Why The GDPR and PoPI Regulations Are Good For Salespeople

As a cold caller I hate cold callers. To be fair; what I hate are bad cold callers. In other words; those telemarketing firms that are churning out huge volumes of calls and adding little value to their prospects' lives.

I am happy to engage with a good cold caller. Those that are well prepared and add value to my life.

Most cold callers seem to go for the shotgun approach. Spray your message at as many people as you can and see which ones you hit.

This method has seen dwindling returns on effort for many years now.

In my B2B cold calling efforts one of my time consuming tasks is prospecting. I spend a good amount of time trying to find a small list of people that are likely to show interest in what I offer. Putting a list together can take me hours.

GDPR and PoPI force sales people to work harder to find new customers. In spite of what you might believe cold calling is not banned by these regulations. I am talking about B2B cold callers here (B2C is a whole different matter under GDPR). The regulations help make sure that you have a good reason (legitimate interest) to call your prospect. If you go for the shotgun approach then you're in for trouble.

As a cold caller you should be qualifying your prospect carefully, anyway. It shouldn't take regulations to force us to do this.

Fewer and fewer companies use cold calling now. With these regulations that number is going to dwindle even further. Less telemarketers on the phone harassing my prospects means better outcomes for me. This is the reason that I believe these regulations are good for salespeople. If you're diligent and qualify your prospects correctly then you shouldn't have a problem.As long as you are aware of the regulations around handling customer data.

For a good understanding of what GDPR (and by extension PoPI in South Africa) means for cold callers read this: https://www.pipedrive.com/en/blog/gdpr-cold-calling