In the B2B ecosystem, where personalization and relevance are key competitive differentiators, cold calling might seem old-fashioned. Check any social media feed or read industry publications, and you’ll find unsolicited phone outreach framed as a spray-and-pray tactic from yesteryear.

But that’s not entirely true. As daunting as cold calling may be, it still has a place in modern selling. Sales development representatives (SDRs) and account executives (AEs) find cold calling to be an effective means of reaching prospects when handled correctly.

What is B2B Cold Calling?

B2B cold calling is simply phoning a prospective customer before they’ve expressed interest in your product or service.

One reason why cold calling has such a bad reputation is because it’s associated with low-quality calls from irrelevant companies with poor offers.

While this may be true for many cold calls, this doesn’t mean that cold outreach is worthless. To make cold outbound sales prospecting effective, salespeople should focus on demonstrating genuine value from the very first touchpoint. Doing so requires a keen understanding of a prospect’s problems and growth goals, both of which can be surfaced in seconds with ZoomInfo Copilot, ZoomInfo’s AI-fueled go-to-market platform.

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Benefits of B2B Cold Calling

Every deal starts with a conversation. Think of B2B cold calling as jump-starting the sales journey. In fact, 27% of sellers report that cold calls are “very effective” or “extremely effective,” and nearly 70% of buyers still accept cold calls.

Other cold-calling benefits include:

Reaching new customers
Perfecting your sales pitch
Making a personal connection with a potential customer

It’s important to note that you wouldn’t necessarily achieve the same through, say, cold emailing.

Cold Calling vs. Warm Calling

A close relative of cold calling is “warm calling,” when sales reps contact a potential customer based on previously expressed interest or being in touch with your business. There are two types of warm prospects: direct and non-direct.

Non-direct prospects have:

Visited your website
Consumed some content (such as a case study, eBook, or webinar)

Direct prospects have previously expressed interest in your solution, including:

Requested to talk with a sales representative
Received more information through demo, free trial, or pricing request
Met with a sales rep
Were a lost opportunity

Not all calls are created equal. Establishing contact with a prospect before you call creates an opportunity to establish trust. As a result, potential customers may be more likely to listen to your pitch and consider whether your products can solve their problem. But with cold calling, that value has to be communicated almost instantly to capture and sustain their interest.

Is B2B Cold Calling Dead?

Sales professionals love to debate whether or not cold calling is worthwhile.

The truth is B2B cold calling still has value. It remains one of the most cost-effective methods for B2B businesses to reach new customers. While the first call may not lead to an actual sale, cold calling is an opportunity to familiarize a potential prospect with your brand, your product, and yourself as a salesperson.

The pain of cold calling

If cold calling is still valuable, why are so many sales professionals skeptical of cold outreach?

Data from Gartner suggests that it takes an average of 22.5 dials to achieve a meaningful conversion. In specialized industries, such as IT, or when prospecting senior executives, that figure is closer to 30. To further complicate matters, it takes an average of three conversations to secure one sales appointment or product demo.

While many salespeople dread making cold calls, a strong outbound motion including cold calling is essential for success. When it comes to building an efficient outbound lead generation process, using intent data to warm up cold leads can be an effective strategy when prospecting for new business.

Relevant intent signals include comparative research (identified by keyword analysis), visits to specific web pages, such as pricing pages, and greater engagement with content — all of which can indicate a prospect is in-market and ready to buy. Prospects that have demonstrated some level of intent may still not be interested, but intent signals indicate the prospect is at least in-market, which can make that initial conversation a little easier.

Is B2B cold calling legal?

Many people mistakenly confuse B2B cold calling with spam or “robocalls” from automated dialers. Cold calling is a legal business practice and is not considered spam. But that doesn’t mean there are no rules.

According to the telemarketing experts at Contact Center Compliance, most B2B cold calls are exempt from federal “Do Not Call” regulations, which are meant to protect consumers from unwelcome phone solicitations.

State laws may be more restrictive depending on where your company operates, and other federal regulations may apply. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also notes that soliciting individual consumers for personal sales or charitable contributions at their work phone does not qualify as a B2B call.

Can you cold-call cell phones?

Yes, it is legal to cold-call cell phones, but regulations apply. Cold calling, whether to a landline or cell phone, is regulated by the FTC and the Federal Communications Commission.

Federal law prohibits any calls to cell phones using automatic dialers or prerecorded messages. However, businesses are permitted to call cell phone numbers if the recipient has given written consent.

Best Practices For B2B Cold Calling

When it comes to cold calling, there are hard do’s and don’ts.

Do:

Know exactly who you’re calling (and why): While cold calling means contacting someone who has never expressed interest before, it doesn’t mean calling them without researching any background information. When you’re calling with the goal of closing a sale, you should know exactly who you’re talking to, which company they work for, and the exact value your product can provide for them.
Pitch, listen, and listen some more: Tone matching (also known as “mirroring”) is exactly what it sounds like — matching the tone of the person you’re talking to. For example, if they’re high-energy, you should be too. If they’re skeptical, scale back your approach. Tone matching is one of the most important tactics to build better rapport.
Clearly define the call’s purpose: You should know exactly what you’re going to say before you pick up the phone. Quickly establish exactly why you’re calling, be sure that the prospect understands who you are, the organization you represent, and, most importantly, how your solution can help solve their problems.

Don’t:

Ask who you’re speaking with: Before you dial, you should know who you’re calling, what their title is, and the decision-making power they hold at their company.
Ask if now is a good time: It’s never a good time for a cold call. Don’t give them an out right away. If they really need to go, they’ll tell you.
Excuse yourself: While it’s tempting to apologize to establish a favorable rapport, remember that your solution can bring genuine value to your prospect’s company. Rather than beginning the conversation with “sorry,” consider saying “can you help me?”
Try to sell on the first call: The first cold call serves as a discovery call, with the goal of making sure you’re both on the same page. Rather than trying to immediately pitch your solution, use the first call to get to know the prospect better, and communicate how your product could potentially solve pain points for them.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Successful Cold Calling

Cold outreach is perceived as ineffective due to misaligned expectations. The likelihood of a cold call actually converting is very low — but if you instead view initial cold outreach as the first step in a larger conversation, it makes more sense.

While every customer is different, the most successful cold calls follow four distinct stages that reps can adopt to increase the impact of their own calls.

Interrupt the normal pattern
State the reason for the call
Ask open-ended questions
Make a powerful value statement

Successful cold outreach hinges on timing and a deep understanding of your prospect. By following the four steps above, you’re more likely to advance more deals, or at least make a positive first impression on a potential future customer.

Six Steps to Better Cold Calls

Failing to prepare is preparing to fail, especially considering that only 3% of buyers actually trust sales reps. You can’t prepare for everything, but you can orchestrate your sales outreach based on variables such as buyer personas, verticals, and segments.

Every sales team should have a process to streamline tasks and make the team more effective in how you cold call. There are two parts to a sales call: the pre-call preparation, and the actual execution.

Pre-call tasks include:

1. Segmenting your prospect list

Take the time to craft a segmented list of prospects that you’ve already researched, and who are likely to benefit from what you’re selling.

2. Using org charts and department insights

Understanding department structure — reporting, budgets, head count — will improve your chances of securing a meeting with the right people.

Gartner analysts found that the typical purchasing group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision-makers. This makes org charts a valuable tool. Understanding the relationships between key decision-makers helps you move up or down the organization with purpose and is far more effective than the “smile and dial” approach.

3. Identifying accurate direct-dial phone numbers

Outdated contact information wastes time. Cold-calling is difficult enough without making the task harder with inaccurate phone numbers or navigating corporate switchboards.

4. Use an autodialer

Automated dialers automatically call through lists of uploaded contacts. With sales reps making between 45 and 100 calls a day, the time-savings of autodialers is obvious. Further, click-to-dial and pre-recorded voicemail features reduce error-prone, repetitive tasks and improve overall efficiency.

5. Use a script

Sales cold calling scripts are great tools, even for the most seasoned sales rep. They set you up for a quality conversation, no worrying about stumbling over words or unexpected objections. They also make training new SDRs easier and the task of cold calling less daunting. Personalize them to fit the needs of any given prospect.

6. Product or solution cheat-sheet

Be prepared to handle potential objections and unexpected questions. Knowing exactly what your product does is mandatory. You need to precisely convey the value it can add to the prospect’s organization. For newer SDRs, having that information written out in front of you is very helpful.

When Should You Cold Call?

Timing is everything in cold calling, which is why it’s best to time your cold outreach to take advantage of human nature.

According to ZoomInfo research, the best time to cold call prospects is five minutes before the half-hour and hour. Why? Because most people structure their day in 30-minute intervals.

Is cold texting effective?

Many reps rely on SMS outreach as part of their cold outreach. However, due to the more personal nature of cold texting, it’s important to be tactful, considerate, and judicious in its use.

ZoomInfo’s reps have found it most effective to first ask permission to send additional information to the prospect, keep messages simple and concise, and to consider time zones and dialing codes for international prospects.

Beyond basic texting etiquette, it’s important for reps to recognize the strengths of SMS messaging in their sales process, such as following up to confirm scheduled calls, asking specific questions to move deals forward, and connecting with prospects at in-person events such as trade shows.

Using AI in Cold Outreach

Traditionally, cold calling has been a numbers game. Making more calls increases the likelihood that some prospects might convert. It’s only possible to take this so far, however — even the most diligent salesperson only has so many hours in the day.

However, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t scale your cold outreach efforts — it just requires a modern approach.

Generative AI excels at automating necessary but time-consuming administrative work that drives successful prospecting, including cold outreach. AI for prospecting is becoming increasingly important to go-to-market teams, and is already reshaping how companies reach new markets and sign more business.

Using ZoomInfo Copilot, frontline sales teams identify prospects actively researching relevant products and services — the high-value prospects who, according to data from Gartner, are 60% of the way through the buyer’s journey before they identify themselves. Combined with automated personalization at scale, ZoomInfo Copilot can drive significantly more revenue from your cold outreach efforts.

The Future of Cold Calling

According to Millie Beetham, senior director of ZI Labs and GTM Innovation at ZoomInfo, true cold calling is already being phased out by forward-thinking sales teams and thanks to advances in AI technologies.

In addition to heightened expectations from prospects, increasingly stringent oversight of spam email from major service providers such as Google will further necessitate more targeted, personalized, and relevant outreach from sellers.

Cold outreach is changing faster than perhaps any other aspect of modern sales. Today, there should be no such thing as a truly cold lead, and salespeople must do everything in their power to reach prospects at the right time, with the right message, before their competition.

Although there are never any guarantees when it comes to selling, following the advice above will help salespeople increase the impact of their cold outreach efforts and make more genuine connections with would-be buyers.