For years I have told companies that I work with, cold calling DOES NOT WORK, period. Matter a fact, I would argue that it is the worst way to sell your product and can even hurt your brand image. Cold calls flat out piss people off.
ReadWriteWeb has a great post this morning on “Business Development 2.0.” Here’s an excerpt,
Besides being annoying, cold calling is no longer effective. People are smarter these days, and have learned to ignore upsells. A targeted email which avoids the spam box has a higher chance of getting a response than a call. With a call, the default allergic reaction is now “no.” But with a brief and sincere email it could be, “hmmm, this might be interesting…” However, even cold emails do not work. To have a chance at making a sale, you need to get a warm introduction. It used to be that the business web was hidden inside of people’s heads and rolodexes. Today, however, a lot of it is out there in the open - inside a digital business network called LinkedIn.