Cold caller is a form of sales solicitation from businesses to customers who’ve never interacted with the salesperson making the call. It generally refers to phone-based conversations (hence cold calling) but technically covers in-person door-to-door interactions, too.
Granted, most businesses that use cold calling today no longer adhere to the original meaning. With unknown numbers increasingly associated with scams, it’s more common for companies to use warm calling, or calling from a list of potential customers garnered through lead gathering.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the prospect is expecting the call, but it does mean more research on the caller’s part, some sort of prior connection (via a referral, LinkedIn, etc.), and an increased likelihood that the prospect won’t immediately hang up the phone.
Of course, this begs the question: Is cold calling dead? We say absolutely not—it simply requires the right technique.
