Customers are claiming they are receiving up to 40 “unsolicited and unhelpful” IT supplier calls a day as cold calling is getting out of control.
VAR Probrand, which surveyed IT suppliers and buyers, found that over 60 percent of end-user respondents were being hounded by between nine and 40 calls from IT suppliers.
On average, 90 percent of those calls last between one and five minutes, so end users are burning up to three hours a day fielding unwanted calls. What is bizarre about the sudden uptick is that cold calling is mostly ineffective. Probrand points to research by the Harvard Business Review which finds that 91 percent of cold calls do not work.
Probrand said that there was a complexity and inefficiency out there that the industry at large needs to tackle customers are changing the way they buy – they still want to purchase either on or offline, but it has to be “on their terms” and without disruptive sales calls throughout the day.
The research also found that half of IT suppliers were frustrated by a lack of visibility of end users through the channel.
The study also found that 26 percent of distributors and vendors said poor third-party marketing was a big challenge, while 32 percent were frustrated with poor ROI from reseller marketing activity. Poor reporting was also cited as a contributing problem.
