The First Breakthroughs I’ve gone back and forth a lot about the term “Cold Calling 2.0,” mostly because it doesn’t involve any cold calling. In fact, if you’re making cold calls, you are doing everything wrong. Cold Calling 2.0 means prospecting into cold accounts to generate new business without using any “cold calls.” I define a cold call as “calling someone who doesn’t know you and who isn’t expecting your call.” No one enjoys this— neither the caller nor the person being called, right? Cold Calling 2.0 also means you have processes and a system in place to generate new pipeline and leads predictably—that is, an organization knows how “x effort” will lead to “y results”. In fact, it can be the most predictable source of pipeline at a company, done right—as with companies like Salesforce.com, WPromote or Responsys. While Cold Calling 2.0 is a system with many steps, there was one original breakthrough that started the snowball rolling. In early 2003 I was experimenting with regular cold calling, banging the phones, to see if it worked. Cold calling worked a little bit, and far too slowly: through cold calling, I found I could generate two highly qualified opportunities per