS, but would prefer not to receive cold calls.
I have never heard a single person say “this guy cold called me last night, I really welcomed his phone call and we had a nice chat, I even bought some car insurance off of him, even though I’m already insured”. Have you?
I think banning B2C cold calling is a great idea – its obviously a nuisance for everyone.
Currently it is illegal to send unsolicited sales emails in the UK, now I bet if you asked people which they would prefer to receive, one spam email or one cold call, I’m guessing the majority would say one spam email.
Basically cold calling is a nuisance, and according to the article I was reading if the rate of TPS subscriptions continued we would likely see the entire population registered with it – naturally preventing cold calling. We’ve not had an update from the TPS in 2 years.
I think from the sounds of it, you have just read what I put on the widget, which can quite easily be changed. I don’t think it was worth being “appalled” at, but perhaps your link to right wing propaganda and comments are.
David Whitehouse 645 days ago
Apologies, on closer inspection it seems to be the opposite of right wing propaganda. God damn leftist propaganda…
We are talking about the UK here Keenan, just so you know.
Keenan Steel 644 days ago
http://egoistphilosophyblog.com/Sorry for the slow response. I meant no offense to you personally, David, nor to anyone else. I’m just saying that the crap you typed into the widget is a HORRIBLE phrase in any context.
I’ve got nothing to do with that piece of shit I linked to, and I have NO idea why you’re all talking about religion. It’s an example of how worthless consensus is in determining just policy.
David Whitehouse 643 days ago
Ok Keenan, I think I get you now – by using that I’d be associating myself with all those idiots that use the same arguement.
Something more appropriate then, will have a think.
Steve Ollington 645 days ago
http://www.bronco.co.ukHi Keenan, that’s what is otherwise known as a strawman argument, in that it is completely unrelated… you could apply anything, to anything using that same logic.
Islam is a religion, it has its own culture and its own teachings. People are brought up from birth countries and communities with no differing perspectives and very little in terms of even devils ad-vocation. What you are referring to is not opinion, unlike the foundations of the argument in the original post.
However, I think you could prove your point more easily by looking at how many people (with so many other options) read tabloid newspapers such as the Daily Mail, and watch stupid celebrity programmes. That, is how I would conclude that in terms of the general public, the masses are morons.
Keenan Steel 644 days ago
http://egoistphilosophyblog.com/Hi Steve,
My argument has nothing to do with religion (for once). Sorry you misunderstood.
To modify what you said, “the masses [can be] morons” is exactly my point.
Anthony Baxter 644 days ago
Keenan, Keenan, Keenan
Talk about going off topic and trying to hijack David’s blog with your very negative propaganda, its quite unbelievable!
I’m with Steve and David on this! Also as a non religious person with a buddhist wife and some good friends who are muslims, I don’t believe your statistics at all. I personally believe the vast majority of people regardless of faith are peace loving people who genuinely love thy neighbour, its just the minority that seem to be religious fanatics intent on death and destruction.
I honestly feel quite sorry for you if you feel the need to spread such negativity in the world at a time when we all need to be good brothers and sisters!
David Whitehouse 644 days ago
I’ve got a buddhist wife too!
David Whitehouse 644 days ago
There’s more research out yesterday saying how telephone is the most frustrating customer service channel. I imagine they prefer email because it can be done when they have free time.
Earl Grey 644 days ago
https://www.syndk8.comNever should be banned.
Cold calling is a valid business method.
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