Cold-calling

Cold calling is defined as the solicitation of business from potential customers who have had no prior contact with the salesperson conducting the call. Cold calling is used to attempt to convince potential customers to purchase either the salesperson’s product or service. Cold calling is generally referred to as an over-the-phone process, making it a source of telemarketing, but can also be done in-person by door-to-door salespeople. Though cold calling can be used as a legitimate business tool, scammers can use cold calling as well.

Cold calling, as a means to conduct business, has seen change as technology has increased. Salespeople who use cold calling once followed specific guidelines in order to produce more profit. These guidelines, now believed to be misconceptions by Wendy Weiss, were as follows:

Cold calling has developed into a targeted communication tool. Salespeople call from a list of potential customers that fit certain parameters built to help increase the likelihood of a sale. Cold calling began as a form of giving a sales pitch from a script. This has changed to an approach where the salesperson must now "dig deeply to understand" the potential customer. To avoid being seen as scammers, legitimate businesses that use cold calling now use it as an introduction rather than to close the sale. This is to put less pressure and stress on the prospect.

With the development of newer technology and the internet, cold calling has gained some criticism. Jeffrey Gitomer wrote in a 2010 article for The Augusta Chronicle that "the return on investment on cold calling is under zero." Gitomer believes that cold calling will only annoy customers and will not attract business. Gitomer also believes that referral marketing is a better form of selling and marketing. According to Gitomer, there are "2.5 basic understandings of a cold call":

Cold calling has also been used by scammers. One such example was when a group of impostors posed as members of the Microsoft support team. The impostors called several homes from a database of Microsoft owners. The Microsoft customers were then told that there was a virus on their computers, and in order to fix it, they had to download a specific program. The program gave access to the computer files for the impostors. In July 2006, a survey conducted by Lactofree determined that cold callers were the most annoying thing in the UK. Cold calling has been a hallmark in the proliferation of boiler room scams selling fraudulent investment and sports betting schemes from Australia's Gold Coast.

...
Wikipedia