The conversion rate from cold calling is dismal. Unless you run an office of 20-30 bull-headed employees who have nothing better to do but to bother unsuspected citizens - your efforts are not going to get you far.
I hate SPAM callers that waste my time and make me lose money. I kept getting robo called by a company trying to pretend they were google and "needed to talk to me about my listing" "urgently". Finally the other day I waited for a human on the line. A very aggressive woman came on so I turned it all on her "What company is this..?" "Where are you located.?" "Why are you resorting to such a lowly sleazy job.?" "Don't you have any skills to get a real job.? She was very aggressive and kept trying to turn the conversation back to me and my companies listing, it didn't work. I humiliated her until she hung up and hopefully took me off of that call list. These are really common to many of my clients in the trade industries they don't know about SEO, struggle to understand it and usually have hired a low grade company that has burned them. Usually they started out thinking they could give someone $300 and be on the fist page of google next week.
I understand what you mean, i hate spam callers too but it's not what i will be doing. I will be offering a legitimate service to businesses I've researched before hand to see if they will actually need my services. Totally agree, people do think they can shell out a couple of hundred dollars and see results straight away. When in actual fact is around $100 a month and you should start seeing results after the first month keyword depending. I also don't think people i will be contacting will be receiving loads of calls already. Most will be small self employed people looking to get noticed for their services in the area.
but you have to get them to stay on the line long enough to show that you are targetted. If they knew they needed your services they probably would have done something about it before now so from their perspective it's still a cold call that is interrupting their day. If you are dead set on giving this a go then don't let these guys put you off - but when a call doesn't go the way you hoped atleast you are forewarned. Set yourself a target number of calls and when you've done them review the results and decide if the investment of time and energy is justified by the new sales.
Don't take offense but ALL people say the same thing "it's not what i will be doing. I will be offering a legitimate service to businesses" every time. When people ask me about spam (email, cold calls, etc) I tell them I do not do that because I hate SPAM and it is such a low conversion rate that it is not worth it. They always tell me their SPAM is Not SPAM. lol
Put it this way, If you have a product that can Truly help people, You should be able to sell it to them over the phone. I find Cold Calling to be worth it if you have a targeted audience, if you are just calling random numbers i would go about outsourcing it. it will not be worth the trouble. But then again if you are a good "Sales man" you will have them begging you to sell them your product.
One last comment on cold calling from me, but from the personal side: I don't really like getting cold calls, either, unless it is about something that I am interested in. That goes for email spamming, as well. For over a decade, I have been saying that if someone calls or emails me about fishing equipment (one of my favorite hobbies) I will likely drop everything I am doing to learn more and will absolutely not be annoyed by the interruption. That is because the seller will have hit one of my "hot buttons." You are only an annoying telemarketer or email spammer if your product/service is not of interest to me at that specific time.
Depends on the Niche and quality of Contact details you have like for PC repair there needs to be Offices and Gamers to contact and not go for dialing a coffee shop which don't use any Computer. I think try it once with budget pre-defined for not going broke in this marketing technique.
Cold calling is a good way to generate more business, but it depends what kind of business you have. If your business is selling product, which you can show to the customer at the time of meeting him then cold calling is the best way. And if you are selling services (just in your case, selling online services) cold calling is not the right way to go. Can't comment on conversion rate but as I said earlier for service industries returns from cold calling could be dismal.
Cold calling is a great way of giving more product / service options to the existing customers and for getting new customers as well. At times, you might get negative responses while cold calling, but at times you might secure leads and more orders. Cold calling is worth the effort!