A Blog On Cold Calling

The Death Of Prospecting Has Been Greatly Exaggerated. Is That Supported By My Personal Experiences And Data?

Since 2005 I’ve been obsessed with my cold calling data.

I log every prospecting activity (calls, emails, inmails, texts, shouting on a street corner, etc. etc. etc.) into spreadsheet, as well as any and all notes from that activity since every bit of detail in those notes can be used for data analysis (for example, how does prospecting differ on an Election Tuesday versus a regular day?). I like Excel because it’s cheap, user friendly, useable offline, efficient, reliable, and (best of all) because it’s just soooooo easy to use various formulas to do extensive statistical analysis.

Last night rather than binge watching TV (we’re loving Ted Lasso!!), my wife and I worked and I used some of that time to analyze my last two year’s of outreach/prospecting. And I have to admit — I was surprised. In fact, really surprised.

Always always always there has been talk that cold calling is dead. Probably there is some long lost scroll in some ancient Roman ruin extolling the wastes of cold calling even though phones didn’t even exist back then. That was certainly true in 2004 when I first started cold calling, that people (even fellow sales people) soapboxed about the waste of cold calling and prospecting. It’s even more true today. In fact, increasingly I see questions on forums on whether prospecting at all even works anymore, whether social media and call screening and filters and just the emotional state of our country as a whole have absolutely killed the value of prospecting.

So I was surprised to learn last night that prospecting — at least for me — success* the past two years is at its highest levels since 2008. And there are far fewer rude people (rude being defined here as people who aggressively shame me for reaching out to them) than there were 20 years ago. Who knew??

The death of prospecting and cold calling has been greatly exaggerated (here’s to you, Mark Twain). Which to me reflects that despite the crazy rat races of our lives, and the proliferation of AI and robots and Heartless Micromanagers From Hell, that people are still receptive to fellow people. That they’ll even take a moment out of their lives to listen to little ol’ me. For that I’m grateful. People are amazing. When all else fails, their generosity and welcoming hearts shine through.

NOTES

(*) Success being defined here as people being accessible and entertaining my introduction)