Cold calling is going extinct. Even its contemporary translation to 'telemarketing' isn't enough to keep it going. My take is that it will disappear altogether and then be resurrected as a new business and marketing strategy dubbed 'Direct Prospect Interphasing' or some such.

Cold calling basically became popular in the past as a way to directly market to both warm and cold prospects, if there even is such a thing as a cold prospect. It works great for selling goods or services that require timing and one just shows up and fills the order. But to get that to work one has to play the numbers game and for many goods and services the best way to get those numbers is to volume cold call. For many types of sales there is really no other way to accurately qualify a prospect.

Cold calling is a percentage game and the closing ratio numbers are low because for most prospects the perceived timing is not right or they refuse to make an on the spot decision. Or they feel that no one can walk in off the street and do them any good. Especially if you are dealing with medium and small sized businesses you will find many owners that are clueless and simply don't care. This also makes it a percentage game.

After cold calling on 100 prospects take a step back and evaluate what you saw. Hopefully you kept notes and each visit is clear in your mind. Take what you learned on the first 100 and apply it to the next 100.

If you sell into a specific industry, there is no better way to get to know it than to cold call. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut unless you ask a question. If you can, ask open ended questions as folks tend to open up more. Start with easy questions and get progressively more pointed as times goes by.

If you are patient and just keep listening you will be amazed at what you can find out. Each time you hear the responses you catalogue them in your brain and over a period of time you can recognize patterns and perhaps most importantly, trends. Cold callers always know which way the wind blows because they are always taking the pulse from the street.

Cold calling sharpened my wit and powers of observation and directly led to projects where I would do competitive intelligence or checking out the competition. I got to the point I could just about find out whatever I needed to know about a company simply by walking in and asking a few simple questions and appearing interested.

I would often come back

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