How to Prevent Cold Calls
In the new global marketplace, many strategies and techniques are used to sell products and services through different technologies. Telemarketers and customer service representatives use “cold calling” as one of the many tools they use to transact business. If you run a business that counts the phone as an important tool for transactions, you can try using cold calls.
What is Cold Calling?
Cold calling is a practice in telemarketing and sales where a person makes a call to a prospective client or customer without the receiver expecting the call. The cold call was developed as a strategy for:
Marketing. Many products have been sold through phone transactions ever since landlines became available and affordable for the public. Instead of the customer making the call to the sales office, companies who use cold calling make unsolicited calls to sell their products.
Advertising. To sell a product or a service, companies rely on advertising techniques like print, online advertisements, TV spots, and everything else in between. Cold phone calls are just one of the many tools some companies use to pitch new, popular, or innovative products.
Issues With Cold Calls
Cold calls are unsolicited telephone messages that are either made by telemarketers or sales representatives, or are pre-recorded messages that are automatically sent to random phone numbers. There are many problems with cold calls:
Legality. In many countries, particularly the United States, the United Kingdom, and all member states of the European Union, cold calling is considered illegal. Some countries keep “Do Not Call” registries, which is a listing of phone numbers that companies or telemarketing firms cannot cold-call.
Regulation. Another problem with cold calling is that the practice can be difficult to regulate. Many companies have contact centers and call centers offshore, and many of the employees in those contact centers are outsourced. It then becomes very difficult for governments to enforce rules on cold calling and “Do Not Call” registries.
Etiquette. To simplify telemarketing, many companies use automated or pre-recorded messages to be sent to a collection of numbers stored on a computer or generated at random. Many people find this practice to be rude and a complete waste of their time.
Preventing Cold Calls
There are many ways for you to prevent or deny cold calls to be made to your home line or office line:
Register for “Do Not Call.” The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) established the National Do Not Call Registry as a collection of residential lines that telemarketers cannot contact with a cold call or an unsolicited call. You can contact the FTC to inquire about how you can get your home line to be included in the Do Not Call registry.
Use caller ID. If you’re in the office, most of your calls are from numbers you expect or handle all the time. Caller ID can show the number of an incoming call, and reduces the chances of you picking up the call and get a telemarketing sales pitch instead.
Reject the call politely. If you’re not included in the Do Not Call registry, you may receive phone calls from call center agents and telemarketing representatives on a regular basis. The best thing that you can do when you get a cold call is to politely say “No,” and put down the phone.
Cold calling may be effective for some people, but it is generally frowned upon by many people in business. With these tips, you may need to consider other more reliable marketing and advertising strategies.for your products or services.