Like everything else in the 21st century, prospecting has evolved significantly in the last five years. The best way to get qualified leads is to have them find you rather than blindly call people who don't care and have no need. Salespeople who are effective prospecters have access to Facebook, Linkedin, Zoom Info and the prospects website. A true professional makes creative use of these tools. If you are stuck in the last decade, smiling and dialing you not only waste your time and money, but dilute your brand. Prospecting in 2009 is a science

Thanks for the analogy Matt! I'm looking forward to learning more about Prospecting 2.0. 
 
 
 
I also agree with Dan that smiling and dialing blindly is a waste of time and money, however, I do believe that you still need to reach out to your target audience rather than having them find you.

Reality is that Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing need to co-exist and benefit from each other -- just as I wrote in a recent blog article for Hubspot. 
 
And Dan is correct, outbound marketers using LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social media tools can dial with greater effectiveness.  
 
Couple things to consider about why prospecting should include both inbound and outbound: 
 
- Inbound marketing captures people raising their hands. Already in the buying/educating process. We all benefit by this because they are people that find us. They have already raised their hands. 
 
- Outbound marketing targets people that may not even know they have a need. They aren't yet about to type appointment setting in google and find Green Leads. Sales can take advantage of this by controlling the education of the prospect and initiating the buying process. 
 
- Inbound marketing, although effective, can take time to bring up to a boil. Google doesn't just increase your rankings overnight. Neither do people start following you on twitter and blogs in just a week. Over time, with diligent work, it pays off in a big way. 
 
- Outbound marketing can deliver results in short order. In fact, in the case of our business, we can put our clients in face-to-face meetings with prospects within 2 weeks of the first dial. Accelerating pipeline is a major benefit of outbound and also can pay off big time. 
 
Inbound and Outbound does co-exist, and together result in more effective overall demand gen results. They are each a part of the strategy and not mutually exclusive.  
 
Personally, I drink both flavors of the Kool-Aid.

Both sides are right here. Prospects can self-educate. They are empowered. But outbound marketing plays a big role too. No better tool than the telephone for building relationships.  
 
A combination of outbound and inbound is best.

The best prospectors know the tricks of the trade for using push and pull simultaneously. Social networking sites (especially LinkedIn) change the game on this IF you know how to use the correctly. Cold calling is NOT dead - it's just morphed into quasi-cold calling. Salespeople who can make a quasi-cold introduction make the big bucks.

Thanks so much for linking to me on your post Matt! I appreciate it -- first class stuff! I also really enjoyed yesterday's webinar on Prospecting 2.0 -- the sales profession is changing rapidly and we all need to be doing our part to learn and take action to sell more effectively.