Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling

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To Cold Call or Not to Cold Call?

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

—William Shakespeare, Hamlet

It seems these days that everywhere you look there is some so-called expert pontificating that cold calling is dead. This is usually an inbound marketing, Sales 2.0, social-selling-obsessed nitwit with an agenda and a vested interest in telling you that everything you thought you knew about sales prospecting is “old school”—except their narrow version of “new school.” By vested interest, I mean they’ve got something they want to sell you that promises to fill your pipe with no fuss, no muss, no rejection, and little effort.

These folks pander to the sales masses’ desire to stop cold calling. You’ve seen the ads and headlines plastered everywhere: “Never cold call again!” Buy their system and you’ll be set free of the burden of reaching out and touching prospective customers.

With their top-secret system, you’ll happily and painlessly blog and post on social media sites, and prospects who are already 70 percent (or 57 percent or 68 percent or whatever the latest statistic is these days) through the sales process—all by themselves—will miraculously call you at exactly the right time. You’ll answer the phone or check your e-mail or social inbox and boom—closed deal. It’s easy, they’ll tell you. Why work hard when, with their little magic pill, you can just kick back, relax, and wait for the phone to ring.

Welcome to Fantasy Island.

Likewise, there are experts who bill themselves ...