Alex Iskold on ReadWriteWeb posted “A Guide to Business Development 2.0.” Of course I have a complaint or I wouldn’t be writing this. Alex thinks that “cold calling is dead.” He discusses Linkedin, APIs, and Twitter as alternatives.
Yep, Linkedin is great. APIs are nice if you have them, but biz dev folks aren’t in charge of such things. And outside of the early adopters and tech saavy folks of the Bay Area, not everyone uses Twitter.
Sometimes you have to cold call. No one ever answers their phone, so you’ve got 30 seconds to make your pitch. Most folks get far fewer voicemails than e-mails, so the likelihood that your message will be received is much higher. Even if you’re using Linkedin, you still have to rely on e-mail. In reality I almost always end up calling and e-mailing and that’s what most folks do to me. If their e-mail doesn’t interest me, then I don’t respond. I always return voicemail. If my employers took away the phone, I wouldn’t be able to do my job using nothing but Web 2.0 technology.
