Ask any salesperson with some gray hairs if cold calling works, and they’ll probably tell you to smile and dial. That’s because cold calling indeed “works.” If you spend enough time calling, you’ll book a meeting. With enough meetings, you’ll make a sale. But, everything has an opportunity cost. Time spent cold calling is time not spent on something else.
But, does cold calling have a place in the future of sales? In my opinion, cold calling that’s purely focused on volume is as good as dead. If you’re asking reps to make hundreds of dials per day, you should ask why you don’t have a better strategy.
Cold calling, as we know it, will have to change. Here’s what I see down the line.
The State of Cold Calling Today
I started cold calling more than a decade ago in what feels now like a completely different time. It was never my favorite way to spend a few hours, but it worked well enough that I would use cold calling regularly to keep my pipeline full of prospects.
Over time, I’ve watched the effectiveness of cold calling deteriorate, at first slowly and then rapidly in the last few years. Of course, you’ll still see rookie reps book meetings from cold calls by sheer luck. But, I’m seeing more veteran sellers get stonewalled because the prospect on the other end was sick of unsolicited pitches.
Once we started carrying our phones with us everywhere, call volume increased exponentially, both from “legitimate” telemarketers with actual products and spammers. Now, after being spammed about car warranty extensions ad nauseam, most people I know won’t even answer an unknown number.
According to , it took an average of 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect in 2007. By 2021, that number had risen to eight tries. Today, it’s likely even higher. Ask yourself, if someone called you eight or more times to sell you something, how receptive would you be to their message?
To put it simply, it’s a different world than it was when I started dialing, and the modern challenges are making the ROI of cold calling more dubious than ever.
Modern Cold Calling Challenges
You can put your reputation at risk.
Most cold calls these days aren’t legitimate sales efforts. They’re spammers hoping to con people into pulling out their credit card or some other valuable piece of financial information that can be exploited.
You could have the best intentions in the world and be calling someone who’s a perfect fit for your service. But in your prospect’s eyes, you’re lumped in with all the rest who make their phones ring constantly with unwanted calls.
To make matters worse, they’ll remember the experience, and if your approach to low connect rates is increasing volume, you can cause real reputational harm to your company in the long run.
More people are on the Do Not Call (DNC) registry.
The FTC created the DNC list in 2003 to help combat out-of-control telemarketing. As of 2023, it had nearly 250 million numbers on the list.
So, you need to cross-reference the DNC list before you dial with an autodialer or prerecorded message and demonstrate clear consent to call the person on the other end. If you don’t, you may face massive fines (up to $1,500 per violation) from failure to adhere to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).
FCC guidelines explicitly advise against answering unknown calls.
Want to avoid receiving unwanted calls? The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recommends that you . In my peer group, this practice has become widespread. If someone wants to reach me and they know I don’t have their contact information, they’ll text me first and let me know to expect a call.
Cold calling has gotten more expensive.
It’s easy to assume dialing is cheap. All you need is a phone and a number, right? Data costs money, and the plummeting win rates of cold calling mean you’ll need more of it, along with an autodialing software, to pump up the volume.
You’ll probably also use local presence numbers to boost pickup rates, and you’ll need software to cross-reference lists like the DNC registry to avoid lawsuits. And perhaps most costly, you’ll need to find people who are actually willing to make hundreds of dials per day, plus a constant stream of replacements when those original sales reps get burnt out. Still sound cheap?
How Cold Calling Has to Change
Sales departments will inevitably continue cold calling, but it’s only going to get harder. To turn the phones back into a source of real revenue, try these steps.
Warm up cold calls.
Back to that I mentioned earlier: 84% of buyers say they’re primarily influenced by the recommendations they get from people in their circle. At the same time, 91% of customers express willingness to make a referral, but only 11% of salespeople actually ask for them.
In my mind, this chasm between referrals and requests is the biggest opportunity in sales today. Whether you’re picking up the phone, sending an email, or sending a message on social media, modern sales outreach simply shouldn’t be cold.
Add context immediately.
If a cold call isn’t warmed up by a direct referral, it should at least include immediate context that shows the prospect why a connection is relevant. “I saw your business just expanded into [new market] and I wanted to offer some support,” or “I’ve seen some of your job postings sit open for a while and thought I could help you fill those vacancies.”
If you can quickly communicate the context behind your outreach, you’re at least demonstrating that there’s a point to the call beyond a hope and a prayer they’ll buy something from you.
Use the phone strategically.
Perhaps the biggest shift in mindset for the future: The phone should be a strategic weapon, not a default crutch.
For years, sales teams treated cold calling as a numbers game, and it really was a reliable staple of prospecting. But as we’ve seen, blindly relying on the phone alone is no longer sufficiently productive. Instead, the phone needs to be one channel among many, used at the right moments rather than as a constant battering ram.
Ways Reps Can Adapt to the Future of Cold Calling
I realize this whole take has probably felt a little pessimistic, but I want to stress that it’s possible for reps to adapt to the new reality of dialing and turn the phone back into a valuable tool.
Leverage every channel.
If you ever find yourself relying on one channel for all your sales outreach, you’re probably doing it wrong. In my experience, the best sales strategies incorporate a variety of tactics and touchpoints because you never know what will resonate with the prospect.
If they haven’t logged on to LinkedIn in years, that InMail message probably isn’t going to get you anywhere. If they have 1,000+ unread emails in their inbox, yours is probably going to get buried like the rest.
In this situation, a strategic phone call could be a great option — just never let it become your only option.
Look for signals to improve timing.
Did a prospect just visit the pricing section of your website or download a whitepaper? That’s a great time to call, and it will feel like much less of an interruption to them because it was prompted by a legitimate trigger event.
Signals don’t have to be related to your company, either. A prospect getting promoted or a press release being sent out are icebreakers you can mention that will immediately show the call recipient you’re paying actual attention and not just reading from a script.
Build a referral flywheel.
Referrals are pure gold because they fast-track you through the hardest stage of sales: Building trust. When you’re referred to a prospect, you won’t have to make a cold call. They’re expecting to hear from you, and they might even be welcoming it.
Every time my digital marketing company wraps up a website project, I reach out to our primary point of contact and ask for a referral. In my experience, if you’re doing good work, people are almost always willing to make an intro. And if you ask me, that’s the future of sales.
The best “cold callers” tomorrow will actually be master networkers who never really have to cold call at all.
Don’t Get Blinded by the Basics
It’s a tough sales environment in many industries, and I see a lot of sales leaders wanting to get back to the basics that worked at the beginning of their careers. That means more call blitzes, more dials, more conversations. I get the appeal. It’s a tangible activity. But busier reps absolutely don’t mean more sales.
Looking ahead, I’m convinced that the cold call of tomorrow won’t really be cold at all. The core takeaway is that sales is evolving from blind interruption by bots (human or technology) to informed, context-rich connection. The call might be unexpected, but if the prospect knows your company or, even more ideally, your name? Your odds of closing a deal just skyrocketed.
In the end, sales requires two ingredients: connection and timing. Cold calling in its old form was a brute-force attempt at connection and sheer hope that the timing was lucky.
The future belongs to those who can combine some of the old-school hustle with strategies that engage prospects in the right way at the right time. Warm up your cold calls, or better yet, never let them be cold in the first place, and you won’t have to wonder if cold calling has a place in the future.
30 Free Sales Call Templates
Have better conversations with your sales prospects using these free templates.
- Discovery call template
- Follow-up call template
- Standard outreach template
- And more!
Download Free
All fields are required.
You're all set!
Click this link to access this resource at any time.