I’ve jumped out of a plane from 15,000 feet. Anyone who knows me knows I’d do it again tomorrow.
Here’s the funny part. Some mornings, ringing someone I’ve never spoken to feels harder.
The jump is over in about a minute. There’s an instructor strapped to your back, the forms are signed, and once you’re out of the door there’s nothing left to decide. Gravity takes it from there.
A cold call has none of that. No instructor. You have to decide to start, every single time. And the fall, if it comes, is a sigh and “Sorry, who is this?”
I’m not alone. In the latest Salesforce State of Sales report, 44% of UK sales reps named cold calling as the worst part of their job. The same report says 36% don’t have the bandwidth for enough outreach, even while spending nearly a full day a week on prospecting.
So it isn’t laziness. It’s dread, plus a diary that’s already full.
What helps me
None of this is clever. It works anyway.
Do it before you think about it. First thing, before email, before the coffee goes cold. The longer I look at the list, the longer the list looks.
Know one real thing about them. Not “I saw your company is a leader in its space”. One real thing: a project, a job advert, a new product. It turns a cold call into a slightly warm one.
Ask for a little. “Have you got two minutes, or shall I call back on Thursday?” gives people a way out, and most don’t take it.
Count the calls, not the yeses. I can’t control who answers. I can control whether I dialled.
Will AI make it go away?
Partly. AI can do the research, draft the opener and tell me who’s most likely to pick up. That’s real help, and a lot of the dread is really the admin around the call.
But the moment itself, one person deciding to talk to another, isn’t going anywhere. When every inbox is full of perfect AI emails, a slightly nervous real voice is the thing that stands out.
Jump anyway.
