A cold-call is simply an walk in freezer Suppliers outbound call made to someone you have never spoken with before. It is not a referral. That's a warm call. It is not any inbound call, even if that's your first contact. An inbound call is a blessing because someone wants to speak with you. Cold calls are often impersonal and must be made "personal" as soon as possible. If you are not calling qualified leads then you might as well get out the yellow pages and start dialing. Hitting qualified people boost your close rate dramatically and eliminates wasted time. Invest your time in qualifying before calling. You will still have to further qualify the prospect once on the phone. It would be ridiculous if you offer enterprise-sized solutions and called a small business. Even if the person wants to buy, you would have nothing to sell. OK, we all know it's a numbers game. So, determine what the "superstar" ratio is and work towards beating that figure. Establish where you are now in terms of success and you know how far you need to go. What, you don't have a clue how many calls to make? Ok, try 40 - 60 a day. For example; you place 60 calls resulting in 20 responses, resulting in 5 decision makers reached, resulting in 1 presentation. Assuming you close 1 sale for every 3 presentations, you will have made 180 calls over three days. Your numbers may vary but it's all numbers. This is an easy one right? Wrong! The notepad and pens are obviously to take notes. But its the type of notes you take that make the difference. Listen for words describing how they process information. People have a dominant "channel"; visual, auditory or kinetic. They tell us their channel by saying things like "I see what you mean", "I hear what you're saying", "this feels right to me". Also, listen for buzzword terminology and play them back. Say someone says "I'd like to take this step-by-step" you could respond later in the conversation with something like "let me walk (if kinetic) you through this step-by-step". This is powerful stuff! Better yet, it works!