Cold Calling Is Dead, But the Phone Is Not

By David Karnstedt

Any time someone declares something dead, the reports of its demise are usually wildly exaggerated. We heard it about email, then the office, then the phone. Usually, the thing has not disappeared. It just stopped working the way people were used to.

Cold calling is different.

I started my career as an SDR, making those calls myself. Now I am the CEO receiving them. For the past few months, I have answered every unknown number that hits my phone. I’ve listened to good calls, bad calls and the ones that should never have been made. Hearing it from both sides has convinced me that cold calling really is dead.

However, the phone is not.

I believe in outbound in a major way. People buy from people, and that is not going to change. But today, it better be a warm call, and you better deliver instant value.

What I Had to Unlearn

I know what it feels like to have a list in front of you, a number to hit, and only a few seconds to convince somebody not to hang up. Being on the other end of the line has forced me to rethink a lot of what I learned starting out.

Cold calling really was a numbers game. If you made 50 calls, a certain percentage responded, and a certain percentage of those took a meeting – the math was predictable. Hit the activity number and eventually you hit the outcome.

It doesn’t work like that anymore.

If you are just dialing for volume, skipping the prep and the research, and not thinking about the problems you can solve, you will lose every time.

That is partly because the nature of the interruption has changed. You are calling somebody’s cellphone now, not their office line, which makes the call far more personal. The attention span of somebody willing to listen to you is near zero. You are trying to earn the right to break into somebody’s schedule. It has to be worth it.

I see people miss this in the most basic ways, like not even checking the time zone before they dial. My wife recently got a sales call at 6 a.m. after she left her phone on because our daughter was out late and she wanted to be reachable. Instead, some bonehead trying to sell her something called at six in the morning. The fact that you got someone to pick up does not mean you have earned their attention.

Most bad calls fail for the same reason: The caller has not done enough work to justify the interruption. I get pitched marketing, IT, HR, benefits, real estate, and accounting software. I am rarely the buyer, even as CEO.

One person called because they saw I held a role at a company I left in 2018. How long do you think that call lasted? Another salesperson called to ask whether I had considered buying their product when we were already in an active buying process with people at the same company.

These are wasted calls, and they are damaging to your brand. I am not going to veto a purchase because one SDR annoyed me, but I absolutely walk away thinking, “These guys don’t know what they’re doing.”

The opposite is also true. Respect my time, do your homework, get to the point, make a case for how you can help, and I will respect the brand even if I never buy anything. Every call has an outcome beyond whether it books a meeting.

What Makes a Call Warm

One of the best calls I received recently shows what I mean. We were already evaluating AI tools for a problem we knew we had: too much content across the company, with no easy way to tell what was current versus outdated. The person on the phone led with exactly that problem. It was a pain I already understood we had as an organization.

He addressed the obvious question before I could ask it: Why are you calling the CEO?

His answer: Solving it required organizational change, and that happens from the top. He could work with someone closer to the implementation, but without leadership buy-in, the project’s odds of success were near zero.

He had identified a pain we were literally just talking about internally. And, by the way, he did it in under 30 seconds.

The guy did his homework.

The best callers don’t just find a signal; they connect it to a problem they can solve. And not a generic, abstract problem, but an actual problem the company has today, somewhere the business is losing and they can help. What they don’t do is explain every feature of the product. So many people fall into that trap. They know how everything works, and nobody cares. You need to know the value it provides.

The opening matters too. One of the worst ways to start is, “Hey, how are you?”

Good. What do you need?

Or, “Are you having a good day today?”

It starts you off on the wrong foot because nobody believes that’s why you called. I would rather have somebody be direct: “I know you were not expecting to hear from me, but I have been doing research on your company.”

I used to identify myself as a cold caller all the time.

You have to earn the right to continue the conversation. That is the mindset. You do not deserve five minutes because somebody happened to answer the phone. You earn the first 30 seconds, then you earn the next part of the conversation. This is what turns a cold call into a warm one. At a previous company, we tracked calls and found that you had about 17 seconds to make your point. My sellers say it’s even less now.

So get to the point.

AI Should Make the Call Warmer, Not the Spam Cheaper

There is another reason I think the old volume model is breaking: Technology has made volume nearly free.

It has never been easier to call more people or send more messages. AI makes volume nearly infinite. Sales leaders can use it to create more outreach, more “personalization” that everybody knows is not actually personal, and more noise for buyers to ignore.

Or they can use it to make the work better.

When I was calling public companies, I put every one of them into a stock tracker so I would get news alerts. An acquisition, a divestiture, private equity involved – any of them could be a reason to call. When somebody said they were set with another provider, there was one piece of information I wanted: When does your contract end?

I know. I will not bother you now. But I will call you back as you get closer to that date.

Then I would write it down on a 12-month desk calendar so I remembered when to call. That dates me, but the point is not the calendar. The point is that I was looking for a reason.

Companies that get this right will not simply tell reps to “do more research” and leave them to figure it out alone. They will make the information easier to use: Put contract dates where the rep can see them, surface competitive technology, make company priorities, account history, and relevant signals available. Do not make somebody hunt through five systems just to understand why they are making the call.

Good outbound should not depend on individual acts of heroism. The tools can help you find the signal, but you still have to figure out whether it gives you a reason to call.

When you pick up the phone and talk to somebody, it still needs to be a human. AI can help you prepare for that conversation. It should not be the reason you stop having one. For sales leaders who came up the way I did, that requires some unlearning. And unlearning is hard, because the things you need to let go of are usually the things that made you successful.

Some of what I learned still matters, but I do not think you can manage the future of outbound by simply asking for more of what worked then.

After picking up all these calls, I have more empathy for SDRs than I did before – more for a well-thought-out, professional call, and less for somebody just dialing for dollars and hoping to get lucky.

I know the job is hard. I did it.

If I was starting again, I would still pick up the phone. I would just do a lot more before I dialed. Then, when somebody answered, I would remember the number we used to track: about 17 seconds.